Mastery

Mastery is a process not a destination.

I was talking to a friend of mine from my running group about heart rate training.  She voiced the common complaint that she couldn’t run at a low heart rate.  It was too slow.  She would have to walk.  It was uncomfortable.  She didn’t ‘get it’.  She tried, and it didn’t seem to work.

I experienced the same thing when I learned how to heart rate train. I would constantly be slowing down and shortening my stride to get that heart rate down.  And the answer, as it is in many cases, is not some trick or technique or magic bullet.  The answer is practice.

Practice, but a specific form of practice.  It is a practice that forces you to learn a new thing.

The challenge is not so much that you can’t learn this new thing, the challenge is that you need to be a learner.  You need to put aside the fact that you already know how to run and are quite competent at it.  You need to move out of a place where you are comfortable and pull on the mantle of the student.

In this example, what we are really saying when we push back against having to run uncomfortably slow when we begin to learn heart rate training is, we don’t like it because it is new and different.  We have mastered this other thing to some extent and now need to drop back into being a student to master this new thing so that we can continue to master the running art itself.

This is not an article about heart rate training, but I’ll finish that thought to not leave you hanging.

Those first couple runs are uncomfortable because you and your body are learning a new thing.  You have to slow way down.  Maybe take walk breaks to reset.  I had to reign my stride in and focus on my form.  At first it was this mincing stride that felt awful and foreign to me and was very slow.  I felt guilty or bad to be running so slowly, like I was doing something wrong.

When I began to heart rate train I had to change my head set.  I ended up removing pace from the watch display so it wouldn’t bother me.  I had to disentangle the relationship I had built on my head between pace and self-worth.

As you get through those first few uncomfortably slow runs and keep at it you start to feel more confidence.  You learn the effort level to run at a zone 2 heart rate.  As you practice you learn the form and cadence for that effort level.

After a few weeks of this something strange and wonderful happens.  You notice that you are running at your old pace, with a new form at a lower heart rate.  You can now run at that pace much longer and with more comfort because you have reset your aerobic capacity.  You reconfigure your body’s response to running at a basic level.

But to get there, to get there you had to change your mind first.  You had to change the way you mentally approached the workouts.  You had to adopt the mind of a student and forget what you already ‘knew’.

That is an example of how practice and adopting the mind of a student can help you break through barriers.

When we look at endurance sports, we need to consider the concept of mastery.  Not ability.  Not competence, but mastery.

You are born with a certain amount of ability.  Chances are you knew how to run before you became a runner.  You could probably ride a bike before you became a cyclist.  And you might have known how to paddle around the pond a bit before you became a triathlete.

There is a baseline of ability that we bring into all our pursuits.  This may be zero or it may be mediocrity bordering on competence.  But, it’s not mastery.

At some point you want to improve, and you go looking for ‘how to do it’ information.

In a learning process people use a 4-stage model, whether they realize it or not.  The first stage is unconscious incompetence.  This means we are unable to do something but don’t know or care how it is supposed to be done.

The next stage is conscious incompetence where we understand that there is a right way to do it and that we don’t know how.  This is the stage where you recognize that you need to figure something out, you need to learn something.

The third stage is conscious competence where you are actively focused on practicing the thing to get it right.  You develop skills and you know what you are doing.

The final stage is unconscious competence where you are so well trained in your skill that you can do it without thinking about it.  This is possible because you have practiced so much that it is burned in.  This is where you approach mastery.

There is a big gap between conscious competence and mastery.  Mastery is never fully attained.

This is what I wanted to bring to you today.  Mastery is not a destination.  Mastery is a practice.  There is always room to learn.  There is always more to understand.  There is always room to grow.  Even if your physical limits have been met – that is only part of the practice.

I say this because many of you are in a position of conscious competence.  You have learned the body of knowledge around your sport, you have practiced your training and you have achieved your goals.

Now you may be feeling a bit of pointlessness, lack of direction or as the French would say ‘ennui’.  I’m here to tell you that the vine is not empty.  There is always more to learn.  Mastery is the gift that keeps on giving.

I taught myself how to use speedwork to qualify for the Boston Marathon in my 30’s, when I could have been just another jogger in the neighborhood.  In that journey I learned so much about myself that I kept going.  I learned how to mountain run and trail run and ultra-run.

Coach taught me how to heart rate train in my late 40’s and it opened up a whole new corner of the sport to explore and learn and master.  Along the way I learned how to mountain bike and how to swim.  I have mastered none of these corners of endurance sport but each, approached with the mind of a child brought tremendous bounty.  Bounty in terms of achievement, learning, and new relationships and experiences.

Some took more focused practice than others.  Swimming in particular.  It wasn’t until I was able to get a good wet suit and some video coaching that I was able to crack the swim code.  Then it became such a wonderful form of moving meditation.

So, my friends, don’t get stuck in the doldrums of conscious competence.  Early on you will make large gains.  You will learn and improve exponentially.  Then you may find a mentor or coach and begin the process of mastery which involves practice, the fabled 10,00 hours of practice.

Mastery is not the achievement of a goal or goals or even competence.

Mastery is the long tail of knowledge.

Mastery is the attitude of a student.

Mastery is the joy of the journey.

Mastery is the calm and patient transfer of knowledge.

Approach your journey now as a student and see what else you can learn.