Can You Be Elite and Balanced?

In this episode we debate whether you can become elite at something and still have an element of balance in your life. We also discuss if insecurity is inherent to becoming great. 

Transcript

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Good preparation. We're ready to go. All right. Welcome in to this week. Should we just start saying this quarter? Yeah, seriously. This year's edition. We don't, we don't exactly have a schedule, but that's all right. Well, we get them out when, uh, this is the first step into trying to get on a more regular schedule again. Summer stuff, I, it's mostly been my fault. I've been out of town for the past six weekends. So that's kind of been a rough stretch and Lucas started school on Tuesdays. So we were trying to get into that, that routine as well. So I think there's a lot of stuff that Contributing well, the good news is we have a ton of topics we want to talk about and so we're gonna try to make up for It over the next couple weeks lots of the criticism from our crowd sourcing. Yeah, I can Text left and right for for topics from people about you guys should talk about this So which is which is great and we're gonna actually address one of those today got some positive feedback, too I Someone was asking me to put more show notes in with actual links to more of the studies we referenced and stuff. Cause they listen when they run and they want to be able to go back and actually read the studies or read the books we referenced. And I was like, that's, that's good. We should be able to make that happen. Yeah, that's, that is good feedback. Um, so you want to enter the topic today? Yeah. So the question I got was, do I actually want to pull it up? Make sure I get it correct here. Preparation's key. Well, I had it up and now here it is. Uh, what does training in moderation, AKA a healthy relationship with the sport, look like? Can you still be at the elite level while training in moderation? Uh, this is definitely, I like this question because it's, it's a question I've gotten a decent amount, um, it is You know definitely nuance to it and I mean, there's A lot of different contexts we could look at this question and what sport it is. I think matters The personality of the person matters the stage of development matters Um, so this yeah, this is a tricky question, but a good question Um, yeah, I mean we can just try to be Go through as many as possible and try to be as precise as possible for each example. I think would probably be the most Well, i'm just curious. Well, I mean, yeah the over broad overview to this question again, probably both agreeing. There's nuance to it What would be your initial take before we go into maybe different contexts just no thinking Right off the bat gut response the most elite athletes the greatest of all time in most sports Have some kind of demons they Maybe Are obsessed. They are singularly focused. And that is usually at the expense of other aspects of their life. That'd be my answer, which is the opposite of moderation in my opinion. I I've heard that opinion for sure. I, my initial question to answer this is like, what, how do you define elite? Right. That, that one is really, I don't know how to answer it without that. Like, are we talking greatest of all time? Are we talking, you make it to the professional level? Do you make it? We're starting just gut reaction. Right. Let's say the highest, highest level. So you're going super elite. Yeah. Who are the first people you think of? Name five. Of the goats that come to your mind. Uh, you know, Tiger, Jokovic, you know, LeBron or MJ, um, Simone Biles, you know, things Brady. Yeah. Tom Brady painting. I mean, out of those seven people you just named, I would say at least five, we know four or five of those. We know pretty and pretty well detailed, um, story, how obsessed they were with their goals. Yeah. And, and we can see just from some of the stories, how that played out in there. Yeah, this was an interesting, we actually brought this up in one of our classes in grad school. It was a, such an interesting conversation. One of my favorite conversations in a class of all time. Um, and my professor, Dr. Mark, I, uh, Yagi worked with the Denver Broncos at the time was talking about like, how, He feels like insecurity drives people to the elite level and usually insecurity leads to kind of an unhealthy form of preparation and practice. And, um, certainly wouldn't be what you call moderation. So, you know, his take was he would agree with that. I think I tend to agree with you as well. Um, where I maybe start to differ a little bit and at least want to try to make the argument is okay, if we define elite as. You make it to the professional level. Maybe you're not the Tom Brady of the NFL, but maybe you're, um, you know, a backup quarterback in the NFL. You're, you know, you're in the top 50 in the world at what you do. I would consider that elite. Can you do that in moderation? Could you be, uh, you know, a wide receiver on, on an NFL roster? Could you define if you were to define that as elite? Could you do that in moderation? You know, those, those are the types of questions that come up to me where I won't, I want to believe that it's like, again, also, how do you define moderation? What does that look like? So I don't know. There's a lot of, you're doing too much nuance though. Let's the, the people. That we just named. So that that's the distinction though, right? You're naming people that are on an NFL roster. I'd say most of