Do You Like Numbers?
It is a question I ask every athlete before we work together. Most are obsessed. To be honest, so am I. I spent my childhood looking for a career that combined sport and numbers, two things I was actually good at and enjoyed. Even now, I spend a massive amount of time digging through my own workout data.
It is not because I want to base my entire performance on it. It is for the sense of security that I am heading in the right direction. However, there is an absolute barrage of metrics measured nowadays that can actually stop you from feeling progress.
Is your pace getting quicker? Sure. But your cadence stayed the same and you came off the ground half a centimeter more per stride. At that point, it just becomes irrelevant noise.
People, Not Data Points
This is why my coaching philosophy focuses on what makes my clients happy. They are people, just like you and I. I refuse to treat them as a series of race times or heart rate data points. That would make me a robot.
An AI like ChatGPT can tell you what you look like as a number, but what makes you happy might be something very different. I have heard goals ranging from completing a local 5K to becoming a world champion. These paths are what create the enjoyment, not just the data point at the end. The numbers should never be the definition of whether you are allowed to be happy or not.
The Shackle on Your Wrist
Having goals creates motivation, and that motivation creates enjoyment. I remember the first time I went under 20 minutes for a 5K. I was elated. The second time? It was just another Tuesday. That boost I had the first time was nonexistent.
All that training for one moment was over in a flash. The real achievement was not the number slapped beside my name at the end. It was the effort, the ups, and the downs that got me there.
The irony is that numbers do not just demoralize you when you are slow. They can also act as a shackle when you are feeling great. If you feel like you could fly but you are constantly checking your wrist to make sure you are not “over” your target pace, you are letting an expensive piece of plastic tell you what your limits are.
Zoom Out
If you are going to look at the numbers, I recommend that you do not analyze them session by session. The best thing to do is Zoom Out.
Check your progress over months, not days. The numbers cannot see what is happening off the bike or away from the track. They do not know if you had a stressful day at work, a rubbish night of sleep, or if you simply did not eat enough carbs.
Your watch only measures the output. It does not measure the internal context of your life. We have bad days and bad weeks. Week to week, you might not see any improvement, but over months you will see obvious gains if you have trusted the process. Zone 2 training is the perfect example of this patience. You will not see much change over a short window, but over months, the gains are huge.
Are You Training for a Leaderboard?
Why are you doing this? Why be the first at the pool at 5am or spend four hours on the turbo trainer because there is a blizzard outside? You definitely do not do those sessions for street cred or a few kudos on Strava.
If you are comparing your numbers to someone else on your feed, you are wasting your energy. Is it dishonest to hide your heart rate or power on Strava when you have a bad session?
- Are we training for ourselves or for the public leaderboard?
- Athletes stressing because their 140 BPM is not the same as someone else’s is silly.
- We have different heart sizes, different training histories, and probably had different amounts of coffee that morning.
Their data is not your benchmark. If you are training for the numbers on a social media feed, you have already lost the battle for your own enjoyment.
Focus on Feel
The best thing you can do in the short term is focus on something that cannot be defined by numbers. I offer these goals to all my athletes, for example:
- Technical improvements in the pool.
- Nutrition strategies on the bike.
- Balance and stability exercises for running.
These do not demoralize you because there are no “bad numbers” to analyze. By obsessing over the data, we lose the ability to actually feel what we are doing. If your watch died mid-race, would you actually know how to pace yourself?
Developing that internal feel is a skill that numbers actually hinder. The absolutes of data cause a negative change to your emotions. You get a quick hit of dopamine when your heart rate looks good, or a jab in the heart when you are slower than last month.
Focus on the “why” of the session. How is it getting you to your target regardless of the metrics? Focus on the journey to feel more accomplished. We are all out there for different reasons, but for the same outcome: to be happier, healthier, and better than yesterday.
