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2026 Uphill Athlete Coaches: Goal Setting Summit
469 Plays24 minutes ago
Most endurance athletes don’t fail because they lack motivation—they fail because their goals are vague, unrealistic, or disconnected from their daily behaviors. In this episode of the Uphill Athlete Podcast, Steve House is joined by coaches Chantelle Robitaille and Alexa Hasman to unpack what actually makes goal-setting work over the long term.
The conversation breaks down the critical differences between outcome, performance, and process goals, and explains why process-driven systems (not motivation) are the foundation of sustainable progress. The trio explores how identity, accountability, life constraints, and long-term planning shape athletic success, especially for non-professional athletes balancing work, family, and training.
Listeners will learn how to build goals inside a realistic training structure, avoid common psychological traps like impostor syndrome and comparison, and design systems that hold up when motivation fades. The episode closes with a practical framework for reviewing past seasons, setting meaningful goals, and choosing the right level of support.
Special Offer to Listeners: Receive free four week samples of our most popular training plans, visit uphillathlete.com/letsgo
Write to us at coach@uphillathlete.com
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Transcript
Setting Goals Based on Past vs. Present
00:00:00
Speaker
The biggest one I see is, well, when I was 20, I did this, so I want to try and replicate that. And they're in their 40s or fifty s And what I always say is you have to train and make goals for where you are now not where you were 20 years ago.
00:00:23
Speaker
If you're enjoying the show and want to take the next step in your training, join our newsletter and receive a free four-week sample training plan. Head on over to uphillathlete.com slash let's go, and once you sign up, you'll instantly get a link to try out some of our most popular training plans.
00:00:41
Speaker
It's a great way to get a feel for how we train our athletes for big mountain goals. Check it out uphillathlete.com slash let's go. uphillathlete.com slash L-E-T-S-G-O.
Common Mistakes in Goal Setting
00:00:56
Speaker
Welcome to the Uphill Athlete Podcast. My name is Steve House and I'm here today with Alexa Hassman and Chantelle Robitaille. Welcome. Hello, hello. Hi, for having us.
00:01:08
Speaker
So most endurance athletes don't fail, not because they don't want their goal badly enough. They fail because the goal is too vague or the plan is inconsistent or the daily behaviors don't match the story that they're telling themselves. So today we're going to talk about how to set goals that actually will hold up when your motivation kind of seems to be slipping away and we'll get you to your goals.
00:01:38
Speaker
Chantel, Alexa, and i are going to talk about a few different things. We're going to talk about sort of this idea of outcome versus process goals, which is probably familiar to a lot of it, a lot of you. We're going to talk about, and Alexa has some great insights here on this idea of self-identity and building systems and frameworks to help you get to your goals.
00:01:59
Speaker
how to build goals inside of the constraints, if you will, or with inside the, I guess a structure is a better word, how to build goals inside the structure of a training plan, how different forms of accountability can can help you, um how to communicate and build goals with the help of others, whether it's a coach or a training group, and just some of the most common traps and kind of how to avoid them.
00:02:23
Speaker
So let's dive in Chantel. What is one of the most common goal setting mistakes that you've seen?
Motivation: Daily Routines vs. End Goals
00:02:31
Speaker
Well, it is the season, right?
00:02:33
Speaker
ah To be asking these kinds of questions. I think that probably the biggest one that I see that gets in people's way is building, building a goal around an outcome.
00:02:44
Speaker
So the goal is a summit of a mountain, um, a time in a marathon, a particular race result or podium spot.
00:02:55
Speaker
And they have these goals without being anchored to the reality of the daily behaviors and other constraints that will make this goal realistic for their life and how they live.
00:03:11
Speaker
oh That's Alexa. What from your insights and and you've studied sports psychology and are in a doctorate program around this topic. What is the biggest misconception that people have about this concept of motivation that us humans have have created.
00:03:31
Speaker
Yeah, I think we need to look at motivation as all encompassing, not the final outcome and goal, right? We always sort of put it on this final anchor of what's going to happen at the end when really the motivation needs to be tied to the daily aspects of it,
Specificity and Personal Relevance in Goals
00:03:46
Speaker
right? And so I try to teach my athletes that the summit or the race or anything like that is the cherry on top of all the work, which is actual motivation and the process of going about your daily life, completing these tasks, right? So motivation isn't the end piece. It's the entire process.
00:04:04
Speaker
h I love that. Yeah. I mean, this is this is we are we are whole humans after all. Right. Like we're not living in a vacuum. And I think that this is so important. Like so many times people try to train like a professional athlete without realizing, well, the professional athlete, that's their job.
00:04:21
Speaker
they They eat, sleep, train. That's all they do. Not all they do, but that's the that's their primary day to day. Chantel, wanted you to kind of walk us through some of these concepts.
00:04:35
Speaker
Talk about the difference between an outcome goal and performance goal and a process goal. We hear these terms kicked around. Maybe start just by defining what an outcome goal is, for example.
00:04:49
Speaker
Yeah, I think when people are thinking about goals and as people are are coming up with goals and plans, um and this is not just January, right? Like there's nothing magic about the month of January.
00:05:02
Speaker
It's like there's nothing magic about a Monday, right? So you can you can change your goal. You can have a new goal and it can they can be big.
Controlling Actions to Achieve Goals
00:05:10
Speaker
They can be scary. They can be small. But any kind of goal has to be specific.