those people are, some of those people certainly have a more diverse, uh, moderation type approach to their sport versus their personal life versus their other interests. Um, and that's part of that identity thing. And probably healthier formed identity, where it's not so attached to their performance and their sport and their level of success. But I think, like you said, there's, I was just listening to wheel men today, which is partly a Lance Armstrong biography, partly about the doping scandal of his career. And just even hearing about his childhood from age six or eight, basically because of the way he was raised. And the insecurity and the way he was raised, he was obsessed with performance winning, and that was his attachment. That was the stable thing he could control and just the level of insecurity demons and the level of need he had for that kind of success. That gives him the advantage over everyone else because he will literally do whatever it takes, even die to win. And I think that's what separates people who are, especially in endurance sports, that willingness to suffer really separates that top 0. 0001 percent from the next 1 percent because that they're, everyone's good at that level, the people that are able to just almost in a, you know, like a sociopath or psychopath, they can just disengage the emotional part of their brain and be like, Oh, this is probably causing a wake of damage, but it, I don't even necessarily care or I'm just unaware of it. Right. And I can just be so singularly focused on this at the expense of everything else. Yeah. I think it allows them an ability to perform at a level that's otherwise difficult to achieve. Obviously we see that that catches up with you eventually and either affects your performance or usually what we see is towards the end of the career, post career affects your ability to be happy. But I don't necessarily think that was the question. The question was performing during your career. It is, I'll say one last thing and then let you rebut, but it is interesting. I think in our generation, we're seeing a shift of this a little bit. I think this was the last 50 years or so. We really saw the, just like. Obsessive pro elite athlete. And it definitely seems like there's a shift going on where you're seeing more of the still very focused, still very hungry, still very passionate and spending a lot of time in that. But. Able to be a little bit more balanced and still be elite. You know, you mentioned a couple of names to me before we came on and we'll probably go through those too. Yeah. So here's, here's my answer after hearing you talk. Cause I, I do agree with what you're saying. I think when you, and you're looking at the elite of the elite, the 0. 0001 percent of people, I think I agree with you. There's. It would be extremely difficult to live a healthy balanced moderate life and to get to that level But I also think you it is possible to be an Elite performer so I would define that as like a professional athlete or you know domain And have some level of moderation that would be my argument and that's what I feel like I have seen Do you over the past couple years? So let's define moderation next because when I think of moderation I think either Personal life or training volume or training time. Which do you mean when you use that word? I'm kind of thinking about training time because. I mean, for, for an athlete, it's like, you can only train so much. And so you have all of this other amount of time to, to do other things and to think about, I would say it, I would suggest it's actually probably better for your, uh, psyche to have other things going on in your life. Not too many, but just enough to like get away from it. And again, I, I agree with you in the sense, I think that shift has occurred recently where people are much more endorsing that and in talking about that openly. Um, it's kind of having outlets for it, but I've been around two really highly successful athletes over the past two years. And both of them, I would not be like, wow, they're the hardest workers I've ever seen. Um, and that shocks me a little bit because I think I went in more of with, Oh, you have to be the hardest worker or kind of neurotic to be great at something. And what I've seen is with focus, deliberate, intentional practice and consistency. And then obviously sprinkle on a little talent in there. You can get to a really, really high level. Now, can you get to number one in the world and things? I don't know, but you can get pretty darn close. And with, I would argue a somewhat balanced life. Um, and I think I've changed my opinion on that because I think a couple of years ago, if you would ask me, I would have said, no chance. You have to be unbalanced. You have to be completely singularly focused. Um, um, And it does work for some people. I think Tom Brady being a great example of walking, watching his documentary. He uses that term a lot of early in his career. He used just literally the quotes of singularly focused on his craft and what he was doing and obviously worked for him. Um, but he was also successful when he was dating and marrying Giselle and kids and all this stuff. So. Yeah, but he's been divorced twice. I mean, like that's, that's kind of my point. You look at in like Michael Jordan owning the Hornets was a disaster. The other things he's done, like, I think most of those people that we only need to talk about Tiger woods, right? It's like, I don't know. There's, there's something there where what made those guys great