When I began writing Fitness Intuition, I considered several alternate titles: Runner’s Intuition, Heart of a Runner, Happy Heart Training, etc. But I decided that Fitness Intuition was best.
I chose a title that didn’t have “running” in it because I didn’t want to limit the insights I’d gathered about intuitive training to running alone. I’m convinced they’re applicable to all sports.
The patterns of training are the same in every sport. They’re universal. Whether we run, lift weights, swim, or play basketball, tennis, football, or soccer, training is about nudging the body to do more, then letting it rest and get stronger. Only the details differ.
This was made clear to me several years ago when I picked up a book by Clarence Bass. Now in his 70s, Clarence is a former world-class bodybuilder. His sport is sooooo different from mine – what could he possibly say that would help my running?
Lots, as it turned out.
When Clarence wrote Challenge Yourself, he was over 60 and had lifted weights for 50 years. He’d refined his awareness of what counts most in training, and what he could safely set aside. When I adapted his ideas, I found that they applied beautifully.
In his wonderful book, Lost World of the Kalahari, Laurens van der Post describes a South African man who inherited a farm but knew nothing about farming. He plunged into an intensive study of agriculture, reading books, talking with farmers, and writing to experts, and in the end became very successful. Along the way, he discovered that having studied one subject intensely enabled him to learn other fields quickly as well.
When we become good at one thing, we develop our energy and awareness in ways that help us be good at others. Vaslav Nijinsky, the Russian ballet dancer (1889-1950), was vacationing at a Swiss ski resort, when he watched a professional skier demonstrate several fancy moves. Nijinsky borrowed a pair of skis and repeated the moves effortlessly, even though he’d never skied.
What patterns of training did Clarence Bass identify that can help a runner? Here’s an obvious one: recovery is crucial. No big revelation there! But Bass refined his understanding of recovery. At age 60+, he found that training very easy on his off-days, and taking many easy days, allowed him to train very hard on his main workout days, and make faster progress than at any other time in his career. Not surprisingly, the elite African runners train very hard/very easy as well.
When I adapted similar principles in my running, I got positive results. Instead of focusing on mileage – a questionable endeavor at age 67, I put most of my energy into a single weekly long run. During most of those runs, which were 2 to 3 hours, I did some speedwork – usually a 25-minute effort at above 90% of maximum heart rate, or else some all-out 2-minute repeats. During the week, I ran easily and did some walking with Mary Ellen.
I’ve since discovered that eliminating speedwork from the long runs works better, because it greatly extends my recovery. Combining long runs and speedwork was an inefficient way to manage my energy.
Mind you, at my age, the details of my training are not extensible to younger or more talented runners. My body needs much more rest than it did 40 years ago. But the principles of energy-management are the same.
It’s really a question of scale. The world-leading Africans run very easy on their recovery days. The difference is that their “very easy” runs are as fast as my medium-paced runs, and their hard efforts come just 6 hours after an easy jog, instead of up to 4 days later.
The patterns of energy-management are the same, but the energy flow is much greater. The details are different, but the principles are the same.
Clarence Bass also found that the body loves variety. Again – no surprise. Changing our training helps us stay motivated and stimulates the body to improve.
Which is my long-winded way of warming up to write, once again, about Bill Walsh, and how he applied creative energy-management principles to transform the San Francisco 49ers.
Walsh took the Niners to three Super Bowl wins, after inheriting a 2-14 team that, in the words of 49er offensive lineman Randy Cross, was “the worst 2-14 team in the history of the NFL.” Yet Walsh’s first Super Bowl victory came just three years after he was hired. Walsh transformed the team by applying energy-management ideas that are applicable to running, business, relationships – anything we do.
I recently re-read Walsh’s wonderful book, Building a Champion: On Football and the Making of the 49ers, co-authored with journalist Glenn Dickey and published in 1988. What inspired me to pick it up was a run in San Francisco. As usual, I started at Crissy Field and ambled across the Golden Gate Bridge, then onto the trails of the Marin Headlands. It’s a lovely route that refreshes me after a week sitting at a desk.
On the return, I came off the bridge and pushed the pace hard. I was flying along a sidewalk near the Bay when I heard a familiar voice. I glanced ahead and saw a former 49er player from the team’s glory years. I won’t mention his name, except to say that he’s a Hall of Fame safety, the best ever to play the game, that his initials are R. L., and that he wore number 42.
Seeing Ronnie – uh, the player – reminded me of Sunday afternoons in the eighties when my ex-wife and I would make popcorn and settle in to watch Montana, Rice, and R. L. dismantle teams that practiced a more traditional, grind-em-out style of football.
What made those games enthralling was that they were about energy. And Bill Walsh was the Energy Master.
Walsh rebuilt the 49er organization from the ground up, and the new structure was based entirely on using energy efficiently. Whether he was promoting attitudes of public service among the people who answered the phones and sold tickets, or designing pass plays for Joe Montana and Jerry Rice, he was obsessed with enabling a powerful, uninterrupted energy-flow, toward the end of winning the Super Bowl.
Walsh was quick to rid the 49ers of people and systems that created blocks to that positive energy flow. On the playing field, his system, which New York Giants coach Bill Parcells sneeringly dubbed the “West Coast Offense,” consisted of an energy-efficient style of play that Walsh inherited, in part, from Cincinnati Bengals coach Paul Brown and San Diego Chargers coach Sid Gilman.
Brown, Gilman, and Walsh realized that the most efficient way to move the ball, with the least effort and highest odds of success, was the short pass. When applied against teams that relied on brute physical power, Walsh’s energy-efficient plays were devastating. His system spread like wildfire throughout the NFL, as teams lured the Niner assistants with offers of head coaching jobs.