00:05:16
Speaker
You got to be able to back it up with some action. It's particularly helpful if you can actually choose goals that have that are connected to your own personal why.
00:05:27
Speaker
And you also need to have some clear non-negotiables to make that sort of thing possible. So if we think about outcome goals and performance goals, um an outcome goal could be a summit of a mountain.
00:05:42
Speaker
It could be, i want to run 100 miles. It could be, I want to improve my ah marathon time from four and a half hours to four hours, right? So that's that's a very specific outcome.
00:05:58
Speaker
And so if we think about it from a the performance perspective, that's measured by results. So that's stuff that is mostly in your control, but not all in your control.
00:06:09
Speaker
So things like you know, you're going to have to, if you're running the hundred mile race, right, that's your outcome goal. You want to be able to run that race in 30 hours. Or if you're looking to improve your your marathon time, maybe that's improving your lactate threshold by 5%.
00:06:27
Speaker
So you can mostly improve those things, but there's still going to be stuff that you can't predict that might get in your way of of making that happen. The process goals are completely within your
A, B, and C Goals in Training Plans
00:06:39
Speaker
control. So they are controllable actions and behaviors that you have to be able to show up and execute on to be able to make things happen. So those would be things like um working up to running five to six days per week.
00:06:54
Speaker
Strength training three times a week or even one time a week if you're not doing any of it at all. Having one full rest day per week. Improving your sleep habits, you know, and then, you know, sleeping solidly seven to eight hours per night if that's something that's getting in your way. So thinking about the things that are, you know, that specific goal that you're working towards And then the the things that you need to repetitively be able to do um to make them happen. Because, you know, Alexa, you had some great things to say about motivation. It doesn't drop out of the sky. And sometimes the motivation is there when you wake up.
00:07:34
Speaker
And sometimes the motivation doesn't come until you begrudgingly put your running shoes on and you're moving for 20 minutes after you've pushed yourself out the door. So it's it's that continual part of showing up that's really necessary. Yeah, that's great. And it's interesting you know if we think about why people come to coaching or even a training plan or training group, you know that's usually or very often for an outcome goal. They want to finish a race or climb a mountain.
00:08:03
Speaker
And usually what we end up working on is the the process the daily actions, the process goals. So you define them, Chantel, like, how much sleep are you getting? um You know, how how much, how much strength training are you doing? How are you running? Are you training consistently or not? You know, it sort of goes back to some of the the core fundamental parts of, of training, which is consistency, gradually increasing the training load and modulating the training load.
00:08:30
Speaker
And, you know, I, I like that. idea that outcome goals are not very controllable, like we can't control very much about whether or not we're going to be able to climb Mount Rainier on July 2026.
00:08:44
Speaker
twenty twenty six We can't control the weather. We can't control our partners. We can't control all kinds of things. But the things we can control for are like, do i did I sleep eight hours? Did i you know, get trained? Did I train five days this week? Did I do my strength sessions the way they were prescribed and those kinds of things. So I like that. I like that lens a lot.
00:09:07
Speaker
Yeah, so like I think having a plan is important, right? Like you've got to look at the goal and you've got to sort of zoom away from that goal and think about what are the things that are going to be important? What are the success factors, right, to climb Mount Rainier or to run that race that you're planning to do? What are the things you need to be successful? Where are you starting from? And then you're going to you know, have your plan to block
Long-term Perspective in Training
00:09:30
Speaker
out how you're going to make that happen.
00:09:32
Speaker
And then you're going to intentionally train and do those different things day to day. And then also think about the things that support you. You know, you, like you said, Steve, at the beginning, no one lives in a vacuum, right? You have, people have most of the athletes that we're working with, they have jobs,
00:09:48
Speaker
They have families, they have other responsibilities outside of this. So you have to have some supportive frameworks to to give you the time and the space that you need to take those actionable steps every day.
00:10:04
Speaker
the outcome goals are the inspiration and the process goals are the the building blocks of success.
00:10:14
Speaker
So Chantel, what are some practical examples that would apply to an endurance athlete? Like, let's say the outcome is i want to i want to run UTMB next year. What would be the performance and the process goals in that example?
00:10:28
Speaker
Yeah, so, well, it's a good timing to ask that question. First of all, you got to get chosen in the lottery. and That's happening today as we speak. um so you got to be chosen. So let's say you're chosen and you know you're going to be there and you want to you want to complete UTMB, right? So that's your your goal.
00:10:46
Speaker
your outcome goal. Your performance goals, there could be quite a few of them, right? You've got time, you've got the amount of vertical that you're going to have to to climb, all of that stuff. So having a, how fast are you going to have to move on some of that terrain?
00:11:02
Speaker
Now, again, you can prepare for that in your training, right? That's part of your process goal would be Working up to, um you know, over a given week, making sure that you have about 200 vertical feet of climbing per mile.
00:11:18
Speaker
Right. So that's very specific. You can plan that out. You can make a route, whatever. um And you can work up to a certain vertical rate of climbing in your regular routine.
00:11:29
Speaker
But what you, you know, the performance goal is maybe to be able to climb at a certain vertical rate. That's part of maybe your, your race plan or your race strategy. But on the day, what you can't predict is how is the weather going to be? Is it going to be very hot?
00:11:44
Speaker
and you're not going to be able to work quite as hard, you know, so that performance goal might be kind of hard. um If you have an outcome of being, um let's say, top 10 in your age group, um that's that's a goal that you might have. You don't know who else is going to show up on that day and how they're going to perform. So we want to make sure that obviously outcome goals are important.
