Endurance Mindset

Tag: long-term thinking

  • Why Long-Term Thinking Makes You a Better Athlete

    Why Long-Term Thinking Makes You a Better Athlete

    You can build a beautiful sandcastle in a day, but one wave can wipe it out in seconds.
    Training is the same. You can grind through a brutal 10-week program and look fitter for a moment. That doesn’t mean your body or mind will keep performing once life gets messy again.

    If you want to be truly fit for life, you need a foundation that survives the 1,000-year floods: job stress, kids, injuries, bad sleep, that emergency meeting. That kind of fitness comes from a system that fits your life and is easy to follow for years, not weeks.

    Long-term thinking is what builds that system.

    1. Choose a why that outlives one race

    Start with a goal that makes your eyes light up and that still matters in 10 or 20 years.

    Chasing an IRONMAN World Championship slot can be a great goal. But if it’s only about impressing your friends or proving something once, the satisfaction will fade quickly. It’s like a new watch: exciting for a week, then normal.

    Stronger goals often sound more like this:

    “I want to be able to chase my grandchildren through the yard when I’m 80.”
    “I want to be strong, clear-headed and active for as long as I’m alive.”

    Envision the best version of yourself in 10–20 years. What are they able to do? How do they move, think, and show up for the people they love?

    If you want that version of yourself badly enough, it becomes easier to drop the habits that hold you back and to endure the boring, unglamorous weeks of training. The long-term vision gives today’s session meaning.

    2. Shape your environment for the long game

    You’ve already built a life: work, family, friends, responsibilities. All of that is either supporting your training or quietly working against it.

    Long-term thinking asks: What kind of environment would future-me need to keep training well?

    That means:

    • Talking to your partner and family about your vision so they understand why training matters to you.
    • Being clear about what you need (sleep, time windows, support), and what they get in return (a healthier, more present, more energetic you).
    • Aligning your work routine where possible maybe it’s protected early mornings, or three non-negotiable training slots per week.

    The key is not to drag everyone into your project, but to invite them into the benefits and design something that works for all of you. Nobody sustains high-quality training alone for a decade.

    What long-term thinking looks like in real life

    One of my athletes, Sarah, used to live in 10-week blocks. She’d sign up for a “get fit fast” plan, push hard, run a marathon in around 4 hours… and then be completely wiped out. Two weeks later she was injured, exhausted, and back at zero.

    When we started working together, we made a different deal: no more hero plans. Instead, we focused on a full year of sustainable endurance training. More easy running, smarter fueling, strength work, and realistic weekly volume she could hold even when life got messy.

    A year later, her marathon time had improved (3:20h), but that wasn’t the biggest win. She was sleeping better, her energy during the week was higher, and she felt in control of her body for the first time instead of constantly “starting over.” That’s what long-term thinking does: it trades quick excitement for quiet, compounding progress.

    3. Make the process the goal

    Building lifelong fitness, the kind that outlasts trends and hacks, takes patience.

    Long-term thinking changes how you judge “a good week”:

    • One bad workout doesn’t matter.
    • One skipped session doesn’t ruin anything.
    • The trend over months and years is what counts.

    Anyone can put together one heroic summer. Some can string together a few good seasons. Very few can build a decade of mostly good weeks. That’s where the real durability and joy, lives.

    Practically, that means:

    • You build consistently instead of chasing “hero sessions.”
    • You stay within reasonable training-load limits.
    • Most of your sessions are easy enough that you can show up again tomorrow.
    • You know what “too hard” looks like for you, and you respect that line.
    • You protect your mental battery so training gives energy to your life instead of stealing it.

    This is where long-term thinking protects you from impulsive decisions in the moment: the extra interval when you’re cooked, the race you jump into on dead legs, the training block that looks cool on paper but doesn’t fit your actual life.

    4. You don’t have to build this alone

    This long-term lens is the foundation of how we coach at Kona Endurance.

    With every athlete we:

    • Start from a 12- to 24-month view, not just the next race.
    • Design training that fits their real life: work, kids, travel, health.
    • Monitor load and signs of burnout so they can train hard without breaking.

    The principles work for any motivated athlete. Not everybody likes the patience required, but the ones who do end up not just fitter, but happier and more resilient.

    If you want help building a system that lets you perform well in sport and life for years to come, that’s exactly what we do together at www.konaendurance.com

    Flo

  • Pain is a Biased Teacher: Why Learning the Hard Way Isn’t Always the Right Way

    Pain is a Biased Teacher: Why Learning the Hard Way Isn’t Always the Right Way

    Most people flinch at discomfort. The great ones lean in. Pain isn’t a stop sign, it’s proof you’re getting somewhere. Excellence isn’t talent; it’s tolerance. If you can crave what others avoid, you gain an edge no algorithm can replicate.

    Nobody likes being wrong, but error is a faster path to growth than perfection. We say “failure teaches,” but don’t act like it. We avoid it, rationalize it, try to outsource it. Here’s the truth: if you’re not failing, you’re not trying hard enough. The key is learning from it faster than others.

    Some lessons hurt more than others. I broke my body chasing performance, literally. My immune system went into overdrive. My takeaway? “Moderation or die.” It felt wise. It helped me heal. But four years later, that same mindset held me back. I passed up chances I should’ve taken. Pain taught me, but it also lied.