I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Walsh helped reinvent sports, and that it was important that he do so.
I mentioned in the last chapter my belief that the world has entered an age of energy-awareness. In the last 200 years, the new energy-consciousness has flooded our lives with gadgets fueled by energy from coal, gas, and electricity. On a human level, more flowing, flexible, energy-based patterns are emerging in every area of our lives, including business, religion, sports, and relationships.
By demonstrating that intelligent use of energy is the key to success even in a Neanderthal sport such as pro football, Bill Walsh served as a standard bearer for the energy age.
A simple example. When Walsh arrived in San Francisco, he had to fire many substandard players who had no hope of succeeding in the NFL. Many of the remaining players were well beneath NFL standards, yet Walsh treated them with respect. He poured boundless energy into helping them refine their skills, such as they were. It was an expression of his belief that creating a powerful flow of energy in a positive direction is what counts.
In fact, it was a striking expression of a principle that J. Donald Walters calls “directional relativity.” In his wonderful book, Out of the Labyrinth: For Those Who Want to Believe, But Can’t, Walters argues that values are relative, but directional. Thus, actions that would be positive and expansive for one person (a lazy slob takes a job at a car wash) would be disastrously contractive for a person whose awareness is more expanded (Mother Teresa changes careers to wash cars).
The actions that have the highest value for humanity are those that expand happiness, and decrease suffering. An immutable law of nature says that expansive actions unfailingly deliver a corresponding inflow of joy.
A simple example from running, which I mentioned in the last chapter. When Kenny Moore ran at Oregon, coach Bill Bowerman assigned him a “hard/easy” schedule of workouts, recognizing that Moore needed more rest than Steve Prefontaine. Both runners were intent on improving – moving forward in an expansive direction – but Moore needed a different path to achieve the same progress; he needed easier training than Pre.
If values were fixed and inflexible, Moore and Prefontaine would have thrived on the same training. If values were fixed in stone, all runners could read the same authoritative book and follow its schedules to the letter. But it’s obvious that the individual needs to adapt his or her training in ways that will expand his/her own fitness, not someone else’s.
Walsh understood that creating a powerful, positive flow of energy requires working sensitively with the individual. He knew that helping each 49er player improve, even the worst, was the key to building a successful organization. In Walsh’s words:
We set about teaching fundamentals and skills, establishing a system of football on offense and defense, and establishing a positive atmosphere and attitude.
We were enthusiastically involved in developing the players we had, trying to improve their consistency and effectiveness. I think our staff did an admirable job the first two years, working in most cases with men who could not compete in the NFL, developing them to their fullest potential. (Building a Champion, p. 93)
Sports is changing. Walsh was the first pro coach to devote such intense energy to developing the individual player, even the least-talented, as the key to the team’s success.
When superstars Joe Montana and Steve Young joined the Niners, Walsh didn’t immediately insert them in games, in hopes of quickly improving the team’s woeful record. Instead, he spent months helping them refine fundamental aspects of quarterbacking, such as their footwork, and only used them in plays where they stood a chance of succeeding and gaining confidence. Energy was the key: by helping the individual optimize his energy, he developed a team of players who were faster, smarter, more skilled and energy-efficient. The “system” proved itself with five Super Bowl victories, three during Walsh’s tenure.
What can runners learn from Clarence Bass and Bill Walsh about managing energy? I suspect it’s the idea of studying our own “energy economy” and adopting the methods that will work best for us, at our own level.
No two runners are exactly alike. How quickly do our unique bodies recover? Reviewing our training diary, we can identify the interval between our best long/hard runs.
Which runs leave us feeling energized – “pleasantly tired,” as Arthur Lydiard put it – rather than overextended and sandbagged? Where are the personal “edges” that we can nudge to become faster, stronger, more enduring and energized? How far can we press those edges without falling into overtraining and contraction? How much rest do we need, compared to other runners?
What heart rates work best during our daily runs? Long runs? Speedwork? Races?
The way we feel while running can help us find the answers. When we cooperate with nature, it rewards us with positive feelings. The best runs feel “expansive.”
It’s difficult for most runners to always stay inside nature’s fences – never straying beyond their present abilities, or pretending that they’re better than they are. Yet progress begins with truth – admitting where we stand.
Once we know what our bodies are capable of, we can choose expansive training methods.
We can choose a diet that gives us energy. We all need carbs and protein, but the specifics are individual. Mary Ellen and I eat radically different foods. About the only food we can eat together is pizza. But we both get the same “food groups.”
We can cultivate positive feelings, which dramatically increase the power output of the heart. We can get enough sleep, and so on. And, like Bill Walsh, we can eliminate “energy killers” from our lives – negative people, junk food, overtraining, etc. We can sing, whistle, smile, and help others. We can train in places that make us feel good.
The energy we get from positive people, music, books, movies, art, and scenery is an “ergonomic aid,” because it lifts our mood and boosts our immune system, which is vitally involved in recovery.
We can plan our training for months and years, but adjust it daily. The body’s needs change continually, and calm, objective feeling lets us know when we’re doing the right training from moment to moment. There’s an upbeat feeling when we’re on the right track. Good energy feels good.
Postscript: I was delighted to receive a note from Clarence Bass after I posted this article on the Fitness Intuition website. I don’t know how Clarence found the article, but I’m touched and impressed by his expansive spirit. At 70-plus, he may no longer lift the same weights he did at 40 – though he still works out intensely. But he continues to lift other people.