00:12:08
Speaker
Having performance goals are also important. They challenge us. They give us something to to to chew on, to to fight for on those days that we don't and really feel like we want to get out the door. But we're going to be spending the vast majority of our time taking those daily actions and making sure that we are doing the training, that we are being consistent,
00:12:30
Speaker
that we are supporting our training with good sleep, good stress management, good nutrition, good fueling and hydration when we're out on the run. And that's going to take far more time than
Training Systems and Adaptability
00:12:44
Speaker
anything else. And they're going to give us the best chance of achieving those performance goals and those outcomes.
00:12:50
Speaker
Yeah, I like that. I mean, I think performance goals are ah so seductive in a way. You know, they like people make up these goals benchmarks for themselves and i think a pill athlete in our early years can't we succumbed to that and we said okay like we think that if you have we tried to tie it to the chronic training load if you could have a if you can train in this way for mountaineering and you have a ctl of a certain number for a certain amount of time you'll be fit enough to climb denali you'll be fit enough to climb everest or whatever but you know, ah what after a year or two, we realized that was complete folly because for a variety of reasons, um but people loved it.
00:13:33
Speaker
and And it kind of was hard to back back out of. And people are always asking me, like, how many vertical meters um a week or a month do I need to climb to be, you know, you know top 1% or those kinds of things? And and those are, they're seductive, but they're hard questions. And you ultimately have to, they have to be very personal to you. Mm-hmm.
00:13:55
Speaker
So we talk a lot about sort of um like a events, B events, C events, this kind of thing throughout a season, particularly with trail runner, you know, an A race, B race.
00:14:06
Speaker
Talk about that for a minute. What does that mean to you as a coach, Chantal? Chantal? So if we think about the if you think about training for different things over the year, I think it's helpful for people to have a yearly plan. So if you start with like a yearly calendar and you block out, okay, these are the things i'm gonna I want to do.
00:14:25
Speaker
So let's say if you're going to climb Mount Rainier, well, part of your preparation – well maybe as part of your preparation So that's an A goal, right? That's a most important goal.
00:14:36
Speaker
you're going to label that with an A on your calendar. That's that's a big priority. And then to prepare for Mount Rainier, let's say you're going to go do a mountaineering prep course.
00:14:46
Speaker
Well, that's going to be pretty significant, right? It's going to take a lot out of you um physically, mentally, maybe even emotionally. So you put that on the calendar too. And that's not an A goal. It's very important.
00:14:59
Speaker
But, um you know, it's more of a probably b goal in terms of, you know, it's not the the most important thing on the calendar. um So maybe you're going label that as a B goal.
00:15:10
Speaker
And then in this case, an example of a C goal might be you're going to run a your your family has a little challenge to run a um a local 10K race or a local 5K race or something like that. So you still want to show up and you want to be prepared because if you if you don't, um you know, and you go to to run and you're not running at all and you think, ah, it's 5K, it's three miles.
00:15:37
Speaker
And you decide like, yeah, but maybe I could win a prize and you go all out. Maybe you're not going to be able to run Rainier, right? here right you you get you You hurt yourself and you can't go on. So that's a sequel, something that's like less important, but still something that you want to plan for. And then map those out on your calendar and you know what those are, right? You have them there and then you can think about how do you how can you organize your training to be most prepared for those things.
00:16:03
Speaker
The B and C goals often can be training and good preparation for the A goal. So the things you learn on your mountaineering prep course are going to be things that you're going to take back to your training after the fact. You're going to learn that, oof, I really um do it did a poor job with um fueling myself during the prep course. I got to work on nutrition. I got to add that as a new goal now leading up to Rainier. I've got to get faster. I've got to get fitter.
00:16:33
Speaker
ah Maybe you have a 50K race that's preparing as a B race that's preparing you four um for a 100K race, um something like that. So you have other goals that are maybe feeding into other goals.
00:16:48
Speaker
And when you block them out on the calendar, it also helps you stay focused because let's say you get invited to something along the way and you have your friend invites you to go ah do the Grand Canyon.
00:17:01
Speaker
And that's a three week trip where you're not going to be running.
Coaching: Self vs. One-on-One
00:17:05
Speaker
You're not going to be climbing. You're mostly going to be sitting. Is that ah a great opportunity, chance of a lifetime? Absolutely. Is it going to get in the way of you completing your goals for UTMB?
00:17:18
Speaker
Maybe. So you want to be if you have them blocked out on the calendar, it really helps you to stay focused to either know whether to say no to extra things that might get in your way, or maybe then you have to adjust your goals um for other things if you decide to add something new in.
00:17:36
Speaker
Yeah, when I was climbing full time, I mean, that was my my personal mission statement was to become the best climber I could be. So I use that filter for a lot of those decisions to, in some cases, as you said, the detriment of missing out on amazing opportunities of going on incredible trips with great people.
00:17:55
Speaker
But had to have the you have to have ah i'll decide what your priorities are. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. absolutely Alexa, let's talk a little bit about the directionality of goals and how to create systems to create process progress.
00:18:19
Speaker
How do you talk about, how do you think about systems when it comes to training? Systems when it comes to training and creating goals, I mean, you want to look at basically what your overall picture is. Like Chantal said, is you break it down into your A, your B, your C goals. Now look at your A goal. What is your ultimate goal for that? And you want to build not only that outcome goal, but also that process goal because those process goals are going to get you there. And within that race also, we want process goals.