also. It tortures them a little bit. No, i'm i'm agreeing with you in the the again the top mount rushmore athletes there's there's something upstairs that is Driving them even more than the most driven people in the world. Like that's the just thinking about that like to get to a Elite level you're driven we can agree there maybe with a few outliers out there that are just extremely talented but To outperform that the most driven people in the world you have to be insane Yeah to a certain extent and it does absolutely you look at you name I mean relationships are probably a pretty good metric of how healthy is your life? Maybe not a perfect metric but a good one to look at from over the top and you're right almost all those guys have Some level of frustration or struggle in that area. It is kind of interesting though. One thing that is very culturally American like centric is that for the longest time that all in passionate, you are self made just all these adjectives we would use to describe a prototypical American, like hero kind of describe those people, right? Just like all they care about is their work. They're self made. They did all this stuff. I think that's shifted a lot over the last 10 or 15 years and that narrative of what we even want to be. And I think you see that reflected in the the athletes that are now The best in their sport right now scotty shuffler pat mahomes Depending on who you want to look at in the nba We could say lebron right now, but lebron is very much He loves to win and I think he really cares, but he's always been kind of Interested in yeah, he's got his business. He's got a million businesses and campaigns and stuff. So I think that's been a shift we've seen in our lifetime from the athletes we grew up with to the athletes now. And so, um, it is, it kind of throws a wrench in, in the answer a little bit because it's that a by product of the time they came up in and what was perceived as how you should be like absolute killer mentality. Take no prisoners, even listening to this Lance book right now. That's how he was. He tried, he had already won the tour and he still wanted to just go absolutely annihilate everyone on the next stage, even though he had already won. He could have just sat back, you know, it's just that mentality. But I think these guys now that want to win, they still are elite, but they don't. That's not how they're thinking. They're thinking totally different. They're even friends off the field. You know, it's just a. Different era. So I don't know if that's an era type of thing and a cultural type of shift as well that plays into that. Yeah. I mean, the view, the view of competition has definitely changed. I think the NBA is probably the best example of that, where you look at the rivalries and, and that literally like the old talking heads of the NBA, you always complain about how everyone's friends now in the league, whereas back in the day, they weren't like, they hated it. They like legitimately didn't like each other. And now it's like, you know, the players on the Celtics will train with the players on like their rival team in the off season. But it's like the whole goal is to push each other to get better. And then I would argue that's a healthier relationship. It's not like they're not going to compete against each other hard when they're in the playoffs. Um, and that they don't care. It's just. You don't have to be, you know, an a hole to work hard and, and get better at your craft and push each other. Yeah, I think that's been the shift. I think we like these narratives, the narratives of the 80s, 90s, early 2000s, thinking about the bad boy Pistons versus the Bulls. You know, that's just a very, we just love those types of narratives as sports fans, especially in the U. S. And so. I think that was a huge part of it too. It just feeds into that, that culture. I do want to go back to the moderation thing and just say from my perspective, the way I think about it totally depends on your perspective of what moderation is. I talked to my wife and she thinks running every day isn't moderation, right? So it, it's a very broad spectrum. And I think unless you're in that higher performing category, you're going to see that as obsessive. Even. Whereas someone in that category, there's almost another spectrum, right? Of, of what moderation looks like at an elite level. And so I think it depends who's asking the question. If it's a regular old person, that's never done something at that level. They're probably going to think that's not moderation at all. Even if you are able to have another interest or another relationship or things like that, they're going to say, no, that's obsessive. So. I do think that's one because I look at my running and in some ways i'm like, this is pretty moderate I don't I look at the top marathoners or triathletes and I say my training is not anything Anything like that, right? So to me, it's in moderation, but shelby looks at it sometimes and she's like, what's your crazy? Yeah, exactly. So I think that's another piece of it, too Well, i'll tell you one story that kind of is funny based off of that when I first Came in to work, uh, to do the, the sports psychology at LTP. They had a three hour practice in the morning. That's when all it goes from seven to 10, 7 a. m. to 10 and. I would meet with the, you know, talk to the kids through that time and then kind of like a weekend They said something about practicing in the afternoon again, and I was like, what are you talking about? Like after you guys