My Vo2max when I ran a 4:01 mile was 67 My Vo2max when I ran 4:05 a few years later: 76 Performance is what matters. Looking at one number in isolation or chasing it is not the answer. This is why an obsession over any measure is misguided. Performance is holistic.

You can't sprint for very long. Even the best 100m guys in the world decelerate after ~7 seconds. If someone tells you to sprint for minutes...run away. They don't know what they are talking about.

Running teaches more than fitness. It builds two skills we desperately need today: – The ability to be alone with your thoughts. – The ability to connect deeply with others. In a world dominated by screens and distractions, that’s no small thing.

Just created a NEW FREE Guide to Recovery! It's what I give my pro athletes. Covering what to do if your fatigued, tired, flat, or lethargic. Each demands a different response. Learn more: thegrowtheq.kit.com/5d0013b37a

Recovery Guide

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I put together a free new guide of 13 practical tools for navigating discomfort and improving your mental toughness. It's to help athletes and performers with their mental game. Check it out: thegrowtheq.kit.com/b226353781

Toughness Guide

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Whenever someone suggests an athlete is “just happy to be here” or an “Olympic tourist” it tells me that they don’t understand elite athletes or the motivation it takes to get to such a level.

Excellence is boring. But in the most interesting way possible. It’s staying with that run, swim, or sentence long enough so that you appreciate its nuance. You see that staring at the same line over and over, can bring new challenges and insight. www.stevemagness.org/p/why-...

Why the Best Don't Find It Boring

Kobe said fall in love with the boredom. A sociologist who spent years with Olympic swimmers found they'd stopped calling it boring a long time ago.

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Youth sports is one of the last places left where a family is off screens, outdoors, and around other people who know their name. It's one of the few "third places" An exploration on how youth sports provide community and mattering to adults (and kids): www.stevemagness.org/p/the-youth-...

Why Rational Parents Make Youth Sports Insane

They're solving a real problem, badly, because the cheap solution was taken away.

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Coaching is one of the most rewarding jobs. You are changing someone’s perspective of themselves and what they’re capable of. And i you do it right, it’s not really about the person, it’s about who they become 27 Lessons on coaching the whole person: www.stevemagness.org/p/27-lessons...

What Great Coaching Actually Requires

A practical guide to developing better performers and more capable people

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"Find out who you are and do it on purpose." Dolly Parton captured something Aristotle talked about and modern science calls "Do good, Be Good." We don't discover the self. We act our way into it: www.stevemagness.org/p/find-out-w...

“Find out who you are and do it on purpose.”

Dolly Parton and the Science of Becoming Who You Are

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Just created a NEW FREE Guide to Recovery! It's what I give my pro athletes. Covering what to do if your fatigued, tired, flat, or lethargic. Each demands a different response. Learn more: thegrowtheq.kit.com/5d0013b37a

Recovery Guide

thegrowtheq.kit.com

We’ve engineered physical effort out of our lives, so we exercise. We’ve also engineered human connection out of our lives. Now we need to approach it the same way: www.stevemagness.org/p/connection...

Connection Is the New Exercise

We removed the friction that used to do it for us. Now, like exercise, we have to put it back on purpose.

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“Greatness is boring.” Paul Skenes said it. Kobe Bryant said it. And research on Olympic swimmers confirms it. The best stop seeing it as boring, because the once mundane or effortful transforms into interesting the more attention we give to it. www.stevemagness.org/p/why-the-be...

Why the Best Don't Find It Boring

Kobe said fall in love with the boredom. A sociologist who spent years with Olympic swimmers found they'd stopped calling it boring a long time ago.

stevemagness.org

Back in the day, you’d buy a $2 bag of ice and dump it in a tub for an ice bath. Now, it seems you buy an $8,000 bath tub. Never underestimate the commercialization of everything.

A large part of getting back in shape is remembering how to hurt. Mental toughness is a skill. It's normal for your alarm to be hyper reactive when it hasn't experience fatigue in a while. The way back is to gradually show you can handle it, without freaking out.

Since 2010, time spent in nearly every activity we rate as meaningful has declined. While time spent in activities we say are meaningless has increased. We are starved of significance. And that’s one reason why parents lose their minds at youth sports games: www.stevemagness.org/p/starved-of...

Starved of Significance: Why Intense Moments (Like Youth Sports) Matter More Than Ever

We desperately need to feel alive

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Think years, not days. When legendary marathon runner Frank Shorter was asked about his training, he said: two hard workouts, a long run, and as much mileage as you can handle. Repeat for years. The last part is the key. You want an exercise program that is sustainable.

Everyone is going through something difficult. The world is a tough place. Lead with empathy and understanding.

One of the cruelest workouts you can do, but that teaches a valuable lesson is: The one more rep workout. How does it work? 1. Do a normal hard workout. 2. Let the athlete finish the last repeat & think they are done. 3. Ask: Can you do one more rep?

A coaches job is to develop people That's the secret to the great coaches Their job isn't winning. That's an effect Why? Obsessive focus on the outcome shifts your motivation & perspective. You stop seeing athletes as people & you treat them accordingly. They stop developing..

If you aren’t signed up for the newsletter I write with Brad Stulberg, now is a good time to sign up. We’ve been at it for a few years and just reached 40k subscribers. It’s what the world’s best read on sustainable excellence: thegrowtheq.ck.page/steve

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As coaches, your job isn’t to give athletes the answer, it’s to put them in a place to figure it out.

We turned doing hard things into posting hard things. The ice bath, the puke-after-the-workout pic, the 4 a.m. watch. None of it is inherently bad. But much of it is performative instead of meaningful. On performative suffering vs. the real thing: stevemagness.substack.com/p...

We turned doing hard things into posting hard things.

Why performative suffering doesn't build toughness, and what actually does.

stevemagness.substack.com

Being uncomfortable is a signal that we are in a place to grow. Adaptation and development doesn’t occur when we are smack dab in the middle of our comfort zone, instead it occurs when we are pushing our boundaries.

We over complicate exercise...especially for novices or those who just do it to be healthy. So I created a straightforward guide on what I'd do if I just cared about health and longevity. Here you go: www.stevemagness.org/p/an-exercis...

An Exercise Program for Life, Not Instagram

The Basics of Fitness Explained

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I created a free guide to Kick Development. Walks you through the science and more importantly the workout sequence to improving your kick: thegrowtheq.kit.com/34bb23aabe

Parents: Be careful chasing scholarships in sport. They are far fewer than you think. Examples: I was #1 in the nation and received way more partial offers than full. As a college coach: we had conference champs on next to nothing. And all-Americans on less than 50%

Interested in learning about the science and psychology of performance? Sign up for my free weekly newsletter: thegrowtheq.ck.page/steve

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Join over 40,000 readers, including many of the world's best performers, and subscribe to the Growth Equation newsletter.

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As a parent or coach, the hardest moments come when you clearly see someone’s potential, yet they can't. You can’t force motivation—but you can plant seeds. Here's what to do about it: thegrowtheq.com/you-cant-fo...

During my career, I coached 25+ distance runners who qualified for the Olympic Trials Some ran 50 miles per week. Others 110+ Some maxed out 8 miles of threshold in a session, others 4 The principles of performance are the same. But how each individual gets there is different!