On Discipline

While reading through a few running blogs, I came upon the word discipline again and again. One post was a collection of motivational phrases that included this quote:

Discipline. The word stuck in my head like part of a song on a loop. I looked up the precise definition of the word: the practice of training people to obey rules or a code of behaviour, using punishment to correct disobedience.

Quite heavy until you remove the word from an educational/rehabilitating arena, having discipline is regarded as a positive personality trait. It suggests a fierceness of spirit, an inner drive and a persistent desire. In relation to athletic endeavours it is almost clean of negative connotations, except if someone takes their dedication to the point that their training impinges upon other areas of their lives.

What I admire most about seasoned marathon runners is their discipline.

Of course, it isn’t specific to runners. Like Gene Parmesan (name the show and live in my heart forever) discipline has many guises. A good friend of mine is on a diet that decrees he can only consume 500 calories a day. 500 calories a day! That round number is divided between a few nutrient-dense shakes, a couple of bars and one meal. There are no cheat days for weeks and months depending on the weight loss target. Years ago, after spending five months on the diet, he lost ten stone. This time around, he’s lost two after dieting for five weeks. Whatever you opinion of such extreme diets, it has worked for him. Anyway, the diet isn’t the issue, it’s his incorruptible discipline.

Subsisting on a paltry number of calories while working full-time, moving house, being a father of three and having to deal with supporting Tottenham Hotspur is a monumental load. Even when temptations abound, his children tucking into burgers at the football, me scoffing Jaffa Cakes, he resists and ignores the pangs, remains disciplined. He’ll sniff your food but he won’t bite.

We’ve all read the sporting motto about blood, sweat and tears. The suffering doesn’t overawe us. In fact, I think we crave the pain that comes from pushing through our limits; we revel in the misery. We feed off it. Who cares if people find our behaviour strange? I embrace running in the cold, not because it’s pleasurable but because it’s challenging. Discipline, you either have it or you don’t. There are no excuses. Motivation is fleeting. It’s the consistent hard training that makes you faster, fitter, stronger, or in my friend’s case, slimmer, and he does look much slimmer. Why is Christiano Ronaldo the best footballer on the planet? Because he had the discipline to practice longer than anyone else. Why am I aiming for a personal best at a 10k this coming Sunday? Because I’ve just sprinted a dozen 30-second intervals in the storm unleashing upon Southern England, completing my 108th run of the year in the process.

An abstract noun never won a winner’s medal. But smashing your personal bests will be a realistic and rewarding by-product of becoming disciplined in you sporting endeavours. You have to set a goal, plan and prepare to reach it, then remain firm in your conviction when the going is tough, super tough.

“Discipline”. It’s also the title of one of my favourite running tracks by Nine Inch Nails. Ignore the song’s sadomasochistic overtones; it’s a badass running tune. All those kinky lyrics can extend to running just, er, use you imagination.

The Licensing Effect

Everyone has their dietary crux, a weak spot in the diet plan, a guilty pleasure. Mine’s chocolate. Booze? I’m a fan but I can temper my consumption…most of the time. Salty snacks? Pretty easy to resist. Fags? Never bothered. Chocolate, or anything covered, dipped or sprinkled with chocolate, is the one. To look at me you wouldn’t know it: 6 foot 2, twelve stone. (Girlfriends have loathed my atomic metabolism because I can eat an entire chocolate cake and the scales won’t shimmy up a millimetre.) I’m unable to resist the lure of the cocoa bean. My favourite mind trick is to tell myself that my workouts give me the right to enjoy a chocolate bar or two, or, what the hell, a chocolate bar and a couple of chocolate-covered biscuits. It’s foolish, it’s childish, but it’s oh so good.

Healthy Eating, Start ’em Young!

Psychologists call this warped thinking the licensing effect, and it’s been my devil in the backseat for a few years. Of course, one chocolate bar is too minor an indulgence to derail the elevated metabolic train an intense interval session sets into motion. And, more importantly, what is life without indulgence? Every knowledgeable/sane fitness geek knows how necessary a ‘cheat day’ is. But once you allow complacency’s foot through the door, you have to be wary of its glutinous shadow.

My buddy and I regularly eat at Frankie and Benny’s. The food’s good and we’re able to admire the attractive greeter who’s a decent look-a-like for Jess Ennis. Yet most dishes on the menu are as healthy as a packet of fags. I’ll submit to the three course menu and fool myself that I’m allowed to do it because I’ve completed a difficult workout. That’s the licensing effect: I’ll earn this tomorrow on a tempo run or I earned it earlier sprinting up those hills.

If you’ve blown the day’s healthy eating by lunchtime, like I have many times at Frankie and Benny’s, you think to yourself, What the hell, I might as well eat some more junk seeing as the diet has been blown for the day. Bring on the mid-afternoon chocolate bar washed down with a cup of tea laced with sugar, a packet of McCoy’s crisps and a can of Coke. Dinner? Throw a pizza in the oven. Fancy a beer? Not going to say no. By allowing yourself a treat you can create a routine of ‘cheat’ acceptance. With a half marathon just over a month away, I’m striving to kill this tendency. It’s clean eating, clean living for a month now, only the very rare chocolate bar. Plus I’ll probably save a bunch of money for future travels.

The skill is strengthening your willpower to the point where you can allow yourself that special chocolate bar or a tall cold beer and not letting an avalanche of sugar cascade over you, leaving you feeling grim and lethargic after the initial buzz. Nor suffering a hangover after a healthy glass of wine turns into tequila shots and a dirty burger on the way home. You can work your willpower like a muscle. And just as interval training boosts your aerobic capacity, utilising restraint over a period of time can keep the deleterious foods at bay, until you’ve booted them out of the backseat altogether. Except for that blessed cheat day.