there's another practice like I didn't even know Because it didn't even cross my mind because I was I was like in my head a three hour tennis practices Was already more than enough and then there was another two hour practice in the afternoon and at the time I was just Blown away by the thought of that of how ridiculous it was But now being around the tennis world a lot more for the past couple years it still is a lot like don't get me wrong, but it's I guess when It doesn't seem as crazy to me and part of that is probably just being desensitized to it But um also yeah, you look at people's training like training three four Hours a day is not crazy in that world, right? And that's kind of my point though is like But to me, but to someone on the outside, it was like, I couldn't believe it. Right. So let's say the person asks this question or say a high schoolers listening to this and they're saying. Oh, can I train at a moderate level and become a lead? I would say no. Right. It's like in, in that context. Now, if you're someone that is bordering on being very good for your age group and are a training a good amount, and you're like, Oh, can I train moderate in comparison to the absolute upper limit of training and still be very good or at a very high level in that top 1%? Answer's probably yes. So I think that just depends on where you're coming from, what level you want to get to and what your background is, because I personally wouldn't want someone to listen to this and be like, Oh, I'm a, you know, I'm a really good age group runner and I want to be top of my age group. Am I going to get there going from a moderate amount to just a slightly more moderate amounts? Like probably not right. There are people that are going to be training towards that upper end and you're going to have to get somewhere close to that, right? To be, to be there. And that's, I, I do struggle with, so obviously you need a level of volume, but I, I really think that people who genuinely understand how to practice well can do it significantly more efficiently and it becomes less about volume, right? Just the, like you look at, um, Anders Ericsson's work on intentional and deliberate practice. And it's, it doesn't talk about, you know, all of these numbers get thrown around of how many hours you're supposed to get of intentional practice. But what, what doesn't include is like unintentional practice doesn't add the number. And I think what I see a lot of is people are like, Oh, I practiced this many hours this week. But how many of it was actually intentional? I'm like, you could have probably cut that time. You could have done 25 percent of the volume that you did and gotten just as much, if not more out of it, if you would have just been much more intentional and focused during that time. And so that's where I struggle. That's more of a team sports issue. I think in the endurance world, it's like, if you're practicing, you're doing the thing right. And the team sports world, that's a huge issue. It's just wasted time. I went to a practice a couple of months ago for, um, soccer. And I just had the thought towards the end of the practice. We were out there two or three hours. And by the end of the practice in my head, I thought I probably could have gotten each of these players, this number of touches, 30 or 45 minutes, just by how you set up the session, the way you set up the drills, how many P you know, one on ones two on twos instead of six on sixes Switching all these stations explaining all this stuff. Yeah, so yeah in team sports There's such an inefficiency of practice and I think you've talked about this I think some of it is cultural of oh, we need to practice two hours a day. That's it drives me nuts This is this is a little bit of it feels off topic, but it's not because it's it is relevant, but it drives me Absolutely nuts when we're like, oh we're here for Two hours. Like what a terrible way to schedule a practice for anything. Even like if you're in a company to be like, Oh, spend two hours. We're going to this, like that is, I hate, I don't do time based things. I, it drives me nuts because you, it should be, what is our goal? How are we going to get there? And then we take the amount of time it takes to get to that desired goal. Whether that takes 30 minutes. Or three hours. It doesn't matter. Um, and, and I think people, it's one of those things, it helps people feel good about themselves and be like, oh, I practice for two hours a day. Whereas what you're saying, and I completely agree is you can do 30 minutes and get way more out of it from a volume, you could get way more volume if the practice is done, uh, in a more, you know, efficient, productive way. Yeah. I think this is where really kind of cutting edge, really good coach can make a huge difference. Is understanding this I haven't seen a lot of it and you work with a lot more of these teams So you may see more of it or more bad examples I don't really know but for me I have yet to be on a team or see a coach when I was growing up that really Was willing to say okay, we're going to do this in a totally different way to get the most efficiency Put people in positions. They're going to be in in games to practice that and not do these just Eight on eight drills take 30 minutes to set up you get five touches. It's just such a waste of time I can I can go in my backyard or the field across the street do 30 minutes of the drill the thing I'm going to do in the game probably 50 percent of the time and that's way more beneficial But I would