Love this. So often it’s easy to think of “toughness” as a one dimensional physical characteristic; i.e. the ability to push through end endure pain.
Yet the mental toughness that comes from making hard decisions (like when to quit), and more importantly being okay with the outcome of such difficult decisions, requires a different kind of maturity. One that is rooted in self-awareness, acceptance, and long-term perspective.
I think maybe true toughness isn’t just about how much you can take, but how wisely you can choose when to hold on, when to let go, and how to carry yourself with grace in either case.
Good example, Steve. For those of us who have proper jobs, it's important to remember that sport is only a hobby. Also, that pseudo-macho toughness is overrated.
For many kids, making it to my sessions is a victory: they've had such shit days/ events, that it took courage and perseverance to make it. There's nothing flashy or viral about their efforts, but it's there, just the same.
This is a great post - I’m in the midst or drafting something covering the fine line we can tread as athletes around discipline etc, very good and important topic!
As usual, this is such a great story and extremely well written. I tell amateur runners that I coach "Never go more than 87% in training". And I personally, in a race never go more than 97% because I still have to show up after the race to be a whole human: dad, partner, co-worker, etc.
Running is great, but I'm not sacrificing the rest of my life for a few minutes/hours. But that's me.
Steve - I’ve appreciated 90% of what you write, however this wasn’t one of this pieces. And especially the words you write with Brad, I appreciate at least 95% of those words.
Here’s what landed well with me in this essay: as an athlete you have to learn to trust your body, you have to learn to stop, you have to learn to make correct decisions and avoid pummeling yourself into oblivion just for the sake of it.
What didn’t land with me: going after David Goggins. Full stop. No matter how much David himself sometimes rubs me the wrong way, he’s just not a human who, knowing the context of his life, is someone you don’t go after like this for a simple Substack post.
You also compared apples to oranges, talking about Goggins monumental efforts in mountain ultras (not to mention combat/battle) and comparing them to an Achilles tendon injury suffered pretty much sprinting in a half marathon (I’m not minimizing your pain, I’m sure that was brutal). But those are not nearly the same two activities.
I have two questions for you that will provide me and your readers with better context for how to interpret this essay:
(1) what’s your longest adventure journey in the mountains?
(2) have you read Goggins’ book and would you be willing to share your thoughts about the pain, suffering and trauma he went through as a young child?
I’m not necessarily in the 100% Goggins camp on suffering, although I do believe humans are capable of WAY more than they think. This piece was meant to be controversial, so you got what you wanted. This piece was the 10% for me in terms of your recent writings here on Substack. Now, if you’re willing, I’d love to hear you respond. And I will take your responses very seriously and thoughtfully as I always do. Appreciate your writing, Steve.
I think this is a case of you're going after and focusing on the messenger, instead of the message. I'm not going after Goggins. I'm answering the question that I got from hundreds of people. And it's a fair question. How does my view of toughness contrast and compare to Goggins. Not the man himself, but his view that he preaches.
Your questions are focused on the person. The first one is an insinuation that I don't understand ultras? I mean, I'm not an ultra runner. But I also ran 120 mile weeks as a teenager in Houston, Tx. I've run a lot of miles. I understand the pain that comes through the drudgery.
And the half-marathon cheap shot is not warranted. It's not a sprint. It's a distance event. As anyone in running will tell you. It's also strange because many of the best ultra runners came through shorter events (Herron, Wamsley, Stein, etc.). And I'd bet a lot of money that if Kipchoge cared to run 100 miles and train for it, he'd dominate there too.
Your second question has nothing to do with the concept of toughness. It has to do with the individual, again. That may shape how he thinks. I get that. I have empathy for that. But that's kind of the point... we can't judge a system of toughness by one individual, we have to judge it based on how it helps most handle difficult moments.
It's not meant to be controversial. It's meant to answer the question that I've received from writing a well-read book. And in it, I try to lay out the difference in approach through an example so it resonates. But the greater point is that if you're only tool is push through the pain, stay hard, etc. then you aren't creating the kind of toughness based on flexibility that I think matters in most endeavors. The stay hard tool works until it doesn't.
That's not an attck on Goggins himself. I do not know the man. But it's a critique of the method. Which is fair game and we should all welcome critiques of popular methods.
It wasn’t personal, Steve. Your work has changed my life for the better. Mean that sincerely. I’ve forwarded numerous articles and books of yours to friends. I read your work intently and academically. It was the method here that got me. And, yes, you’re right. I’m all about the individual. That’s where my passion lies, at the individual/human level. A little less data driven, a little more personal. But it’s that same drive toward understanding an individual which is why I love your story so much too :)
I appreciate that. I think what I'm confused on is that in no way did I go after the man himself. In fact the first few lines are about how great his accomplishments are. It's just delineating two different approaches and thoughts, one based more on tolerating, the other on performing.
