Extract from “Feet In The Clouds”

An excellent book from Richard Askwith. In my view essential reading for any would-be professional sports person; an exploration into fell running and so much more.

Here’s a sample – and something for all athletes (yes, golfers too!) about the power of competitive training…

Kenny’s life was not noticeably different from that of an Olympic athlete – except of course, that he still lived with his parents and was fitting his training in around a 40-hour working week.

Somehow he managed to fit a quality 5-mile run into his lunch hour, leaving time to warm down and change, but not to shower. He then summoned the energy for a proper evening session after work.

His training diary meticulously recorded for more than a decade in neat pencil: twice a day for 365 days of the year, rarely more than 90 miles per week: a distance quite low by modern standards, but it was the quality of his training that set him apart:

“I used to do the most incredible interval sessions”, Kenny remembered. “All my competitiveness went into my training as much as my racing. It was in my training that I really used to dig deep. The races were more like a bonus – the reward if you like”.

Kenny Stuart is one of Britain’s greatest unsung athletes. Of his many achievements, perhaps the most astounding is his record for the Ben Nevis Race. Fit walkers take 7 hours for such a journey. In 1984 Kenny Stuart took 1 hour 25 minutes and 34 seconds – which no one has come close to equalling since.

Finding motivation?

Motivation is one of those words or concepts that can feel like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. “Once I find motivation then I’ll start practicing…”

When I think of a highly motivated individual I can picture someone who has a very clear idea of where they want to get to and is energised and excited by this prospect. The occasional knock back doesn’t really affect them and they have the ability to frame events and situations in such a way that helps get to their goal quickly. Their clarity of ‘where they want to be’ enables this person to live each moment in the moment rather than in the past or the future. They are risk takers and are willing to experiment out of their comfort zone as they know this will help them reach their goal quickly. The very highest achievers have the foresight to be able to see an ‘end result’ as an ever changing series of stages. They often take stock and ask themselves questions like: ‘what do I need to do to get to the next stage?’ and ‘what would it mean for me to achieve this?’

Discovering what excites you about your sport is the first step in developing motivation needed for achievement.

One way of ‘fostering’ motivation over a period of time and organising time and priorities is by setting goals. There is usually plenty of talk about goal-setting in sport psychology circles, particularly at this time of year. From my experience goal setting is not done particularly well as a rule and is often seen as a one-off process of setting some prize-related targets rather than an ongoing ‘review and reset’ of the processes involved in improving performance. Even at the highest level of the game I imagine very few top-level golfers get the most from a goal-setting process, yet it’s probably very common for tour players to set themselves a number of achievement-based goals at the start of the year (Top-50 in world, win a European Tour event, make-cut in all majors).

Start big and end small; take your dreams and shape them into smaller chunks. Keep asking what do I need to do today to help me achieve my goals?

It is much easier to live by your core values than some prescriptive to-do list. The more you can structure your goals around your core values the more rewarding the goal-setting process will be. An achievement goal such as: ‘winning the county championship’ would be well served by several value-based process goals such as: ‘take up another non-impact competitive sport to assist with co-ordination and fitness, pushing myself hard and playing to win whilst maintaining showing respect to opponent at all times’.

Continually ask ‘what do I need to do to achieve this goal’? How can I link this to my core values?