Raising the Floor
On base-building, training errors, and the gap between knowing and doing.
If you engage in any activity that requires training, you must have heard the quote saying that “consistency is key”. And yet most of us, at some point, have found ourselves focusing on the exact opposite. Chasing the big sessions, or mileage graphs that “feel like progress” on Strava.
The gap between knowing and doing is where most athletes — myself included — lose the game. Because of it, the big step we make forward often ends up costing ten steps back: weeks of burnout, injuries, poor performance.
But why is consistency so hard to hold onto? And what does a sustainable approach actually look like?
In endurance pursuits especially, the body responds almost exclusively to “chronic load“, meaning controlled stress applied over weeks, months, years. A 2021 study conducted by Cascado et al. amongst a group of elite runners confirmed this: their total running volume and the volume of easy runs were the strongest performance predictors over a 7-year period.
I like to picture the training process as trying to go up a floor without a lift. You’re more likely to get where you want by taking the stairs, rather than attempting a huge jump from one level to another. To borrow the words of Steve Magness, this means focusing on raising the floor, or doing the basics consistently well, rather than the ceiling: the most impressive sessions.
In theory, we all understand this.
Why would anyone take a riskier path, knowing they could fall short, burn out, or injure themselves?
But in practice, we all share a very human tendency to gravitate toward the “flashy” stuff, be it huge jumps in volume or intensity.
As every athlete, I occasionally push things too far.
In many areas, making mistakes is an opportunity to learn. Sport is no different, but we shouldn’t overlook the fact that the consequences can impact our physical and mental health. As someone who has dealt with years of injuries, I can only recommend adopting a reasonably preventive approach.
There’s a saying that coaches are “responsible, but not guilty“ for what happens to their athletes. To me, the same holds true for athletes dealing with themselves.
We sometimes think it’s simply a matter of discipline, as if the brain, detached from the body, could impose the right reasoning onto it. But in reality, our choices are shaped by our insecurities, our beliefs, and our environment.
There are two main thought processes, I think, that lead people to getting injured:
Errors can stem from overconfidence, overestimating our capacity to perform and absorb training, often with too little background. This tendency is only reinforced by the avalanche of “training content“ on social media right now, where people want to replicate what they see, forgetting any idea of context. As Mads Taersbol put it on a recent episode of the Runners FM podcast: most runners overestimate what they can do in the short term, and underestimate what they can do in the long term.
But it can also work the other way around: when overdoing it comes from a lack of confidence. This shows up in different ways: the need to constantly test their fitness in training, doing more because of others’ opinions, or never resting out of fear of losing fitness.
Being afraid of doing too little rather than too much is a common phenomenon in athletes, but think about it: one episode of pushing too hard can keep you out of the sport for months, while the opposite is never true.
According to some studies (*1; 2), having had a previous running-related injury multiplies the likelihood of getting a new one by two. Beyond the potential physical fragilities, chances are that psychological mechanisms are still at play here. Many athletes, after a period of injury, rush to get back into shape. The feeling of falling behind convinces them they need to push harder. And the cycle repeats itself.
I recently wrote an article on the “Norwegian Single Method”. I admit that, in the beginning, I was buzzing reading the testimonies of athletes breaking their PBs with this approach. You could think that this is because of a magical thing happening in their physiology.
But actually, this method is working because it allows runners to be consistent over months, something they’ve never achieved before. As James Copeland explains in his book, staying in control on 99% of workouts (apart from races) allows for more consistency over months, which leads to more stress and more adaptations.
I’m not here to promote any training method, but I’d simply encourage you to shift your perspective from seeing your progress through the lens of your fastest or longest sessions, and rather to see it through the daily commitment to the basics.
A simple phrase that I like to remind myself of is that I should train today in a way that allows me to come back tomorrow.
Or, as Alex Soojung-Kim Pang writes it in his book “Rest”, stop working at the right point today, knowing what your next move should be, so that it is easier to get restarted tomorrow.