In the health tech startups I’ve worked at when giving reviews we practice the “feedback sandwich”. That initial shoutout to Goggins felt just a bit like that. But I also want to apologize for something because I did not mean to send you a cheap shot about the half marathon distance. I have immense respect for those events. My training partner competed in college in track and field. In fact whenever I try to run shorter and faster my body screams in agony. I have huge admiration for athletes like you, Steve. And I will continue to promote your work.
Here though in your post, I’ll say again, there was too much of an apples to oranges type comparison And it also felt (to me) like you were not recognizing the very difficult upbringing and background of a phenomenal human who’s training ideals you wanted to analyze in this essay.
Love the article and I did not see ANY typos which is rare in this day and age.
I'm with Steve on this one. Always have been but I dont always know when I CAN push through pain and not get injured or when I should back off. I always want to know what the pain is and if pushing through is harmful or not. I should have married a physio. I seem to ALWAYS have some sort of injury but so far nothing broke or torn but Ive been uninjured only one year out of the last 7 and it's always *months* to recover.
Most definitely agree. 💯 As a triathlete who specializes in long course racing, I see this SO much in Ironman athletes.
First, there’s this stubborn refusal to do what might be best for the body (and your performance) in favor of doing something that’s perceived as being tough or “mentally strong.”
For example, research, case studies, and elite age groupers performances have shown that short strategic walk breaks (30 seconds) during the IM marathon leads to less fatigue, lower heart rate, and the ability to run faster for longer.
And yet you see a never ending shuffling line of age groupers, barely even jogging, because they’re too stubborn or afraid to walk. Because someone told them you have to “push through” and “be tough.”
Ironman is tough, period. There’s no getting around it. But there’s something to be said about working smarter, not harder.
The same goes for the stories people share online of how they pulled a hamstring/ruptured an Achilles, ect. but still finished! Great. I hope that finish line was worth it to you, because that’s the only one you’re going to see for 8-10 months during recovery, if you ever get back.
Also, deciding not to do a race you’ve trained 8+ months for when you’re struggling with an injury, is a far more “tough” thing to do than to go ahead and gut it out, but rarely do people have the self-discipline to make those types of decisions.
It goes both ways, training is both Easy & Complex. If we are into starting phase meaning we have started any activity we need not focus on zones as our first priority should be we should have the drive to do it for at least couple of years to see some significant gains in physiology. And yeah at the start every kind of training works as a stimuli, it comes after a couple of months or one can say a couple of years as well when they need to focus on 1% improvement markers. Fundamental is the key meaning putting in the work, nutrition during the workout & for the whole day for months on and recovery in terms of sleep. Sticking to basics does wonders but in this era of information overload & easy access to it, we are focusing firstly to 1% improvement markers rather than 99%.
Joy has to be in the drive seat of training as well. Ben Dhiman after coming 2nd in UTMB simply put one gotta love doing this, then only one can succeed. Tom Evans also said his relationship with running went to that he had to perform & win but before this year's UTMB, he reclaimed his relationship with running which got reflected in his win. Ruth Croft has been having a similar approach for more than a decade. Does Courtney not have fun, when almost 99.99% would have quit, she kept chipping away and continued to cherish the community she was surrounded with.
Toughness has been sold as the only way to achieve greatness but it is not the only route everyone need to understand. One needs to value long term instead of short term in every walk of life.
But even I myself have learned this the hard way, I have read tons of books, listened to almost fifteen thousand podcasts. When I read Scott Fauble & Ben Rosario's book Inside a Marathon, then I got a glimpse of how much of just running people like myself are doing, meaning just running and not training. People want to just run fast in just a couple of weeks or months, but this not how our physiological & muscular adaptations take place. As Kilian Jornet said it takes months and years for your bodies to adapt to the stimuli and our cells and mitochondria to adapt and get the stimulus to get fast and build a huge aerobic base. People don't want to run easy, they just see it on multiple social media platforms and then come to a conclusion I am no where near what people run, I need to run this fast but they need to study multiple coaches from Arthur Lydiard, Renato Canova, Jack Daniels, Joe Vigil, Ed Eyestone, Mike Scannell and others as well.