00:18:49
Speaker
So my goal is to eat every 40 minutes. My goal is to stay at this RPE. for the entire first hour of this race, right? so we got to look at it in this broad stream of things. And then we want to break it down of like, if this is my goal, how am I going to structure the rest of my life around that or vice versa, right? So we have to fit it in. We all have other stuff outside of training going on.
00:19:12
Speaker
Like that's just how life is and things come up randomly. But how do we fit it in and how do we make it viable for our our life, right? Like, does that mean I have to wake up at 5 a.m.? Does that mean I have to stay up late and get this done? And is that realistic for my life and what I want to do? And if it's not, then we need to change our goals, right? If it is, yes, I can wake up at 5 a.m. and I can get my long run in.
00:19:36
Speaker
Great. Let's keep working towards that goal. If that's not going to be possible, then we want to adjust from there. Yeah. And, you know, I could have paraphrased James Clear of Atomic Habits fame where, you know, he talked was talking about habits, but if we shifted a little bit, I would rephrase his famous maximum and say, you don't rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your training systems. And training is
Identity as Athletes and Its Impact
00:20:03
Speaker
a system. is it's It's a schedule. It's having, you know, backup plans if you're
00:20:10
Speaker
planning on doing a gym, but it was a holiday and the gym is closed. What do you do? It's having accountability. It's having someone, you know, whether that's yourself, if you're self-coaching or a coach, reviewing your training and and giving you input. I mean, that is a system that is self, self sort of self feeding.
00:20:31
Speaker
How do you look at those systems? Like, you know, kind of have these almost three variations, like kind of self-coached, self-directed, maybe you're using a training plan, maybe you're just using a book, versus like what what you're managing every day and coaching in every day, which is our training groups versus, you know, one-on-one coaching. How do you see those different systems and how do they benefit different people in different ways that are right for them at different stages, et cetera? How do you think about that?
00:20:59
Speaker
Yeah, I think there's different there's different types of personalities and each version fits into a different section of that, right? So you have to to do like a training plan and be self-coaching. You have to be very motivated and accountable to yourself or somebody else outside of that. And that can be really difficult for the majority of people. Because you have nobody checking and being like, hey, are you doing this?
00:21:24
Speaker
um Then we move on to training groups, which offers a little bit more accountability, but you still have to be pretty self-motivated because nobody's in your calendar every day checking on you. But you do have a community of people that you know are also training alongside you for their own goals. So you have that accountability. Yeah.
00:21:41
Speaker
And then you go to coaching, one-on-one coaching, and you have that accountability from your coach, right? So like my athletes know that I'm going to message them if I see um that they didn't complete a workout. I'll be like, are you okay? What's going on? Do we need to move this? Right. So you have these different personality types and it works for each of those. Some people don't want that accountability. It doesn't work for them. It's too much pressure and that's okay. So for them, a training plan might be great. And as long as it's uploaded into training peaks and they see that, that's enough motivation for them. Then there's the other end, which are people like me. I need somebody that's like watching me because if they're not, then I'm going to, I'm going to play with the rules a little bit. Right. So yeah, it's definitely a personality type.
00:22:25
Speaker
Mm hmm.
00:22:27
Speaker
I like that a lot. Let's talk about sort of the identity aspect of being an athlete. And this is something that you've thought a lot about. How do you think about that and how to communicate about around identity with athletes, both on on both ends of the spectrum? There's there's those of us perhaps over identify as athletes and those of us that under identify, if that makes sense.
00:22:51
Speaker
Yeah, I think we have a real issue with identity in this sport and that a lot of us under identify as athletes, right? There's so many times we were like, I'm not a runner. Like, well, but you're running. So like, you actually are a runner. so we need to change this concept of like, what an athlete is. i mean, it could be as small as running a mile or even hiking a mile, whatever it is that makes you an athlete. It doesn't, the, um, the bigger, the goal doesn't define what kind of athlete you are, right? We don't need you climbing Everest to say that you are an athlete. Uh, that's unrealistic and sort of what our society has created around this is like, if you're not running hundred mile races, you're not an ultra athlete.
00:23:32
Speaker
That's not true. If you're running, if you're out there, if you're working towards these goals, you are an athlete. And so we need to change our society's thinking about what that athletic identity is. And we need to work on that as individuals as well.
00:23:47
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's that's really powerful. and i And even to take it a step further, I think it's really important for people to... frame it in again, like going back to sort of the outcome process performance goal kind of, um, viewpoint is if we can have people think about themselves as, you know, I am a consistent endurance athlete. I show up, I'm the person that shows up for myself to train six days a week. And I take one day, one day off one day, rest day. And that's, that's who I am uh,
00:24:25
Speaker
I think that that's super helpful because a lot of times I'll tell people, you know, Hey, if you've only got 20 minutes to do something like do that, like it's way, it's infinitely better than doing nothing in terms of progressing towards your fitness goals. And you're you know going to feel better and you're going to uphold the sort of pact you've made with yourself and your identity is to like, what kind of person
Benefits of Long-term Coaching
00:24:46
Speaker
you are. You're the person that does your best every day, shows up the best you can every day and, and, and and puts it out there. And I think that that's that's really important.
