Last week I went through some Q &A, this week some thoughts on elite youth sports and fitness events.
Youth Sports –
I went to Madrid for a Hyrox two weeks ago and did a tour of the Bernabeu football stadium. It was a great experience, what really made an impact on me was seeing all the youth teams they had. There was a photo of each player in their academy teams, from 8 years old to adult. To see the 400 player photos reminded me how crazy elite sports selection really is.
Out of the 400 there, I imagine only 3-5 would actually go on to play for Real Madrid itself for any length of time, maybe only 15-20 would actually play professional football anywhere for a career. That means 375 failed dreams and what could have beens. To think, If you had your 10 year old playing for perhaps the biggest club in the world’s youth team, you would not only be beyond proud but assume this is almost a guarantee to a successful football life ahead. In reality, they are vastly more likely to go nowhere within football. This hopes and dreams pattern is of course repeated across all the professional football teams across UK and the world as well as other professional sports. The percentage who make it as a professional footballer at the higher levels is about 1 in 40,000, 0.002%.
Fitness Event Expectations (Hyrox, Marathons, Bodybuilding etc) –
I competed twice in Hyrox events over the last two weekends. After each event, the Facebook groups get the usual mix of posts of people who were really happy and others who feel down and disheartened. It feels much the same as when I was active in the bodybuilding chat forums, with people, proud, angry, happy or sad about the event. Most of this comes down to their prior expectations. Here are some rules of thumb about fitness events, be it Hyrox to marathons, or bodybuilding shows to chess tournaments.
Your First Event – The goal is to just enjoy it, and enter with zero expectations. The goal should be finishing and doing the best that you can. With this as your base the only way is up, you could come last and feel good about it, or win and feel good too. When you cross the finish line you are now part of something most people have never done. The reason this works is that your performance on the day is about 5% the actual event day itself, and 95% the weeks, months or even years before you got to the start line.
People are obsessed with having an expectation, e.g. got to place top 3, need to run a sub 4 hour marathon or whatever. But there is not really a difference between 3.59 or 4.00, it is 0.5% between the times, they just happen to lie either side of a number change. Would you feel different about running 4.12 vs 4.13?
The end question of the first event basically is, do you want to do it again? It is very common for your first even to be a bit of a disaster, be it underprepared, injured, not having a clue what you were doing on the day etc. Many people only ever do it once, if so, just enjoy your achievement and put the experience into your achievements archive.
Next Few Events – After your first one you may decide to come back again, you should be much more knowledgeable about what the requirements are of the sport by now. A common problem with many fitness challenges is that people do not respect the event as a real sport. Muscly people from the gym would always turn up to bodybuilding shows complaining they didn’t win while knowing absolutely nothing about the rules, likewise, Hyrox is so well known for ruining really fast runners who think they will be great because they can run. The problem here is the wrong expectations, it should just be about improving on prior performances, this doesn’t even have to be about beating your previous time, it could be that you want to run it better tactically or say you really enjoyed the event after finishing (rather than doing a better time).
Do the Event as a Sport (even if just for a while) – The final part is that you enjoy this enough to want to keep doing it regularly enough to call it your sport. This is a good place to be as you will now learn more about the sports itself, can see what others do, and if you choose to try to push yourself to higher standards will know what is required. There is no reason, or expectation to always try to push things higher, if you are happy with current dedication and level then just keep on with it as you will be far ahead fitness wise from doing it than if you were not participating. Likewise, if you are reaching for higher targets, this will just come back to how effective your training consistency is over the months. You will know if you have put in the work to achieve the level you want, a huge part of this comes back to avoiding injury, being healthy etc so you can actually be consistent.
What This Means For You
I have seen soooo many people not do fitness events or challenges because of the many expectations and attitudes above. I say just get involved, I came last in my first bodybuilding show, no one cared. I barely survived my first Hyrox, next one I came back 17 minutes quicker. Fitness is not like school P.E classes. Participation is winning in itself.
Photo – Hyrox Madrid with a 1.11 for 18th place in our age category, Hyrox London for a top 20% finish in 1.08 and finally the Madrid youth team photos:
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