And isn't mileage just a by product of showing up with consistency to put in the work? Racking up miles is just one form of consistency. Eating enough food through out the whole day to fuel the body while training for any endurance activity needs consistency, sleep also needs consistency, strength & mobility work needs consistency and mental fitness also needs consistency. All these things need consistency and needs to be done in balanced manner, if one thing gets under done- then either the body crumbles or we will not be able to perform at our best level. If we take care of our bodies and listen to it, it will provide us with great performances but if we just keep banging the door w/o listening to it, somewhere down the road it will crumble and then we will think we were more focused on racking up miles which was just a small part of training.
There is one thing told that work harder than everybody else in the room but one doesn't tell it all boils down to mental component a lot as well, what kind of internal monologue goes b/w our ears is a great predictor of either limits or propels our progression, the amount of improvement we can do in any domain/walk of life.
Franz Stampfl, coach of Roger Bannister said-The great barrier is the mental hurdle.
If Roger Bannister's coach knew it 70 years ago, then there is for sure people need to know that yeah mental component is a huge chunk of whether one succeeds or not.
There is one thing told that work harder than everybody else in the room but one doesn't tell it all boils down to mental component a lot, what kind of internal monologue goes b/w our ears which either limits or propels our progression, the amount of improvement we can do in any domain/walk of life.
There is a lot of unraveling that can be done in terms of one's psychology. No one lays much emphasis on this thing b/w our ears. Iga Swiatek might me the first lawn Tennis player to have full time sports psychologist travelling with her. When Madison Keys won Australian Open this year, she was asked what lead her to win her first grand slam, her straight away answer was Lots of Therapy. Francesco Puppi has talked about therapy & Jennifer Lichter also.
"For the last four or so miles, this continued, until with a bit over a mile to go, it turned into a boil. Kiya made bold moves, and I followed in his wake.... After all, I had a race to try to win.... At some point in the last mile, I made my push for home, driving as hard as I could to the finish."
And:
"They found that people would get locked-in, and focused too much on how to achieve the goal (making the summit). All that mattered was finishing. Such a mindset was wonderful for getting to the top…but it blinded them to dangers and hazards, especially on the way down."
Good examples of sunk costs. So much has been invested at that point, why abandon the effort without achieving the goal? Why waste the investment?
Love this. So often it’s easy to think of “toughness” as a one dimensional physical characteristic; i.e. the ability to push through end endure pain.
Yet the mental toughness that comes from making hard decisions (like when to quit), and more importantly being okay with the outcome of such difficult decisions, requires a different kind of maturity. One that is rooted in self-awareness, acceptance, and long-term perspective.
I think maybe true toughness isn’t just about how much you can take, but how wisely you can choose when to hold on, when to let go, and how to carry yourself with grace in either case.
Good example, Steve. For those of us who have proper jobs, it's important to remember that sport is only a hobby. Also, that pseudo-macho toughness is overrated.
For many kids, making it to my sessions is a victory: they've had such shit days/ events, that it took courage and perseverance to make it. There's nothing flashy or viral about their efforts, but it's there, just the same.
I'm happy to coach them and support them.
Very well said, never worth it to dig a hole you can’t dig out of or that creates permanent damage
Great timing, I needed to read this this morning. Thanks 🙏
This is a great post - I’m in the midst or drafting something covering the fine line we can tread as athletes around discipline etc, very good and important topic!
This is a great a read. Many young athletes ruin what could be a great career by not listening to their bodies.
This was a great read
Thanks so much!
As usual, this is such a great story and extremely well written. I tell amateur runners that I coach "Never go more than 87% in training". And I personally, in a race never go more than 97% because I still have to show up after the race to be a whole human: dad, partner, co-worker, etc.
Running is great, but I'm not sacrificing the rest of my life for a few minutes/hours. But that's me.
Steve - I’ve appreciated 90% of what you write, however this wasn’t one of this pieces. And especially the words you write with Brad, I appreciate at least 95% of those words.
Here’s what landed well with me in this essay: as an athlete you have to learn to trust your body, you have to learn to stop, you have to learn to make correct decisions and avoid pummeling yourself into oblivion just for the sake of it.
What didn’t land with me: going after David Goggins. Full stop. No matter how much David himself sometimes rubs me the wrong way, he’s just not a human who, knowing the context of his life, is someone you don’t go after like this for a simple Substack post.
You also compared apples to oranges, talking about Goggins monumental efforts in mountain ultras (not to mention combat/battle) and comparing them to an Achilles tendon injury suffered pretty much sprinting in a half marathon (I’m not minimizing your pain, I’m sure that was brutal). But those are not nearly the same two activities.