00:24:56
Speaker
Yeah, there's this huge imposter syndrome ah but around calling ourselves athletes, right? We feel like we don't have the right to do that. In reality, we do, right? Even if we're just showing up as much as we can, we are athletes out there. So I really want everybody that's listening to work on telling yourself you are an athlete and really resonating with that. Try and tell yourself that every single day.
00:25:20
Speaker
And, you know, just to to plug the Voice of the Mountains podcast, that the the day we're recording today, the podcast with John Windsor dropped, which was early January 2026. And John is this incredible guy who's, you know, a professor apparettus at Harvard and an incredible athlete his whole life and on and on. And he talked really incredibly.
00:25:44
Speaker
eloquently about imposter syndrome in that podcast. I recommend people give John a listen. He's incredibly wise man and incredibly accomplished. And he had to struggle deeply with with this. And it's really common um in endurance athletes how many of us have struggled with this idea of imposter syndrome. And so I think that's something for us to all work on.
00:26:07
Speaker
Let's talk about one of the things, Chantel, you probably have a lot to say about this too. One of the things that we've tried in the past is to say that we need to have, like if someone signs up for coaching, we used to say like, you have to sign up for no less than four months.
00:26:27
Speaker
um And people thought that was like a money thing, but actually it was about coaching. If you could give us 16 weeks to work with a coach, you're going to see incredible, tangible results.
00:26:40
Speaker
And a lot of people just aren't that patient. And we have to talk a little bit about how, particularly with endurance, and I think with strength athletes too, but particularly with endurance, the results lag pretty far behind when you do the work. Like you do the work for weeks and even months before you actually like can measurably notice that you're running faster or climbing faster or feeling better out in the mountains.
00:27:07
Speaker
And I think it's one of the messages I want to get across in this as we talk about these goals is to have, and I know you're a huge fan of this, Chantel, have that long-term view, make that annual plan. it is season for building our annual training plans, by the way, for all all the uphill athlete coaches that are listening. This a reminder. We need to build our ATPs for our athletes.
00:27:29
Speaker
And trust- No, they should be already done. They should already be done, Steve. They should already be done. I'm going to say that I'm i'm guilty. I'm not fully caught up there. But um yeah, got it boss.
00:27:45
Speaker
Yeah, I think the long term mindset is is really key because it's, you know, what A couple of things on that. One, if you just work with a coach for one month, are you going to learn a few things? Sure.
00:27:59
Speaker
But are you going to get the most out of the experience? No, you're not. Because for most of the things that the the types of athletes that we work with are doing, they have long-term goals.
00:28:10
Speaker
there's Of course, there's there are the odd people that have one very specific goal to... um climb, let's say they want to climb Mount Baker. They're going to go with a group of friends and that's a goal. They're going to climb Mount Baker. They're going to ski down. They want help for this very specific thing.
00:28:28
Speaker
They're not going to need any help after this. Well, chances are they're going to do that. They're going to have a great time going to have a challenging time and they're going to want to do more of these things and they're gonna want to they're going to want to improve and and do more stuff.
Setting Realistic Goals and Avoiding Self-Sabotage
00:28:43
Speaker
So for more so most of us, we want to keep doing these exciting things. for a very long time. And so having that long-term mindset is really important.
00:28:52
Speaker
And then you have the opportunity to sort of review each, how each season or each year went, make some small deliberate changes over time so that you're continually getting better rather than just repeating the same, you know, all that work last year. Let me try it again. You may not be the same athlete you were last year. Maybe you have a new baby, uh, maybe you are, uh, now an empty nester. So you're, life is actually not the same. Maybe you have a new job.
00:29:20
Speaker
So things should change a little bit each time, right? And it's also helpful to keep some form of structured training all year long rather than having like, well, I climbed Aconcagua and I'm going to stop coaching now and I'm going to do my own thing until i'm tilt next year when I'm going to work with a coach for three months before Denali.
00:29:44
Speaker
Well, many people will continue to be accountable and continue to train. most people are going to slack off, fall off. And then when they come back to that coach in January, woof they got a lot of work to do to get ready for Denali. And they feel really discouraged because they know how fit they felt eight months before.
00:30:03
Speaker
And that's not how they're feeling now. And they feel like they're going back to square one. And the older we get, the harder it is to start over. So having that long-term mindset is really important for many different reasons that, and to to think about Having a plan that is long range, that is organized, that is periodized.
00:30:25
Speaker
And starting with that as a framework helps us to stay more consistent, helps us to Think about supporting ourselves well with good sleep, nutrition, strength work, recovery days.
00:30:38
Speaker
All that stuff is part of your training, by the way. It's not extra stuff. It is your training. And they adapt. they They have space to adapt when life stress comes in, if injury comes up, if illness comes up, because they have a long-term plan. If they don't, those things can derail people really quickly.
00:30:58
Speaker
And the other thing, i mean, we won't have time to get into this today, but actually be a great podcast podcast. just on its own is just sort of the physiology of endurance adaptations and how they degrade and which which adaptations degrade first and which take the longest to you know which stick around the longest is the other way to put it and that that that slide is is a thing and they are starting over as you said they they're almost starting over but they actually almost are starting over
00:31:30
Speaker
The other thing to keep in mind, and this was hugely motivating when I learned this when I was early in my training. I've been training, I think, for about two years. And I was out with um a Nordic ski coach and in Nizama, Washington. Flash, if you're listening, it's shout out to you. But he and I were talking about this. And he said, and I later looked it up and I found this report.
