I have started to bake bread, and it’s right up my alley.
It takes the correct recipe to make the perfect product. You can’t go rogue like when cooking.
Adding more flavors won’t enhance the recipe. It will ruin it.
This concept connects with me as an endurance athlete and coach training for HYROX and Hybrid Racing.
Hybrid Racing is demanding. It’s a serious challenge. You can’t walk up to the start line of a Hyrox without preparation and have any fun.
You need to train, and the training is where the magic happens.
But the races are demanding, and it can feel daunting to be prepared for it.
The solution seems simple.
Do more.
This is a simple solution, and it works.
But it doesn’t work forever. There is a time when more is not better, and more is just more.
Doing a lot of volume feels good. It takes up time, and time is a good/simple metric.
Plus, it feels like progress. Doing more gives a feeling of accomplishment. Doing more work can feel addicting, and then it starts to feel like the only way to get better is by doing more work.
But there is a line where more work pushes you beyond what is recoverable. If you sit in this non-recoverable area for too long, you will not enjoy training, you will feel overly stressed, and you will not perform well.
And that defeats the whole purpose of being an athlete.
Doing what you need to do to show up your best on race day takes discipline.
There is a time when you need to follow the recipe and give your body what it needs to be the best-finished product.
This is when you need to be a baker.
A baker would stop adding ingredients when the recipe is done. As an endurance athlete, you will do more harm than good if you always add more work.
Don’t do work for the sake of doing work, and you can end up with the perfect final product.
Take a look at the RMR training app which includes 8 and 12-week plans that will lead you directly into your next race. Check it out here.
