Aesthetically Astute Athleticism (AAA) by Atul Singh
Aesthetically Astute Athleticism (AAA)
Through the last ten years or so when I have been actively engaged with endurance sports like running, triathlons and even hiking, I have come across two types of athletes. One is the gym rat. They are well built, buffed up, but look generally stiff, bulky and out of range in appeal and possibility for average folks. Then there are the endurance athletes, mainly runners. Some are slim, even stick legs and arms, if they are the serious ones who train all year round. Then there are others, who are in majority, who expand and contract based on whether they are in off season or training season. Bigger, smaller, bigger, smaller, year after year they go, with bodies not really changing in any significant way, appearance wise and constitution wise. Many a times, performance wise also, they stay within 10-20 percent of the first plateau they reach after the first couple of races they run and shift their label from a normal person to being a runner. They are happy in the knowledge that they are at least beating the age clock.
I have fallen more towards the second category, as have most of my friends. Even if we hit the gym once in a while, it is for some basic strength training that may help in running. To structure one’s body to look aesthetically appealing or to purposefully craft it differently is not the dominant thought. The reason perhaps is the knowledge of whether an endurance athlete can actually be buffed up. The path is not so clear. In the belief of many people that I know, the path is non-existent. The possibility of building and keeping the muscle mass intact while running 40-50 miles a week that many of us do, during peak training times, defies logic. Add to that biking and swimming for a triathlete and the odds become even slimmer in our minds. Then there is the big question of having to garner the sheer physical energy and time to do both, proper strength training and running. That thought itself kills any initiative or engagement towards the goal of being a successful endurance athlete along with becoming an excellent physical specimen to look at, with six pack abs, strong chest, shoulders and arms or its female equivalent. We tend to lose the battle before even starting. I say this after evangelizing these ideas that I am about to share, as a trial balloon, with other endurance athletes and finding resistance to it. So, if you are already uncomfortable with the thought, in anticipation, you are not alone. The reason is simple. By the time someone becomes a halfway decent endurance athlete, having run a few good marathons, Triathlons, even Ultras, one has learnt a lot about endurance and nutrition and effortful workouts and sleep and so on. So, we know a lot already. Unless we are hearing from a significantly faster runner than us, or an established coach, we have little patience for people’s opinions and rightly so. If someone runs a 20 miler on a Sunday before most people wake up or takes on a 100-mile bike ride with moderate effort or if someone knows the calorific value, the protein/carb composition of everything they put in their mouth, why should they waste time on random opinions. I can totally relate to that.
However, I am not here to discuss how to become a better athlete. I am not qualified to do that. I am here to have us consider shifting our goal post. I am challenging us to rethink it from ground up and reconsider what success looks like. I am talking about a paradigm shift.
This is where I will present my one and only artifact. A case in point. An exhibit 1. Basically, to thwart the resistance. Else you will “But Atul” me to death. Let's keep the butt where it belongs for the next fifteen minutes, please.
So, David Goggins, see pic below, is one of world’s finest ultra distance runners. There are many more like him, but let’s talk about him briefly. "David Goggins is the only member of the U.S. Armed Forces to complete Navy SEAL training, the U.S. Army Ranger School, and Air Force tactical air controller training. Having completed multiple ultra-marathons, triathlons, ultra-triathlons, and more, he is considered one of the world's greatest endurance athletes".
On top of being all that he is as an endurance athlete, please take a look at these pictures of him.
https://www.freepik.com/premium-ai-image/david-goggins-running-desert_58916975.htm
Now let us circle back with you about a very foundational premise with which we as an endurance athlete have been operating, until this moment in time. The premise that it was not possible to look buffed up, let alone look like a David Goggins and run the massive weekly mileage that he does an endurance athlete. I hope you will agree, upon seeing the images and reading his biography, that our premise was misplaced. It was my premise too for the last ten years. I wanted to look different but did not know how. And I did not go about discovering the how in earnest because I did not in believe it to be possible, for the reasons I have mentioned earlier on already. Now if you cannot arrive at that basic conclusion, after seeing the images shared, that it is possible, do not bother reading any further. There would be no point discussing the worthiness of that goal or the mechanics of achieving it.
