Building your super power: 14 Lessons from endurance training - Part 4 of 4

Previous post in this series: Building your super power: 14 Lessons from endurance training – Part 3 of 4

11. Food is sacred

The quality of your fuel defines you. That binge will give you instant gratification for sure. Will it be good for you in the long term? It’s a question I’ve learned to answer for myself and I hope you’ll do it too. Whether it’s sports training or any other skill, the food that you eat will go a long way in deciding how you perform. Put bad quality fuel in your car – you know what happens. Put good quality fuel in your car – you know what happens.

12. Taking care of myself

Endurance training is teaching me how to take care of myself. It reminds me of cause and effect everyday – in terms of how to manage my time and how to fuel myself everyday. I learn what adds to my energy and what drains it. It teaches me about making choices and it makes me happier overall.

13. Slowing down takes you far and fast… eventually

Slowing down helps you become sure footed. This isn’t to do with procrastination in decision making. This is to do with building a skill or base – by partaking slow and deliberate motions.

When you’re learning to play an instrument, you want to play as fast as the pro guitarist plays. In that process, you forget that the guitarist has spent years training slowly to get the right notes, the right tone and to develop a feel for the instrument. It’s the same with anything. The faster you try to go in the base building phase, the more disservice you’re doing to yourself for the long term. If you learn an incorrect technique during the base building phase in order to speed up, more often than not, it’ll come back to bite you. Build up your base slowly and steadily. The speed will follow – it really has no other option.

Speeding up the correct technique is way easier than unlearning an incorrect one and then trying to speed it up.

14. And finally, the realization

As you become better, you’ll realize how important it is to go through the motions – after all, success has no shortcuts. You can finish a marathon with a big smile and enough energy left to walk/ drive home. Or you can finish it as you collapse at the finish line – or before you reach the finish line. The difference between a strong finish and being scooped off the floor with a spatula is a choice you’ll have to make long before you even attempt the marathon.

You’ll visit another country and understand the language as a native. You conclude a business deal and think of it as a job incredibly well done – that’s when you realize. It’s all been worth it. The pain, the agony, the disappointments, and small steps forward and the seemingly bigger steps backward. They’ve all been worth it, and what you’ve become, is your pride. A superpower that you own.

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