Health Equals Performance
When I was a runner in my 20s, training for everything from the 800 to the marathon, I made a habit of crashing and burning. Once, a week after finishing a tough marathon, I launched into a 10k training program extracted from an article written by the late, great coach, Joe Vigil. The base mileage was high and hard. I didn't last long: An achilles strain on my right foot and ankle three weeks.
I repeated that cycle of hard training and injury for years. Occasionally I stayed healthy long enough to clock some decent race performances. Sub 2:38 marathon, a 15-flat road 5k, and a 4:06 1500-meters.
Eventually the rate of injuries outpaced my capacity to put in consecutive weeks of training, and I stopped making it the starting line of races in search of a PR. So I went longer and slower, and survived the occasional Ironman race. In an Ironman, I was so wasted by the time I got to the marathon leg that I shuffled and walked my way to the finish line. So even if I was injured or limping it didn't make a huge difference.
But in time I couldn't even do that. My right knee had developed enough arthritis that not only was I not running, I wasn't even walking down a flight of steps without turning my body sideways and using my left leg to do most of the work.
I'll cut to the chase: After years of trying everything from CrossFit to acupuncture, I threw up my hands and went through with a recommended knee replacement. A year and a half after that I had my left achilles tendon surgically repaired, taking another year of PT.
Throughout these years and decades, I learned a great deal about fitness, but perhaps the best lesson of all was understanding that, for me anyway, a focus on hard training has a gambling aspect to it. And I almost always lost.
What if the focus shifts from performance to health. Take on a challenging training program, but pull back the volume and intensity to moderate levels and make recoery, restoration and overall health the number one priority.
Then, the odds of getting snared by another injury drop and the possibility of racking up consistent weeks of training rise.
If you're like me and prone to injury, moderate, restoration-heavy training weeks beat out max mileage-and-intensity weeks every time.
Even though the focus is on ancillary activities (like strength work, stretching, mobility, nutrition) as opposed to training your guts out, the consistency has a better chance of netting a good race performance.
For one thing, you make it to the starting line.
This is my new mindset for training with the mantra: Health Equals Peformance, and is the topic of this publication
T.J. Murphy is a NYT bestselling author and the editor of The Writer magazine. His work has appeared in Outside, Runner's World, and Triathlete Magazine.