00:31:55
Speaker
you know, has been referenced multiple times in the scientific literature that the it the average time it takes someone to fulfill their genetic potential as an endurance athlete is about 120 months. That's 10 years. So we think three months or six months or nine months is long. We'll try 10 years. And I think obviously like age can play a role. I was probably in my mid-20s when I was told that. And obviously as a 55-year-old, I'm not going to be...
00:32:24
Speaker
probably a lot fitter at 65 if I start training religiously from this point on, but I'll be in a heck of a lot better shape than I will if I if i don't do anything. Absolutely.
00:32:37
Speaker
So Alexa, I'd like you to put your kind of sports psychologist hat on and talk a bit more about, you know, the relationship between goals and identity. When is a when is a goal too big?
00:32:53
Speaker
woof When is a goal too big? That is a question I ask myself before every race. um So i think we have to really be careful with outcome and performance goals.
00:33:05
Speaker
Um, specifically when it comes to comparing ourselves to other people, like placing in races or anything like that, that's a big one that we need to be careful because we cannot control other people.
00:33:17
Speaker
And that's the number one thing that we want to think about when creating our goals. Can I control the other people in my race? No. Um, and then same thing when it comes to mountaineering, can I control the weather on the mountain? No. So the summit is again, one of those outcome or performance goals that is like, you can't really rely on that. So what we want to do is we want to think about, is this realistic? Can I control it? Is it within my control? So like a time,
00:33:43
Speaker
That is a great performance or outcome goal that is a little bit more in our control if we're doing the training, right? um Process goals are obviously something that we can do well. Those are totally in our control. So when we think about our goals, am i in control of this?
00:34:00
Speaker
Can i achieve it if I do the proper training? From there, you know, is this realistic? Yes. Am I setting a goal that's like, ah if I want to go from a five hour marathon to a three hour marathon, is that realistic?
00:34:14
Speaker
Probably not. Right. Maybe not in one year. Yes, exactly. Exactly. Like from one race to the next. Right. Is this a realistic goal? We want to look at that across the board. um And that can be really hard because how do you create those goals? Right. And that's why having a coach is really helpful because they can look at that with you and be like, hey, yeah is this realistic? Right.
00:34:35
Speaker
Yes, maybe if we do this, if we change this in our training, yeah, that can be possible. So that's the big value of having a
Exercise and Emotional Stability
00:34:44
Speaker
coach. You have somebody else to look at that with you and help create those goals. But otherwise, yeah, I think the biggest thing is to look at, is this in my hands or is this in the mountains hands and the races hands and the other competitors?
00:34:56
Speaker
Or can I control this? One thing that I will say from my experience, particularly with professional athletes, I'm specifically thinking of a few professional climbers that I've worked with as a coach.
00:35:10
Speaker
When the goal is so big that it's in their mind going to define them as a climber and in these cases, um I've observed that they will self-sabotage the training.
00:35:27
Speaker
And I think that the the These things, they get too big, especially when they get public and everything feels a little too fragile. And they just, they self-sabotage. They find, they they they do things wrong. They're like, they just, a myriad, a number of ways because the goal is so big that it kind of threatens their whole identity. Yeah, and I think...
00:35:57
Speaker
The number one clue to that that you can see is in social media. You can see when people are like, hey, heading into UTMB, didn't have the greatest training block. Immediately there, you're giving yourself a a reason of this is why I'm not going to perform as well.
00:36:13
Speaker
Right. So you want to be really careful about those stories that you're telling yourself and also the pressure you're putting on yourself for those goals. Right. Is this going to be an athletic defining moment?
00:36:26
Speaker
Well, you got to remember that one event never defines you athletically, right? One moment never defines you. It's a moment in a process of of outcomes.
00:36:37
Speaker
So that pressure usually sabotages us because it's it's just too much for people to handle. um But yeah, I think we often see that of people making these reasons why they're not going to complete these outcomes because there's too much pressure on them. And that's really, it's it's hard to see because what I would want for them is to reframe it of how can I still be happy with my outcome, even if it's not perfect.
00:37:02
Speaker
I like that a lot. So one of the things I've observed both in myself, but also in others that I've coached is that I first noticed this with myself. I'll use myself as an example where if I'm not exercising, whether, whether you want to call it training or or not, but if I'm not consistently, let's say training more or less every day, my emotions don't regulate as well. Like I'm not as even like I'm more, my, my emotions are more up and down and,
00:37:40
Speaker
It took me a while of not training to sort of realize the connection between that. So I'm just curious if that's an experience for other people and actually a reason that they go back, because it has been for me, to being like, oh, I need to i need to train. I need to do something every day because then the rest of my day is much better because I'm more easily, my emotions are even and I'm like solid.
00:38:08
Speaker
Oh, sure. I think we see that a lot as coaches during the recovery weeks, right? Like people just lose it. Or tapering before a big event. Great point, yeah. Of course. um So, yeah, I think there is definitely that correlation. But also, like, again, it play plays with our identity. If I'm not training today, who am I? What am I doing with my life? Am I going to get worse?
00:38:29
Speaker
When really what i I wish people understood is you need that day. You need that week. You need that recovery time. And it's the same for us as coaches, too. I mean, today is a rest day for me. And i'm I'm antsy as can be because I'm like, i need to get in my strength training.