I have two questions for you that will provide me and your readers with better context for how to interpret this essay:
(1) what’s your longest adventure journey in the mountains?
(2) have you read Goggins’ book and would you be willing to share your thoughts about the pain, suffering and trauma he went through as a young child?
I’m not necessarily in the 100% Goggins camp on suffering, although I do believe humans are capable of WAY more than they think. This piece was meant to be controversial, so you got what you wanted. This piece was the 10% for me in terms of your recent writings here on Substack. Now, if you’re willing, I’d love to hear you respond. And I will take your responses very seriously and thoughtfully as I always do. Appreciate your writing, Steve.
Thanks.
I think this is a case of you're going after and focusing on the messenger, instead of the message. I'm not going after Goggins. I'm answering the question that I got from hundreds of people. And it's a fair question. How does my view of toughness contrast and compare to Goggins. Not the man himself, but his view that he preaches.
Your questions are focused on the person. The first one is an insinuation that I don't understand ultras? I mean, I'm not an ultra runner. But I also ran 120 mile weeks as a teenager in Houston, Tx. I've run a lot of miles. I understand the pain that comes through the drudgery.
And the half-marathon cheap shot is not warranted. It's not a sprint. It's a distance event. As anyone in running will tell you. It's also strange because many of the best ultra runners came through shorter events (Herron, Wamsley, Stein, etc.). And I'd bet a lot of money that if Kipchoge cared to run 100 miles and train for it, he'd dominate there too.
Your second question has nothing to do with the concept of toughness. It has to do with the individual, again. That may shape how he thinks. I get that. I have empathy for that. But that's kind of the point... we can't judge a system of toughness by one individual, we have to judge it based on how it helps most handle difficult moments.
It's not meant to be controversial. It's meant to answer the question that I've received from writing a well-read book. And in it, I try to lay out the difference in approach through an example so it resonates. But the greater point is that if you're only tool is push through the pain, stay hard, etc. then you aren't creating the kind of toughness based on flexibility that I think matters in most endeavors. The stay hard tool works until it doesn't.
That's not an attck on Goggins himself. I do not know the man. But it's a critique of the method. Which is fair game and we should all welcome critiques of popular methods.
It wasn’t personal, Steve. Your work has changed my life for the better. Mean that sincerely. I’ve forwarded numerous articles and books of yours to friends. I read your work intently and academically. It was the method here that got me. And, yes, you’re right. I’m all about the individual. That’s where my passion lies, at the individual/human level. A little less data driven, a little more personal. But it’s that same drive toward understanding an individual which is why I love your story so much too :)
I appreciate that. I think what I'm confused on is that in no way did I go after the man himself. In fact the first few lines are about how great his accomplishments are. It's just delineating two different approaches and thoughts, one based more on tolerating, the other on performing.
In the health tech startups I’ve worked at when giving reviews we practice the “feedback sandwich”. That initial shoutout to Goggins felt just a bit like that. But I also want to apologize for something because I did not mean to send you a cheap shot about the half marathon distance. I have immense respect for those events. My training partner competed in college in track and field. In fact whenever I try to run shorter and faster my body screams in agony. I have huge admiration for athletes like you, Steve. And I will continue to promote your work.
Here though in your post, I’ll say again, there was too much of an apples to oranges type comparison And it also felt (to me) like you were not recognizing the very difficult upbringing and background of a phenomenal human who’s training ideals you wanted to analyze in this essay.
Love the article and I did not see ANY typos which is rare in this day and age.
I'm with Steve on this one. Always have been but I dont always know when I CAN push through pain and not get injured or when I should back off. I always want to know what the pain is and if pushing through is harmful or not. I should have married a physio. I seem to ALWAYS have some sort of injury but so far nothing broke or torn but Ive been uninjured only one year out of the last 7 and it's always *months* to recover.
Most definitely agree. 💯 As a triathlete who specializes in long course racing, I see this SO much in Ironman athletes.
First, there’s this stubborn refusal to do what might be best for the body (and your performance) in favor of doing something that’s perceived as being tough or “mentally strong.”
For example, research, case studies, and elite age groupers performances have shown that short strategic walk breaks (30 seconds) during the IM marathon leads to less fatigue, lower heart rate, and the ability to run faster for longer.
And yet you see a never ending shuffling line of age groupers, barely even jogging, because they’re too stubborn or afraid to walk. Because someone told them you have to “push through” and “be tough.”
Ironman is tough, period. There’s no getting around it. But there’s something to be said about working smarter, not harder.
The same goes for the stories people share online of how they pulled a hamstring/ruptured an Achilles, ect. but still finished! Great. I hope that finish line was worth it to you, because that’s the only one you’re going to see for 8-10 months during recovery, if you ever get back.
