9. When to get out
This is Western Coffee—notes on building the creative body. Last time: Two kinds of time. Please share this email; you can sign up free below.
I used to believe that athletes experienced things differently from me. My tolerance for discomfort was so low, and so immovable, that it felt like a difference of constitution. They brought to whatever gate of resistance they may encounter a battering ram of inborn fortitude. Lacking it, I opted out of: t-ball, soccer, swimming, golf, tennis, baseball, most bicycling, running, and the basketball obsessively favored by Mormons (especially for tall boys🦒). Because of an analogous illusion about writers, I avoided composing fiction until I was 37.
Athletes do cultivate various buffers for tolerating strain, and suffering will sometimes flinch before devotion. But while expanding the body’s limits is a part of endurance, the way our brains work makes it hard even to approach an actual physiological maximum, much less stay there. The more relevant boundary in day-to-day practice is mental—meaning, your body has the absolute capacity to do (often much) more, but is throttled by your psyche. This can be an energy-budgeting issue; it can be a problem of distraction; it can be self-protective; it can stem from an error of belief. What it cannot sustainably be is defeated by brute force, because you won’t outsmart your brain; you must persuade, seduce, re-educate, or distract it. Once you do bypass the mental wall, however, the territory you gain is often yours to keep.
Various tactics exist for slipping past: We’ve touched on improvising (yes, and—inventing ways around obstacles) and its components surrender (of your own resistance) and exposure (seeing what happens when you try).
But another important piece is developing an awareness about when further effort in one direction is a bad idea—not just because of the potential for burnout or injury, but also because building any kind of endurance is about creating a chain of positive associations, of motivations that sustain and reinforce one another, of refuges within yourself that are easy to find and robust enough to withstand intensifying strain. The risk of pushing too hard is not just that you disconnect from your capacity for endurance but that you undo it.
I have to admit: Whereas I used to opt out of sports before anything could happen, in adulthood there are times when I push too hard—as a runner, as a writer, even in some of my past relationships. When I recognize that it’s happening, I think about how my life as an athlete got started: I went for a bike ride at sunset on the beach in California. Note the near absence of difficulty in the beginning; the open field for the formation of an appetite.
It’s right for us to look at impossible things and say, That’s where I’m going. But the road there has to stay in distant view, at least, of delight. If it doesn’t, then it’s time to get out—rest, reflect, rethink. And only then resume.
Coming Friday: Tricks.
Kindly send me your thoughts, questions, and provocations: dmichaelowen@gmail.com. And say hi on Instagram, or let’s Peloton together: @leggy_blond.