00:38:43
Speaker
But in the back of my head, I know that that's not true. I need to absorb the training that I have been doing. But it's hard to express that when you feel this like angst to get out there and, you know, you're going to take it out on your family later today because you haven't got that run in. 100%.
00:39:01
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
Reflecting on Achievements and Setting Future Goals
00:39:02
Speaker
And I mean, it's good to be interesting that you say that because those are the people that reflected it back on me where I first noticed it. They're like, did you notice when you don't do something? Oh, yeah.
00:39:14
Speaker
You know, yeah or that that's good. Or someone important in your life says to you, do you need to do you need to get outside? do you need to take a walk? Do you need to go run? Yep. Yeah. We see this in our pets, but it's harder to see that in ourselves. Yeah.
00:39:30
Speaker
Chantel, let's, let's get, let's bring this to sort of a real practical, like if we're coaching people, like how listeners actually kind of get some traction. What's a, what's a structure that you can offer for how to go through the process of creating some of these goals?
00:39:49
Speaker
I think, um you know, some of the things we've talked about already, I think it can be helpful to take before you start looking ahead to take a look back. So, you know, what did what have you been doing? And if and if you're kind of new to getting started in training, that's also OK. Like there's no right or wrong answer here. It's just information.
00:40:09
Speaker
So what does the training look like in the last three months, six months, one year, if you've been training more or less consistently in the year, what went really well? What are you proud of? What, what went really well? What are, and also how did you, you know, if you had goals last year, let's take a look at those goals. Cause often we say like, okay, these are my goals. I'm going climb Rainier. I'm going run a race. I'm going to do these things. Tick. What's the next thing?
00:40:34
Speaker
Like actually, take a Take a moment to recognize what you did and what you achieved. so And how does it actually feel to know that you've done that thing? What are some things that didn't go well?
00:40:47
Speaker
Why? How does that feel for you? you know And like sit with that for a moment. Don't just breeze over it. And then as you're thinking forward, what are the new things that you want to achieve? Are there some lessons and things and learnings that you learned last year or in the last couple months? or patterns that you've changed that you want to carry forward. Maybe for some people it's, um you know, in January, there's a lot of people doing dry January.
00:41:14
Speaker
Maybe in January you learn that, wow, by just not drinking over 30 days, I feel less irritable. I feel like I'm sleeping better.
00:41:25
Speaker
I feel like I have more motivation when I wake up in the morning. Maybe your pants are fitting better. Do you want to carry that? How do you want to carry that forward? Maybe you consider you want to have a dry February, or maybe you decide you want to be a little more intentional about your alcohol intake, right? Just as as ah an example, that's probably tangible for a lot of people at the moment.
00:41:47
Speaker
So take a look back. How did you stack up? Are there some things that you achieved that actually weren't even on your list? Like maybe you did place top 10 in your age group in all races that you did and placing anywhere at all in top 50 were not even on your list. Like that's pretty awesome. So recognize those things and think about all that stuff before you Celebrate the Yeah, celebrate the wins. Like we're so quick to just take it off and next.
00:42:17
Speaker
But then if something, if we do something, if we have a goal and we don't need it, man alive, we will spend weeks and months beating ourselves up. But we don't spend weeks and months being proud about the things we actually achieved.
00:42:28
Speaker
So maybe, you know, reversing that pattern a little bit. I think is important. And then think about the goals that you want to have for the year. And you can be big and you can be bold, like write them all down, brainstorm them, put them out there.
00:42:41
Speaker
Talk to some people in your life about them. Talk to your friends, your training buddies, your coach. If you're part of our training group, drop it in there. Put that stuff out there and like see how it actually feels to think about achieving that goal. Like how does it feel in your body? How does it feel in your mind?
00:42:57
Speaker
And then think about really evaluating that goal. What do I need to achieve that goal or those goals, whatever they are? And write down those things. What are the metrics for success?
00:43:08
Speaker
Write them down. And then i find it helpful for athletes to go through the exercise of looking at those metrics of success and thinking where I'm sitting today, how would I rank myself in those things?
00:43:21
Speaker
You know, and and so then again, it's not good or bad. and for but It's not right or wrong, just information. It shows you where you have room to work. Right. And that helps you put together those process goals to be able to reach those goals. And that helps you put together your plan.
00:43:38
Speaker
So then you you can start to to kind of like zoom out from those goals to where you're sitting today. And you have those things that you know you need to tangibly work on. Maybe it's improving your sleep.
00:43:49
Speaker
Maybe it's improving your um the way you handle your recovery days. um having some strategies for handling recovery days can be helpful. So instead of thinking about the things I can't do, ah can't strength train, I can't run, i can't ski, what are some things you can do on that day?
00:44:08
Speaker
You could do yoga. You can spend some extra time with your kids. You can um work on some other kind of project that you've been avoiding for a little while and get something else done.
00:44:19
Speaker
So think about the stuff, like turn the stuff around into something positive that you can do. I know you're smirking at me, Alexa, but maybe you need to hear it too sometimes. We're all guilty of that.
Wrap-up: Writing Specific Goals
00:44:31
Speaker
So think about the stuff that you can, the the stuff that you could tangibly do every day to move yourself forward. Organize your plan. If you need help and you don't know where to start, get some help.
00:44:42
Speaker
um You know, we have lots of different training plans that, you know, if you need a template to help you along. And you need some accountability and some structure, we can help you with that.
