How to convince the suffer-is-achievement friends to back off?

Performance Training
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I know for me personally, that I have used exercise for brain chemistry as well as fitness. Greg Lemond famously said he used cycling to deal with some ADHD and later mentioned his abuse as a teen. At 63 now, I can relate to the 40 yr old me who used intense exercise as a mental stress management tool. I came of age athletically in the no pain no gain era of threshold intervals every other day and I always feel tapers or reduction weeks take extra work to get relaxation.

With all the numbers available to measure intensity of output since HR and power became common, it might be that getting over-stressors to accurately track HRV would help(?) There’s a lot of bad HRV AI blather and apps that are not that good, but without a coach to just ask “ how was that?” or just “how are you today ?”, a daily HRV measurement at the same time, same posture might help people recognize that their nervous system hasn’t calmed down and they aren’t recovered. FastTalk podcast has some good discussions with coaches about how sleep trackers and HRV trackers make things more confusing but it’s a good offset to focusing only on TSS / watts / mileage / climbing

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23

If they didn’t ask you to help, then don’t. As Joey Swoll would say, mind your own business.

24

There’s no silver bullet to convince certain cohorts to back off, having been surrounded by overly motivated people but also watching how they progress (or regress) over many years.

Some people are literally wired such that Metrics and Consistency become their identify. And if they are brand new to the sport and sees early gains they become addicted to Riding the Dragon – which only reinforces their overly developed sense of drive.

For these folks, only a major event that temporarily disrupts their consistency is what gives them a chance for change. Things like…

  • Their first crash (takes them out for 2~3 weeks, assumes outdoor and not just indoor homie)
  • First major bike part overhaul (bike stuck in shop for a week, no back-up bike)
  • Some major life event that forces no exercise for couple weeks

The event needs to be not so disruptive that they actually come back to the sport – in an Ironically Tapered form.

And when they do, they have their first chance for that “oh my god” moment.

After they chew on that, it now goes a few different ways…

  • They regress back to their old ways
  • They take first step towards balance – realizing your breadcrumbs actually tasted good
  • They become addicted to the Taper, and the “LeSsONs LeArned” from their thrilling personal journey having consumed too much lowest common denominator cycling content while sitting on the couch waiting for that clavicle to heal – morphing into the non-stop Evangelist for Z2 long slow steady riding which is another great forum thread topic: “How do you convince Z2 90g/hr Wide Tire Low PSI Homies to back off?”
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