I’m a big fan of quotes and memes. While their brevity often prevents them from describing nuance, they serve as quick reminders of complex but useful ideas that are easily overlooked during the daily grind.
Of course, when we have minimal experience in a subject, that brevity and cleverness can also promote ideas which may cause more harm than good.
A couple weeks ago I saw a fitness meme that falls into the latter case.
The image showed a random guy in a hooded sweatshirt mid-stride on a cold, morning run with text that stated: “Running a marathon successfully is 0.5% training, 0.5% diet, and 99% determination. Go for it!”
Now that’s cute and motivational. And I’m all about the importance of mindset—which is why thinking comes before nutrition and training in the TNT tagline—as well as people taking on meaningful challenges like participating in a Tactical Strength Challenge, running a marathon, or climbing a mountain.
In fact, I wish more people would take on and train for such challenges, including ones in which there’s a real possibility of “failure”.
But the idea of mindset being the most important factor in overcoming significant physical challenges while downplaying the roles of training and diet is dangerous, illogical, and just plain wrong.
It’s dangerous because it ignores the very real possibility of injury to muscles, tendons, or bones which haven’t been subjected to appropriate amounts of progressive training stimulus, development, and recovery (of which nutrition is a major component).
From a logic perspective, it misses two ideas: The first is that willpower/determination is a “muscle” which can (and must) be developed. The second is that one of the best ways to develop it is to do challenging things which we might not want to do. Like taking time to train, eating well, and resting appropriately.
As for the validity component, a story about a recent experience will illustrate the point:
Last week my brother and I did some climbing in the back country around Grand Teton and also summitted it with some friends.
One of the guys who came along has been regularly rucking and training for HYROX, which is sort of like if CrossFit met an 8-km run. However, he had neither camped before nor spent much time hiking over rock-and-root-covered trails.
After less than 45 minutes of struggling to find his balance on the steep and rock-covered trail on summit day, he had fallen so far behind that he decided it was in everyone’s best interest (and safety) for him to return to camp and wait for the rest of us to return after summitting.
While his determination (and general strength and endurance) was more than sufficient to enable him to summit, it wasn’t enough to overcome his lack of time spent hiking on uneven surfaces.
Putting it into practice
Whether inspired by a friend, silly meme, or some other means, I highly encourage you to commit to participating in some type of challenging-for-you event or activity.
If you do, I also recommend that you spend time intentionally training your mindset. After all, determination, motivation, discipline, and a host of other mental characteristics are vital for your success.
Just remember that if achieving success in some physical challenge is 100% mental, it’s also at least 50% training and 50% diet. 😉