Lessons in the Pursuit of Running
There is a big difference between the performance of professional runners (those committed athletes who win races and compete at the Olympic level) and the amateur runner (those who jog as an exercise activity). Yet, just like the professional, almost all amateurs have a desire (or at least a dream) to run further and faster while being injury free. The question always is: How to achieve it?
The major difference between the amateur runner and the professional (the mediocre and the excellent) is that the amateur has not learned to use his body efficiently to propel himself forward. The biggest mistake that an amateur runner makes when attempting to improve performance is in focusing on a part instead of the whole; an amateur, for example, may pick-up a piece of advice such as “lift your knees higher,” and end up with worse performance and maybe an injury. Instead of understanding how the whole body and mind works in unison, the amateur runner too often tries to improve one aspect of body movement; this unfortunately often creates a situation in which muscles are actually working against each other and decreases instead of improves performance.
The real impact is that while attempting to move forward, the amateur runner simultaneously pulls sideways, downward, upward, and even backward. Rather than enhancing performance, much of the effort goes toward sabotaging it—as if he were piling weights on his own shoulders. Not only does he work harder in the process, but he causes undue stress to his joints, which may eventually lead to pain and injury.
The professional, on the other hand, does not contradict himself, but instead, over time and working with proper coaching, coordinates every part of his body to propel himself forward. Because the professional runner possesses more awareness of how different parts of the body can work together, he does not enact unnecessary movements that “cripple” the amateur runner. As a result, the professional’s stride is smooth, graceful and powerful, requiring much less effort for an even greater amount of propulsion.
Looking at running this way, we could say that improvement is a result of learning how to stop contradicting ourselves, or in other words, understanding how different parts of the body relate to each other and the environment and can be made to work in unison not in contradiction. Understanding the whole, how the parts work together as one, is the easiest way to achieve real performance improvement.
The amateur often sees running as one thing, for example, a cardiovascular workout or a calorie burning activity. The professional sees it has a series of related functions: Breathing, muscle strength, coordination, balance, awareness and feedback learning. The professional sees the whole but also breaks improvement into smaller, more digestible parts, understanding the fundamentals of efficient, powerful and coordinated movement in a much deeper way.
Once the building blocks for powerful, coordinated movement are in place, it was much easier to put them together into larger, faster, more efficient and powerful movements. The result is holistic strength, and it is several times more powerful than strength that relies solely on one element—for example speed over endurance or safety.
Excellence in running—or in distribution—is about going further—faster, longer, more efficiently and in a sustainable way. The lesson from running in achieving excellence—professional level performance—is in thinking a different way: Excellence is achieved not by taking one piece of advice and trying to fit it into an existing system; it is achieved by breaking things down into constituent parts, understanding each, developing each to a high level of performance and being able to put all the pieces together in a way that allows them to work together, in unison, instead of in contradiction.
One of the areas LaserShip is working on in its 25th year is breaking down our values into organizational traits that clearly represent our purpose and direction. Each of the six traits that have been identified is supported by action statements. Our Values of focusing on customers, employees, quality, image and ethics creates an organizational trait of having a Passion for Excellence. This means that we are obsessed with delivering beyond expectations. The observable behaviors that support this obsession are:
- Consciously considering the impact of actions on the whole; recognizing that every action has multiple consequences.
- Actively seeking to be the first to foresee problems; and identify opportunities to improve processes, service, work conditions, revenue and profits
- Taking immediate action when identifying a problem
- Constantly communicating excellence: What it looks like, how to achieve it, who it impacts and why it is important
- Rejecting “Okay” as a satisfactory standard
- Always asking “What’s next?” to achieve
No comments:
Post a Comment