Also, deciding not to do a race you’ve trained 8+ months for when you’re struggling with an injury, is a far more “tough” thing to do than to go ahead and gut it out, but rarely do people have the self-discipline to make those types of decisions.
It goes both ways, training is both Easy & Complex. If we are into starting phase meaning we have started any activity we need not focus on zones as our first priority should be we should have the drive to do it for at least couple of years to see some significant gains in physiology. And yeah at the start every kind of training works as a stimuli, it comes after a couple of months or one can say a couple of years as well when they need to focus on 1% improvement markers. Fundamental is the key meaning putting in the work, nutrition during the workout & for the whole day for months on and recovery in terms of sleep. Sticking to basics does wonders but in this era of information overload & easy access to it, we are focusing firstly to 1% improvement markers rather than 99%.
Joy has to be in the drive seat of training as well. Ben Dhiman after coming 2nd in UTMB simply put one gotta love doing this, then only one can succeed. Tom Evans also said his relationship with running went to that he had to perform & win but before this year's UTMB, he reclaimed his relationship with running which got reflected in his win. Ruth Croft has been having a similar approach for more than a decade. Does Courtney not have fun, when almost 99.99% would have quit, she kept chipping away and continued to cherish the community she was surrounded with.
Toughness has been sold as the only way to achieve greatness but it is not the only route everyone need to understand. One needs to value long term instead of short term in every walk of life.
But even I myself have learned this the hard way, I have read tons of books, listened to almost fifteen thousand podcasts. When I read Scott Fauble & Ben Rosario's book Inside a Marathon, then I got a glimpse of how much of just running people like myself are doing, meaning just running and not training. People want to just run fast in just a couple of weeks or months, but this not how our physiological & muscular adaptations take place. As Kilian Jornet said it takes months and years for your bodies to adapt to the stimuli and our cells and mitochondria to adapt and get the stimulus to get fast and build a huge aerobic base. People don't want to run easy, they just see it on multiple social media platforms and then come to a conclusion I am no where near what people run, I need to run this fast but they need to study multiple coaches from Arthur Lydiard, Renato Canova, Jack Daniels, Joe Vigil, Ed Eyestone, Mike Scannell and others as well.
And isn't mileage just a by product of showing up with consistency to put in the work? Racking up miles is just one form of consistency. Eating enough food through out the whole day to fuel the body while training for any endurance activity needs consistency, sleep also needs consistency, strength & mobility work needs consistency and mental fitness also needs consistency. All these things need consistency and needs to be done in balanced manner, if one thing gets under done- then either the body crumbles or we will not be able to perform at our best level. If we take care of our bodies and listen to it, it will provide us with great performances but if we just keep banging the door w/o listening to it, somewhere down the road it will crumble and then we will think we were more focused on racking up miles which was just a small part of training.
There is one thing told that work harder than everybody else in the room but one doesn't tell it all boils down to mental component a lot as well, what kind of internal monologue goes b/w our ears is a great predictor of either limits or propels our progression, the amount of improvement we can do in any domain/walk of life.
Franz Stampfl, coach of Roger Bannister said-The great barrier is the mental hurdle.
If Roger Bannister's coach knew it 70 years ago, then there is for sure people need to know that yeah mental component is a huge chunk of whether one succeeds or not.
There is one thing told that work harder than everybody else in the room but one doesn't tell it all boils down to mental component a lot, what kind of internal monologue goes b/w our ears which either limits or propels our progression, the amount of improvement we can do in any domain/walk of life.
There is a lot of unraveling that can be done in terms of one's psychology. No one lays much emphasis on this thing b/w our ears. Iga Swiatek might me the first lawn Tennis player to have full time sports psychologist travelling with her. When Madison Keys won Australian Open this year, she was asked what lead her to win her first grand slam, her straight away answer was Lots of Therapy. Francesco Puppi has talked about therapy & Jennifer Lichter also.
"For the last four or so miles, this continued, until with a bit over a mile to go, it turned into a boil. Kiya made bold moves, and I followed in his wake.... After all, I had a race to try to win.... At some point in the last mile, I made my push for home, driving as hard as I could to the finish."
And:
"They found that people would get locked-in, and focused too much on how to achieve the goal (making the summit). All that mattered was finishing. Such a mindset was wonderful for getting to the top…but it blinded them to dangers and hazards, especially on the way down."
Good examples of sunk costs. So much has been invested at that point, why abandon the effort without achieving the goal? Why waste the investment?