Time vs. Motivation

Triathlon training, even at the amateur level, is a time intensive endeavor. Even compared to other endurance sports, like running (elite triathletes and cyclists tend to log more total hours than elite runners), to perform to your potential requires a large volume of swim, bike and run. And then there’s the additional preparation time involved with the first two. 

Running at Big Sur, CA

But, in my years coaching and observing hundreds of amateur athletes, time or availability to train or “busyness” is rarely the distinguishing factor in how much work gets done. I’ve coached plenty of busy professionals including CEOs, parents and people with irregular work/travel schedules. I’ve also coached retirees and people with more free time during the day too. There’s next to no correlation in how much free time (which admittedly is hard to define) an amateur athlete has and how much training they get done on a monthly/yearly basis. What differentiates them is the motivation, organization and the importance, or focus, they place on training in their lives (prioritization). I’ve found that a coach (I’ll speak for myself here) can’t do much to change motivation. It’s innate. How badly you want it is up to you. A coach can help by providing a motivating environment, like I’ve tried to create with TCMTriSquad (a whole other blog on that here). A coach can help with organization. I’ve seen ways of athletes getting it done creatively around other priorities which can be applied to others in similar circumstances. A coach can’t help prioritizing the importance of the things in your life. Again that’s a personal decision. He or she can help you see the very strong connection between training time and performance (and mental health!), which might help guide your prioritization. 

So what does it matter if it’s time or motivation that you're blaming for not doing the training?  Well, as I’ve mentioned, it seems to me motivation is fixed and you don’t have a lot of direct control over it. There’s no real way to tweak your own brain to change how much you want to qualify for Worlds, or finish on the podium or lose 20lb or live a healthier life. You just do or you don’t. So if you’re blaming “lack of time” for not doing the work to reach your goals you’re not, I believe, being honest with yourself and ignoring a potential fix. It might be more protective of the ego to blame time (ie. I’m helpless against a world which is conspiring against me to derail my endurance training and goals) than to accept the fact that you just don’t have the inner drive to set your alarm to 5am. But, if you accept that you don’t have the required level of motivation to do the training, you might just find your way around the often fixable problem of prioritizing training into your life. 

I’ve mentioned that I haven’t noticed much of a difference between people who have plenty of time, and those that don’t, in being able to do the volume. I have noticed challenges within the same person who perceives that their life priorities or time availability have changed. In fact, the time to train is usually still there but things may have to be rearranged to something that’s less…wait for it…motivating. Take the example of a parent who has other commitments on a Saturday morning other than the fun, group ride they’d done for years before they had kids. A perfect opportunity to throw up your hands and say you have no time anymore. But, if you’re honest about this being a motivation problem, and not a time problem, you might see that you can still get seven hours sleep between 10pm-5am, jump on the bike trainer for two hours, have a shower and be ready to take the kids off to wherever. Is this as appealing as riding in the sunshine with your friends? No, of course not, so it would require extra motivation, but the time still exists and in this solution and doesn’t affect your priorities (your kids).

The nice thing about endurance sports that persists, in a world that often seems to reward privilege, is that improvement and results are almost guaranteed by simply putting in the time. You just have to want it enough and be honest about what’s really holding you back.