say oh, I only practice 30 minutes, but the intensity was higher. The purposeness was higher the Specificity was higher but it feels better as a coach and if you lose I think this goes back to the penalty kick thing You We talked about in the past. Why does no one kick it down the middle and penalty kicks? Because if you miss, you look like an idiot. I think some of that applies to coaching and why coaches choose to practice their certain amount of time versus trying to be a little bit more. Um, what's the word I'm looking for? Just forward thinking with the way they structure practice, because if you only practice an hour and you go get obliterated, everyone's going to say, what, you know, what the heck are you doing? Right. So I think there's some risk averseness with that. So yeah, especially at high levels, like you're at with. Uh, the battery. Well, I was actually going to bring them up because I don't think I've talked to you about this. They do an amazing job and I, I, I mean the coaching staff there is incredible. They have an incredibly efficient practice. They have film, the clips are ready to go. It's, it takes 10 minutes max. And that's very intentional about what they're practicing that day. They do their, uh, fun kind of warmup time. You know, they have some intentional fun kind of time to warm up. Then they do their, their real warmup. Um, and then they get right into it and the coach does an amazing job of explaining all What they're doing why they're doing it and how to do it in a very efficient manner The practice is all in all once they're warmed up. It Rarely goes over 90 minutes. Yeah, which is hilarious because you go to a high school practice and it's It's it is ridiculous. And this is one of the things I tell people and it it doesn't it doesn't register for so I've told many coaches. It's like the professional team is Practicing less than you guys Like that should say something and it's not like they're a bad time. I mean, they have been highly successful and have players destroying records this year. So it's not like it hasn't worked. And I think that goes back to the coaching thing. This is where coaching, everyone thinks coaching is in game and there's a huge component of that. But a lot of coaching is this type of thing of how do I structure practice? How do I put people in the positions to practice the thing that's specific to the skill they need for the situation and put them in? What are the things I want them thinking about seeing from a field perspective? That's what a good coach does is it prepares the players for those situations. And so this is why my, this is why I am pushing back a little bit on your argument of like, I think if you do things the right way, you can have a level of moderation and be, and be really, really good at something. Um, if you are intentional, efficient and organized and know what you're doing. So I don't know. It's a little bit of both obviously, but I think I've just seen a number of examples of, of that. And I would say the people that. Are the ones that spend a ton of time doing it. Um, aren't practicing the right way, which is why it's taking so freaking long. Yeah. I, I would say that obviously you can do be very intentional, specific, purposeful with your practice. It's not like the purpose is to be the greatest of all time by wasting your time and just being out there 24 hours a day. Right. But I think probably what those greats do. Is they already do that then they take that purpose? Level to a high volume, right? And then they're able to do more. They don't get burnt out by it They do it consistently Right, and then on top of that they have some some demons that really motivate them in this hard time So I would call it insecurities. But yes, I I like the Um, but the kevin nah reference, right? Um for those That's gonna go over a lot of people Those are the niche, the niche backseat driver references that you got. Um, so yeah, I think, I think what you're saying is definitely a hundred percent true. I agree with it, especially in team sports. It's just a huge, just a huge thing that I'd love to see overhauled at every level. I mean, I'm about to start coaching Lucas teams in the next couple of years for soccer probably. And I've seen some of those little kid practices and it's crazy. It should take 45 minutes. Right, exactly. Some of it is wrangling the kid. So it's probably harder. That is that you get to eight or nine. So I think that's a Good discussion. Let me what is your Take at this point if I made you pin down to be top two or three in a sport over an era 20 year span. Do you think that's someone that can have no trauma or baggage or Uh, identity issues from growing up or young adulthood. Do you think it's possible? It's such a good question. Here's the thing. I think it's possible. I think it's, I don't think it happens a lot. Because here's the thing. There's, there is someone, let's say you are healthy without insecurities and you just really love what you're doing. And there is someone with the insecurities that will push them. To do more than you because they are insecure about it. Then that's, I think my, the thought I come back to the rest is even, I can see this in my own life when I was more insecure, I was able to a, I'd be more obsessed with running goals, times or soccer, you know, growing up. And then the other thing that happened though, is I would be able to push myself a little bit harder. I think for. 10 years, I probably hit every single workout. And then as I became more balanced, I was