00:44:53
Speaker
um If you feel like you need a little bit more of a community because you feel like a lone wolf and everyone in your life thinks it's absolutely ridiculous that you want to climb mountains or run a marathon or...
00:45:04
Speaker
um run 200 miles, we're here for you. We got some weirdos just like you in our training group. And if you feel like you need, you know, you have more complicated goals or you just don't know where to start and you really need um really specific and want really specific guidance, consider working with a coach.
00:45:24
Speaker
You don't need to be, um you know, the fastest, the the raddest to work with a coach. Coaching is actually for for everybody. And I think actually non-elite athletes need coaches more because they don't know where to start and they don't know what they don't know. And they have a lot of doubts. So not being alone in this process is really helpful for for many different ways, you know, for for support, for backup, and for guidance.
00:45:54
Speaker
And working with a coach, I think, is like, I tell people, it's like, you're still in the driver's seat. Like, this is still your thing. We agree on the destination, right? We agree on the interest. Think about it like a a road trip.
00:46:07
Speaker
We agree on the destination. Maybe it's UTMB or it's Mount Rainier or it's a half marathon, right? We agree on that. We think we talk together about some of the things that we want to hit along the way, some interest points.
00:46:21
Speaker
So here are some interesting things along the way, some, you know, that we want to, maybe it's an amusement park. Maybe it's a place we want to swim or hike or whatever. And then The coach's job is to plot the best route to get to that destination while hitting all those interest points.
00:46:38
Speaker
Now the athlete is the driver, the coach is just the co-pilot, but you agree on the destination, you agree on the route, and then the athlete starts driving the car. And maybe they wanna take a couple shortcuts.
00:46:50
Speaker
Sometimes that works out, sometimes it's a dead end. Again, it's okay. The coach's job as the co-pilot is to get you back on course and get you back to the nest next point of interest. So you're still the driver, but the coach is there to help you when you get off track, to help you take some shortcuts that maybe you don't see on the map, and to help you when you get a flat tire.
00:47:15
Speaker
And you know that that sets you back a little bit. They're there to help you change the tire and get back on course. And so it's a it's a really um great way to to learn. It's a really great way to Give yourself some challenges because if you do get off course, you have someone to help reroute you instead of you being stuck there and giving up altogether.
00:47:39
Speaker
That's all great information. Let's do a quick lightning round of some of the most common failures and some of their fixes when it comes to setting. And I'm going to start. ah One of the things that I've seen is ah ah trap that people fall into is setting goals based on someone else's life.
00:47:57
Speaker
someone else's fitness. People need to be realistic. And now a lot of this is, you know, comes back to sports psychology. It's very good sort of self-regulation, emotional regulation exercises to write goals that match your constraints, to the amount of time you have to train and recover, your age, your athletic history, the the other stresses going on in your life, positive and negative, and and and write down goals.
00:48:26
Speaker
Alexa, do you have a common failure and fix for us? Yeah, I think the biggest one I see is, well, when I was 20, I did this. So I want to try and replicate that. And they're in their 40s or 50s. And what I always say is you have to train and make goals for where you are now, not where you were 20 years ago. Right. And that's that looks different. And it's really hard to to understand that and see that and grapple with that.
00:48:53
Speaker
um But that's the realistic view of it. 100%. Chantel, what's one for you? Goals that are too vague or and or don't have ah a broad like don't have a real purpose. like ah i want to improve max score on my Garmin watch.
00:49:15
Speaker
why Well, I think it's important. Why do you think it's important? And you get down to they don't actually know. So it comes back to like having a goal that is that actually means something to you and that has a purpose for your life. Because if it's if it's too vague, just like someone says, like, well, my goal is to get healthier.
00:49:36
Speaker
What does that mean? Right. So we want to have something that we, that is, that has a purpose that is meaningful. And that is something that we can, that we can have some actionable, measurable steps towards so that we can, we can continually check in every week, every month to make sure that we're still moving towards that, that goal every single, every single day.
00:50:01
Speaker
Because if it's too vague, then we have very little chance of being able to move towards that. 100%. You can't have 17 priorities. You can only have one priority. Yeah, there's only one. Actually, priorities, plural, shouldn't even exist in our in our language, right?
00:50:17
Speaker
Exactly. Yeah. I think that's a great place to end it and wrap it up here. Thank you so much for all the tips and pointers. We're going to write a blog associated with this article and we're going to try to, one of the things I want to do is try to come up with a sort of a written.
00:50:36
Speaker
form or process in this blog post where people can do sort of a goal audit. And I think that that could be a ah really interesting exercise. and we'll try to link to that in the show notes here. And if you are looking for more structure and accountability,
00:50:52
Speaker
And training plans are not working for you. and Alexa talked about different personality types and what works for whom. Investigate the training groups. Alexa runs our training groups and is a head coach for training groups. She does an amazing job in there. I'm in there often as well. And of course, we have our one-to-one coaching that Chantel is managing that process of matching athletes and coaches to make sure that everybody, it's it's a little bit like a dating game, I think, we're like matching the right hand. So many things go into that right, getting that right chemistry. And it's super important to find that right chemistry. So if you have questions, write to us at coach at uphillathlete.com or send us your goal, what your constraints are, and let us know what keeps kind of breaking in your goal setting process. We'd love to hear from you. My name is Steve House.
00:51:44
Speaker
Thank you for joining
00:51:58
Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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