New Year, New You?

Happy New Year!  It's time for “New Year, New You”resolutions.  But what does that really mean for us?  What needs to be ‘new’?

In the context of running, this usual means setting goals.  Often BIG goals!  Whether it’s a goal to run a bit faster, or a bit longer, or to even just start running, goal setting can serve as a way to focus our attention, helping us clarify steps which need to be taken, and creating a degree of accountability.  So why is it that so many people fail to follow through with their New Year’s goals?

We think it’s basically two-fold: first, it’s simple over-exuberance.  It’s really easy to get really excited about the “shiny new thing”, and attempting to put forth ‘maximum’ effort towards that goal.  While the intention is good, it’s the execution which sets them up for failure.  Big Goals are like training for a marathon — one can’t just start out by trying to set a PR (Personal Record) at the distance.  It takes months and months of focused, deliberate effort to build one’s mind and body up for such a grueling event.

Secondly, we think it’s an over-reliance on external metrics, like distance or pace, instead of focusing on internal metrics.  It’s understandable, of course!  Internal metrics — how it feels — can be messy.  Even relatively objective internal metrics like heart rate are subject to dozens of influences (heat, humidity, and/or illness, to name but a few).

So what’s the method to find the BEST way to create the New Me?  If you thought I was going to say Breath Running, you’re wrong.  Or at least not completely correct.  Let me explain…

The fact of the matter is there is NO SUCH THING as a “best way” to exercise.  Everybody is different.  We all have our own unique variables which determines what works well and what’s not effective, and all of those variables are variable.  What works well this year might not work well at all the following year.  This is the trap of the Shiny New Thing.

Ever hear of a Monkey Trap?  In regions which are pestered by aggressive monkeys who get into and steal and/or soil food stock and merchandise, there’s a never-ending game of  Catch the Monkey.  Eons ago, when coins became a staple form of currency, monkeys were enthralled with these shiny discs, and would grab them at every chance, even right out of people’s hands.  Catching these furry little thieves became a high priority.

The problem is, these monkeys are lightning quick, extremely clever, and are known to bite people.  So the people in the villages needed a clever way to trap the little beasts, a way that will allow them to subdue the monkey and then relocate it somewhere else.

Some extraordinarily astute person figured out that if they took a gourd — a relative of the pumpkin, but stretched long — and cut the top of the neck off, hollowed it out and let it dry, it became very hard.  Almost like porcelain.  The inner diameter of the neck was purposefully bored out to be *just* big enough for a coin to be dropped into the body of the gourd.  The gourd was securely tied up around its neck and tethered to a tree frequented by the monkeys.

Whether it was the wind or one of the monkeys, the gourd would get jostled, and the rattle of the coin inside would pique the curiosity of a monkey.  A peek inside revealed the irresistible shiny coin!  The monkey reaches in, grabs the coin, and… they’re trapped.  The coin in the palm of their hand makes their paw too large to come back through the neck of the gourd.  They’ll thrash about, scream, and do everything they can to pull their arm out of the gourd.  Everything, that is, except let go of the coin.

Call it greed.  Call it stupidity.  Call it whatever you want, but once a monkey has its paw on something it deems valuable or desirable, it Will Not Let Go. It will spend hours battling the intractable gourd, until it is spent with exhaustion.  That is when the human trapper comes by and scoops the monkey — gourd and all — into a sack, and then transfers it to a cage.  The humans can cut the gourd away and wrest the coin out of the drained monkey’s paw, and then send it far, far away, where it will no longer bother the villagers.

So what does this have to do with training?  Simply this: we at Breath Runner believe that far too many athletes trap themselves by grabbing onto that Shiny New gadget, program, and/or supplement, and proceed to needlessly thrash themselves to bits.  The mystical draw of the external metric completely overrides the awareness of the internal metrics, messy as they may be.    And they keep doing it to themselves.  They just won’t let go.

Herein is the secret to the Breath Runner Method: it’s NOT *the* thing.  It’s merely *a* thing; something available to use to bring those internal metrics into focus.  We’re certainly NOT saying that the external metrics don’t matter!  Of course they do!  But the fact is that they’re the icing on the cake.  If you want to make a better cake, you need better ingredients, and better technique to mix them all together, and then a knowledge of just how much heat to apply and for how long in order to get the best possible outcome.  It’s the deep interior of the cake which determines the overall success of the endeavor, and that’s an unknown until the cake gets served.

So if training is analogous to the ingredients, technique, and baking time of the proverbial cake, then race day is when we get “served up”.  How well we put together the pieces, how much attention we gave to each ingredient throughout the process, and how consistently we applied appropriate load over an appropriate amount of time, these are the factors which will determine our degree of success on race day.

So if there’s no “best” way, then what way is there which gives us this magical mixture of ingredients, skill, and foresight for us to find our New selves?  Obviously, we believe it has to do with syncing one’s breath to their cadence as a way to bring focus and order to those critically important internal metrics.   It’s so simple.  It’s so easy.  You don’t need a fancy high-tech watch, or an A.I. program, or crazy expensive supplements to make this work.  You just run, and pay attention to how you’re breathing.  It’s the polar opposite of the shiny things; it’s borderline dull.  And yet…

Take away all the shiny things to keep looking at, take away all the beeps and haptics, take away all the modern distractions until we’re left with nothing but our breath and footsteps, and what do we have?  Where is our mind?  Are we consumed with concerns for all the tasks we have waiting for us when we finish?  Are we feeling burdened with all of the things we should’ve/would’ve/could’ve?

**OR**, are we instead drawn into the rhythmic beauty of the moment?  Have we ventured into a realm of exercise-induced awareness, where our internal experience is harmoniously blending with our surroundings?  Are we experiencing mindfulness, our ability to be fully present and aware of where we are and what we’re doing, without being hyper-reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on?

Here’s where we think the Breath Runner Method gets really cool: whenever we bring a focused awareness to what we’re directly experiencing via our senses, we’re being mindful.  And there’s a growing body of research which shows that when we train our brain to be mindful, we’re actually remodeling the physical structure of our brain for more peace and positivity.

So if the goal is to re-create ourselves, then perhaps it’s time to let go of the shiny, noisy things, and start focusing on the deep interior.

The Breath Runner Method.  We think you’ll find it delicious!