less inclined to just suffer. Like, you know, and Brad Stolberg talks about that too. Is he, as he went through the same transformation, he's like in power lifting, I just, I just can't put myself in the same place I used to, because I just, your failure does not destroy my ego like it used to. So I'm not as scared of it. And I think there's something to be said about that. Like once you get to that point. I do think it can be hard to get to that most elite, especially, I mean, maybe I'm talking more about endurance sports because there's a huge component of suffering in that to be great and less in team sports. I don't know. There's a lot of suffering to be great in anything you do, but, um, so here's, here's two points. I don't want to actually keep going. I won't cut you off. Yeah. I'm done. You're done. Okay. So I have two points. One's a count. One's an argument against myself. I think Scotty Scheffler is maybe the first example that I can think of that I think has a healthy relationship with his life and is the number one player in the world by a wide margin. So he's, to me, he's like the beacon of hope of, yes, this is possible. I agree with that. Um, so that would be my outlet, my unicorn example, but it's, like I said, so rare to find that. Um, the other thing I was thinking about when you were talking, I was kind of reading through my notes before this, and one of the things I read is that I had written at some point, actually. I don't know if you ever do that where you're like, this is actually pretty good, but like a goal, having a goal in general signals some level of discontentment with your current situation. Inherently, that's some form of like, I don't know whether you want to call it an insecurity or an unhappiness or discontentment. So if you're someone who's driven by goals, you're, you're telling yourself like, what I have now is I'm not happy with at some level. And so, yes, people that are balanced and content with their life, the end of the way I've heard contentment defined that I really like, so you don't really want to change anything, right? If you're sitting by the pool in a comfortable, you know, Perfect, whether you're content because you don't need to change anything around you or in your situation And so if you feel that in life, then yes, you're not going to be as driven Um, and so yeah, I think it is really difficult to be fully content and open Extremely driven. I do think those two things are Paradoxically against each other. Yeah, I think it is as we've been talking about though It seems more and more like there probably is a way to be very good at least somewhat able to Have good boundaries to maintain healthy relationships or diverse interests and still be very good at your yes, you're being very good Yes, top top top. We're talking number one in the world type people You Probably really difficult to say outside of our one Because it's crazy you think even someone like Rory McIlroy who knows career came across. It's like no, I know that's what I'm saying Yeah, but it's like it is interesting early and I'll be interested to see with Scotty too because he's early in his career Yeah, it does seem like first three to five years People look okay. And then 10 years, you're like, well, everyone thought tiger woods was like, that's all I'm saying is it's a perfect human. It's kind of interesting. Like you see some of that more and more. Um, I don't know if that's because of the level scrutiny or because there's ups and downs that kind of breaks down that facade of thinking your identity secure, and then it gets questioned. You start. It may be secure right now because he's like dominating, but as soon as maybe things started to go south and be curious to see how he responds and how he talks about things. So it's a great discussion. This is one of my favorites. One of the trail running podcasts I listened to always talks about this. And I think it's just, it's just really a great topic. There was someone in the trail running world recently who was Wikipedia page. And they were talking on the podcast about how. That insecurity probably makes her great, but it also caused her and her husband to do this really dumb thing of editing different runners, Wikipedia pages to make them sound less good and to make herself sound more. And it's like, what, what's going on up there psychologically. That's probably, he was like, this is probably a huge part of her success. Is this just psychology of insecurity, but also you can see how, when it manifests in reality, sometimes it. Is extremely unhealthy and Just yeah, you know, it's borderline like you need help. So this is this is a side note on that um not that i've been around like So many elite people but I mean I have been able to be around some from a coach like coaching and players And most of those types of people are not super pleasant to be around Like you can you can smell the ego from a mile away You And you're right. I think it, it does push them to be the top of, and that's what they want. Right. That's what you want. And you're willing to sacrifice other things to get there, including relationships with other people and the way you come across and X, Y, Z. Great. Right. I don't really have a particular problem with that. It's just not someone I'm going to want to be. Best friends with, well, great discussion. Anything else you want to add? No good stuff. Good. Uh, you know who you are for the crowd source. Uh, we appreciate the topic. Um, so yeah, glad to be back. See you guys sometime soon. Hopefully.