THREE on how setting goals changes your brain
Goal-setting optimizes your brain to achieve that goal
Rationalizing behavior is a pretty good way to distract from your goals. “I needed the sleep” after snoozing through the alarm clock, or “We’re celebrating, open the next bottle of wine” when you promised yourself an early night are two examples. This past week, I caught myself rationalizing watching playoff hockey at 1:00pm on a workday. “I’m not procrastinating my work; I’m researching goal achievement!” The Philadelphia Flyers were energetic, aggressive, and focused on putting the puck into their opponent’s net. We should pursue our goals with the same levels of clarity and focus.
When a hockey player takes the ice, his or her efforts are focused on a goal which is always in sight, never more than 200 feet away. Endurance athletes, on the other hand, chase a finish line that’s unseen for 99.9% of the race. Endurance sport is like life in that sense. Rarely are the things we want right in front of us. Rather, those “wants” are only achieved through long-term, focused effort.
Endurance athletes must define concrete goals with their minds-eye since there are not hockey goals stationed every 200ft during a triathlon. Instead of standing on the starting line and thinking about winning the race, an endurance athlete should be thinking, “There is the first swim buoy about 200m ahead. I’m going to control my breathing and keep a high body position, and I’m going to kick a little harder than I normally do until I reach that buoy.” Without smaller, incremental goals, endurance athletes will fall victim not to their competitors, but rather to distraction. This is true not only for racing, but also for daily training.
Scientific research affirms the importance of specific and measurable goals as the path to achievement. The linked article “What Goal Setting Does to your Brain” details how pursuing ambitious, specific goals changes the composition of your brain. Identifying and then working towards a specific, actionable goal will actually turn you into someone who can accomplish that goal. It’s powerful stuff, but it only works when you resist the urge to rationalize yourself onto an easier path.
When you have a clear idea of the goal that’s driving your action, your brain will link its problem solving and emotional centers to help you become someone capable of achieving that goal. Even when the finish line is out of sight, specific goals, like lanterns along a walkway, will guide endurance athletes to the finish.
Joe Maloy, 2016 U.S. Olympic Triathlete, Co-Founder and Editor-at-Large
• SWIM TRAINING FOR TRIATHLETES Summer is a perfect time to take advantage of open-water swimming and outdoor pools. With most races on hold, there could be a silver lining when it comes to focusing on technique, improving endurance and tracking your progress. U.S. Masters Swimming recently published Seven Effective Drill and Pace Sets for Triathlon Swim Training That Won’t Bore You. In the workout, USMS writes that “there are defined best practices when it comes to getting the most bang for your buck with swim training. What you need most is certainty that the time you’re putting in and the work you’re doing is going to pay off. And a little fun along the way won’t hurt, either.”
Sample U.S. Masters Swimming triathlete workout: 4 x 100s (first 50 catch-up drill, second 50 build to race pace freestyle); 4 x 100s (odd 25s, head-up freestyle); 8 x 50s (odds breathe every 3, evens breathe every 5); 4 x 100s (negative split by 50, build kick into finish); 4 x 100s (upper body-up kick without a kickboard, arms extended in front); 8 x 50s (no-wall turns under the flags without touching lane lines or bottom); 4 x 50s (take as few strokes as possible under a set time)
• NO POOL? NO PROBLEM If you don’t have access to a pool to execute yard or meter-specific training sessions, Triathlon Magazine Canada has an open-water swim training plan. “With pools across the country still closed, the good news for triathletes is that lakes are warming up.” The TMC article talks about the benefits of training alongside others, particularly for people who find the close proximity of competitors in the water on race day to be disorienting after months training solo in a pool.
Triathlon Magazine Canada sample open-water training workout: Warm-Up — 10 min easy swim; Main — 4×40 seconds at start speed/rest 30 seconds between each effort; 400 m (6 to 7 minutes) moderate/45 seconds rest; 800 m (around 15 minutes) of steady draft work. Exchange the lead every 50 strokes-the leader pulls over and the others swim past. This is best done in groups of three or four. 40 x 40 seconds surge/30 seconds easy between each effort; Cool-Down — 400 m (7 to 8 minutes)
• CONSISTENCY IS KEY Maintaining consistency is a key part of any training. While all of us have occasionally been caught up in the moment and decided to push beyond our plans for the session, as a regular practice that type of training mentality could be doing more harm than good. USA Triathlon’s Multisport Lab recently published an article focused on consistency in training and asked the question, “as an athlete, can the idea of constantly outworking yourself and those around you backfire?”
"Consistency of good training beats sometimes spectacular training any day. Yes, one can lay down massive work, and finish workouts empty and done ... and for a while they will improve, often a lot. A gifted athlete will improve a whole lot for a while. But at some point, and it may only be six to eight weeks, that constantly pushing strategy will stop yielding positive gains and things will stagnate."
• LUCY CHARLES-BARCLAY’S MIND HACKS If you’re the kind of person who finds it hard to stay motivated, or someone who trains consistently but lacks confidence on race day, Red Bull has Lucy Charles-Barclay’s best advice on how to get mentally ready to race. In the article, Charles-Barclay shares tips on how to keep yourself motivated, how to eat and sleep well, and how to own race day.
“Nerves aren’t necessarily a bad thing – if you can control them in the right way.”
• CHANGE YOUR BRAIN As Joe wrote in his editor's letter, pursuing goals forces us to combine our brain’s problem solving and emotional centers. This unique combination is unlocked through focused effort, and it actually changes the physical composition of one’s brain to optimize it to perform the desired action. Late last month, Inc. published a piece on What Goal-Setting Does to Your Brain and Why It's Spectacularly Effective. Summing things up, the article says that “Goal-setting literally alters the structure of your brain so that you perceive and behave in ways that will cause you to achieve those goals.”
“The part of your brain that creates emotion (your amygdala) evaluates the degree to which the goal is important to you.The part of your brain that does problem solving (your frontal lobe) defines the specifics of what the goal entails.The amygdala and frontal lobe work together to keep you focused on, and moving toward, situations and behaviors that lead to the achievement of that goal, while simultaneously causing you to ignore and avoid situations and behaviors that don't.”
• TWIN PEAKS POOL As a result of gym and community pool closures, many of us went months without swimming in a pool. A stretch of dormancy is OK for amateur athletes, but it’s a different situation if you’re training to qualify for the Paralympic Games. The New York Times tells the story of how Swimmer Rudy Garcia-Tolson searched for a pool until actor David Duchovny offered to let him use his.
"I was still trying to find a pool when I got one of the great messages of my life. It was from a woman who said she worked with the actor David Duchovny, telling me to get in touch with her about finding a pool to train in. She gave me his number and told me to reach out. When I did, he told me he had a 25-meter, one-lane pool in his backyard. I was welcome to use it whenever I wanted. I just needed to give him a little notice."
• ECO-CHALLENGE VS. IRONMAN For triathletes, oftentimes long-course racing is seen as a highlight of endurance sport. So what would long-course athletes have to say about a race that “is fun, it’s gritty, and it makes the Ironman Triathlon look like golf.” Outside Online reviews Amazon Prime’s World’s Toughest Race, a streaming series featuring Bear Grylls. Set in Fiji, the review states that “‘Eco-Challenge’ Is the Adventure TV We Need.”
“It’s the toughest, longest, most extreme, baddest adventure race in human history. Period. Nothing else even comes close.” - BEAR GRYLLS
