Today I'm going to rant about devices.
As of last week, I have been a professional coach for 18 years.
In that time, tech has evolved a lot. And with that rise, I've watched athletes lose their intuitive sense of feel.
The devices themselves aren’t the problem. They’re useful tools. But too many athletes have started outsourcing their thinking to them.
I've seen athletes hold up the start of a run because they can't get a GPS signal.
I've seen athletes not train easy because it's embarrassing on Strava.
I've seen athletes finish a race with plenty of gas in the tank because they blindly followed their heart rate instead of the race.
A watch is a tool
A good one. A useful one. But a tool nonetheless.
Batteries die, GPS drops, and heart rates spike for no reason.
As an athlete, you need to feel your effort, so that if these things ever happen, it doesn't matter.
I want our athletes to know what 30 seconds feels like. To know what 2 minutes and 10 minutes feel like, and the nuances between easy and steady, moderately hard and hard.
Not because a screen tells them, but because they can feel it.
A sense of feel matters. Hayden Wilde shows it perfectly in this video.
Race day is not a perfect environment. Conditions vary. Tactics change, and shit happens. You need to know how to think. Training should prepare you for that.
I'm not a fan of athletes programming every session into a watch.
Sure, it's easy to listen to the beep, but with that beep, you lose a sense of feel and the ability to think clearly.
Many popular training apps promote all their device integrations with a sense of pride. A key feature that makes training so effortless.
Training isn't effortless. It's work.
Our athletes have to remember their sessions. They have to think when fatigued. That skill pays off late in a race when nothing is going to plan.
Take the headphones out sometimes
You shouldn't train with headphones in your ears all the time, either.
Sometimes you need silence, so you can listen to your breathing and your footfall.
They tell a story. When you know how to listen to the messages your body sends, you get feedback in real time. No screen required.
Numbers are not the work
Thresholds matter. Zones matter. Pace, power, and heart rate all matter.
Hell, a big part of our business is lab testing, where we pin down exactly what those numbers mean for you.
They help confirm progress. They connect what the data says to what your body feels.
They support the work, but they don't replace the work.
Go naked occasionally
Leave the watch at home sometimes. Not as a protest, but as practice. You're training the skill of pacing by feel, and like any skill, it needs reps.
Some athletes genuinely need data as a guardrail, especially early on. That's fine. But the goal is always to need it less. To trust yourself more.
That's where real confidence comes from. From knowing what you're capable of when the screen goes dark.