If we are still reading, let’s now discuss the worthiness aspect. For that we have to try and get inside the mind of a runner. While it is true that we start running for health reasons, we really don’t do 26.2 miles, let alone 50 or even 100-mile races for staying healthy. If anything, beyond a point, health-wise there are diminishing returns, that flow into negative returns with injuries also kicking in at regular intervals for long distance runners. So, it’sprimarily not health. Instead, there are two drivers that I have observed.
Let’s give a ratio of 50/50 to both drivers as to what inspires us. I think is it more skewed in favor of vanity goals, but I will be generous today. I want you on my side.
So, in both goals, the measure is speed or distance. How fast we can run compared to our last effort and/or how big race was, distance wise. We measure these meticulously and months and years of our life go at chipping away at those numbers. Body fat ratios be damned, body shape and loss of muscle mass be damned, nausea after eating food bars and gels be damned, running injuries be damned. We need those numbers clicking along in our favor to feel fulfilled. That’s the passion, that’s the obsession, that’s the conversation, that life’s highest priority during certain times of the year for causal athletes like me and most of the year for serious ones. That’s also the peer pressure. If you think high school is when peer pressure happens, you haven’t seen this group. We get sucked into this jet-stream of running Marathon majors, of marquee races, of the latest and greatest in athletic gear and sports drinks, because of the cohort of people we are around and associated with our pet hobby of being an endurance athlete. Major travel, international and otherwise, expensive bikes and an endless pit of time and money. And it is all good. It is a very fulfilling pastime for sure and while others spend their time and money a certain way, we do it this way. It’s all good.
But if we want to be fair, we also have to periodically assess where it lands us after a period of five to ten years across the two major drivers we have, Sense of Accomplishment and Vanity Goal.
Now take those exact same five years, which will be the next five years of your life and be invested with the same vigor in a slightly modified goal. That goal would be to look unabashedly fabulous in and out of clothes, with six-packs and the whole nine yards while continuing to perform and outperform in the endurance arena. Whatever behavior changes, diet changes, regimen changes we need to do, we will do, but will keep both irons in the fire. The only constant will be time. We will put the same time as earlier in our “hobby”. So, if we were a five hour a week average runner, which over 12 months is about 1000 miles of running, we will still put in five hours only and no more. For more serious dudes, the 10-hour weekly folks, the 2000 miles a year folks we will stick to the same time. But we will shift the effort differently. We will carve up the time, perhaps 60/40 between running and strength training on average through the year. Let’s investigate what would happen in a year’s time. My estimation is that the race times may get slower first before starting to get even faster than before. Here is why.
All this in addition to the fact that a six-pack spouse/gf/bf tends to seem funnier, wiser and even a better parent to the other spouse. Remember last year when he was looking into your eyes for a “that-a-boy” validation after having reduced the marathon time by 37 seconds, while you held on to his love handles, at that special moment. And you had struggled to find the right words. Next year all of that changes as there are no more love handles and both of you are laughing about the 37 second PR that seemed to have mattered so much, while he did not even look like an athlete. This year, having gone berserko on his core, he had beaten his PR by five minutes. But it’s how she looked at her adonis that made it all worth it. It is a new dawn. Life has shifted itself into a new gear, a better gear, where athletic prowess finally comes along with a matching body, as it should.
Think of what just happened. You are starting to reinvent yourself. Your vanity validation universe now extends to the home, office, friends and even acquaintances. Whereever you are, your new look speaks for itself. No need for shaking medals in people’s faces and boring them with your race time. They will ask themselves. Look at picture one more time. That is endurance athletics being done right.
I could get into the mechanics of how 3-4 days of forty minute to one-hour workouts will yield very visible results in as little as three months. That with your kind of discipline and focus you will hit this out of the park. That this will force you to do a workout and your running during two separate times of the day. That you will need to up your protein intake. But you will figure out all that and then some. The how never held anyone back. Like always, it’s the why we do things that counts. Hope there is a seed of a new why in you now. If you let it germinate and take hold, you will soon be conversing with a new and sexy you in the mirror. With the background of an endurance athlete, you can get the wrong kind of weight at bay even faster than gym rats. You just need to run, run with this new paradigm and bust your butt in the gym also, with equal cadence, enthusiasm and even ferocity. Isn't that why you are an endurance athlete. To play the part and well. look it too.
Will you join me in a AAA journey?
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