Uncommon simplicity and focus // Nils Göran on how he trained for his speed skating world records
As someone with zero interest in either the Olympics or speed skating, I can’t stop thinking about How to Skate a 10K (and also half a 10K)📕, a short, free ebook written by Nils Göran van der Poel.
Before I get into why I find Nil’s writeup to be quite so fascinating (and how it relates to business and building), here’s the wiki context:
Nils Göran van der Poel (born 25 April 1996) is a Swedish speed skater who is the current world and Olympic record holder and reigning world and Olympic champion in the 5,000 m event and the 10,000 m event.
So. Pretty good results!
The following quotes from Nils’ training guide are ostensibly about exercise, but are actually about a counter-intuitive devotion to focus (and a willingness to call common-sense BS on what everybody else is saying, including all other top competitors, trainers, and experts):
The common way to approach the sport [is] to acquire some certain abilities (i.e. maximum strength, VO2max, threshold, technique, mobility, core stability etc.) and as the competition approaches you put all these abilities together, like a puzzle, and so you build the perfect speed skater. […] Instead the main idea of my training program was that you will become good at whatever it is that you train. The idea was that whoever skated the most laps of 30,0 during the last three months prior to the competition would win the 10k. […]**
Some pro athletes say that, since they are professionals and can train as much as they like, they might as well add some weight training, and some stretching, and some core, and some technical sessions, and some training competitions, and some coordination sessions… All training sessions are performed at the expense of other, more efficient, training sessions, or at the expense of recovery after these sessions.
My point isn’t that stretching is useless. If you need to stretch then go ahead and bend over. But do not fool yourself; do not drop hours from the essential sessions in order to perform something that sounds cool or is easy. […] I completely cut what I thought were the sub-optimal sessions in order to increase the optimal ones.
You can think of founder-time the same way. Yes, being active on social media is nice and having a big following is certainly helpful. But all activities come at the cost of another. Is it really credible to believe that your business would be better served by an extra hour of twitter-time over an extra hour of product-time…?
Nils sounds like he took a look at all the “extra” stuff that his competitors were doing to train and said, “Nah.” Not because it those extras weren’t valuable, but because they weren’t *as valuable as more skating. *
During winter I skated a lot more competition speed laps than any other long distance speed skater, but I did a lot less of any other high intensity training than all the others.
** Nothing exists in a vacuum, and focused founder-hours carry the highest opportunity cost of all. Nils didn’t do more training; he just did more of the training that mattered.
Still, Nils does admit that perhaps he went a bit too far.
But, as I’m looking back upon it all, 5 minutes of core and stretching weekly would have been a smart way of staying clear of injury. Those “prehab” sessions I believe should be approached with an attitude of “how little of this is enough?” in order not to get injured nor steal time and effort from the essential sessions.
Five minutes!! Per week!!! Haha, love it. Dare I suggest that, for most founders, social media deserves approximately the same weekly investment of time? (“How little of this is enough?”)
Recuperation is also crucial, for both body and mind:
I almost always trained after a 5-2 day training program. Training for five days and then resting for two days. My rest days were usually during weekends. In that way I could spend the weekends doing fun stuff with my friends. Usually I did not train at all during rest days. I rested both my mind and my body.
He’s ruthlessly efficient with his training time, but only his training time. He isn’t expecting 24/7 productivity, nor turning himself into a productivity zombie.
On Monday-sessions I would always be well rested and ready for another hard five days. And if I weren’t well rested, if my pulse was not responding as usual or if my legs felt heavier than they usually did on a Monday-session, I would take notice early. I would know that something was abnormal before it became a real issue and I would throw in some extra rest days and avoid a negative trend.
Not feeling right? Rest more. Kinda sensible, right? But how many of us have ground ourselves into burnout and mental unhealth by forcing ourselves to remain at the desk despite those early warning signs?
Though the 5-2 has one big challenge: 48 hours of no training weekly. For some it’s a dream, for some it’s a nightmare. It’s especially hard during training camps where one just wants to train. But I stuck to my rest days and learned to enjoy them. A lot of athletes are not used to having all this spare time and, to get accustomed to it, a hobby and some friends are needed. I spent a lot of time figuring out what I wanted to do with all this time and it really pushed me out of my comfort zone.
In BUILD, Tony Fadell also spoke of how hard it can be to start taking time away from your business. As well as how critical it is, for both yourself and your team. So it’s nice, in a way, to hear that this time away doesn’t come easy. Nils invested active effort to find the hobbies, to open up the space for recovery. That sounds like prudent advice.
As a closing note, I also love Nils’ attitude and motivation for writing and sharing his training guide:
I like to think that I earned my success. I also wish for the sport to keep developing and for my records to be broken. I will not be the one to break 6.00,00 nor 12.30,00, but maybe someone else will. For those who might want to, I wrote this document. It’s basically a summary of how I trained from May 2019 to February 2022.
It’s all (un)common sense: focus your finite hours on the most impactful activity, do the bare minimum of everything else, and actively create (and defend) your recovery time. Nothing too wild or controversial, but also an approach that is far too rare in a world where we’re all obsessed by wacky new regimens and tactics and hacks and all that jazz.
Anyway, great stuff from Nils Göran van der Poel: How to Skate a 10K (and also half a 10K)📕
Comments (2)
💯. I love this on multiple levels. "How little is enough?" is a really fantastic question to ask of so many things.
I'd add that it's not just doing as little as you can get away with; it's also recognizing that doing more can be actively detrimental, and not just the opportunity cost of spending the time on it. Few things are purely, straightforwardly good.
To extend the exercise metaphor here, I've worked with a large number of people who did their "prehab" exercises so much that it actually caused them problems as they both fatigued themselves and trained themselves to be extra tense in those areas at all times, even at times that should be restful.
And simply stopping something was more helpful than anything they could have added, even beyond that it gave them more time and energy for things that were either more productive or more fun or both.
Great Post ! This idea aligns very well with the ideas of Cal Newport - “Do less, do better, know why.” His whole philosophy around doing "Deep Work" and living a deep life is reflected in the speed skater's training.