    That’s the problem with deep scars, they leave permanent edits on your map. As a coach, I wanted to spare others that pain and I try to teach them lessons on a “smaller scale”. For example if they forgot to fuel a long workout correctly in the winter that’s cool and they have enough time to fix that and learn how to do it right, till the big races in the summer come around.  That worked until it didn’t. Some never learned to course correct on their own.

    At some point, you realize: you can’t walk the path for someone else. Even if you see the wall coming, they need to crash into it. It’s how humans grow. Parents know this. Lovers, too. Wisdom doesn’t transfer easily. Only pain does.

    But here’s the fun part: when we finally do learn, we often overcorrect. We mistake the intensity of the last failure for a universal truth. We build rules that hold us down. “Never push that hard again.” “Always play it safe.” And suddenly, the lesson that was supposed to make us better becomes a prison.

    So how do we get better at failing? Iterate. Bounce off the edges of your box. Test the walls of your physical, mental, and social limits. But also update your map. Apply Bayesian thinking: use new data, revise old conclusions. Don’t just protect the wound. Ask if it still needs protecting.

    Learn from others when you can. It takes guts and some of your own pain to be able to listen to other’s wisdom. Read biographies. Study people you admire and those you can’t stand. They show you the range of human possibility. But in the end, the version of truth that matters is the one you earn.

    Just don’t forget: pain is a powerful teacher, but it’s also a biased one. The lesson might not be universal. It might not even still be true. Your job is to keep learning and not let the scar rewrite your future.

    Flo

  • Build Your Life Like It Matters

    Build Your Life Like It Matters

    I once poured years of my life into an athlete and treated him like family. I believed in his talent more than he did. I optimized every detail: his training, recovery, mindset, even life stuff he never asked for help with. I thought if I just gave enough, he’d finally see it. That he’d shift from chasing short-term highs to building something that could last.

    He never did.

    He made the same mistakes over and over. Self-sabotage, shortcuts, lies. There was always a new excuse, a new crisis, a new way to avoid the long game. In the end, I had to let him go, not because I didn’t care, but because I finally realized: you can hand someone the blueprint, but you can’t make them build the house.

    That moment taught me something: optimization means nothing without ownership. Long-term thinking only works when you actually think long-term, for yourself.

    Long-Term Thinking = the Foundation of Ownership

    The joy of long-term thinking is that it gives you clarity. You sit down, reflect, and align your actions with the life you actually want to build, not the one you’re reacting to.

    When you do this seriously, it doesn’t just lead to better plans, it leads to better morals, better habits, better decisions. You begin to realize that nobody wants to be broke, sick, or regretful. Most people want to feel healthy, fulfilled, joyful, and connected. But the price? Few are willing to pay it.

    Long-term thinking helps you reverse engineer the price of your dreams. You set the vision, and then trace it back to the habits, mindset, and systems required today. That’s why I believe it’s one of the most powerful tools for taking ownership over your life.

    The Presence Trap vs. True Living

    But there’s a trap I’ve seen and fallen into myself. When you go all-in on optimization, you can forget to live.

    Being present doesn’t mean making reckless short-term decisions. It means living consciously, even while making disciplined moves toward the long game. The athlete I mentioned in the beginning? He was always “in the moment”, but not in the good way. He lived in reaction mode. Never slowed down enough to zoom out. Never learned. Never changed.

    Through Becca and life itself, I’ve learned that presence doesn’t mean letting go of direction. It means learning to enjoy the process while walking it. Long-term thinking doesn’t kill presence. It anchors it.

    My Framework – The PRO Playbook

    This is why I created the PRO Playbook for Kona Endurance. Not to just help people train harder or “optimize” better, but to help them master the actual art of living. To build:

    • A body that can handle life
    • A mind that can handle stress
    • And a system that aligns with long-term goals

    We don’t rise to the level of our motivation, we fall to the level of our systems. And if your system isn’t built with your deepest values in mind, you’ll end up somewhere you don’t want to be. More on the PRO playbook soon.

    Don’t Just Plan It. Live It.

    Planning is essential, but overplanning is a disguise. You can build the perfect social media presence, portfolio, company or whatever you are chasing and still be emotionally bankrupt. You can chase the dream and miss the whole point.

    Life doesn’t measure success by how many zeros are in your bank account, how many people follow you or by how many races you won, or even how optimized your routine is. At the end of the road, it seems to come down to something much simpler: Who’s with you when the lights go out?

    I know I’m biased. I believe part of life’s meaning comes from helping others and improving the world around us. But when I read biographies, study history, or listen to people reflecting on their lives, whether they succeeded wildly or lost everything, it’s the same themes that surface again and again: genuine human connection, inner peace, and living by values that feel solid.

    That doesn’t mean you have to follow the crowd. Clear thinking often requires going against it. But goodness: real, grounded goodness, seems to be the quiet thread that ties everything worthwhile together.

    Leaning into that love, into that integrity, won’t just help you reach your goals. It makes the process of getting there feel whole.

    Build Your Life Like It Matters…

    The Timeless Way of Building taught me: Great structures feel alive.
    They’re built on patterns that last, not fads, not hacks, not shortcuts.

    Life is the same. A well-built life has rhythm. Space to breathe. A soul.

    The soul of performance isn’t about intensity, it’s about grace. Patience. The courage to build something that matters. That means taking bold steps forward. Embracing risk. And just as importantly, letting go of what no longer serves the foundation.

    That part can hurt.

    Letting go of that athlete after years of pouring into him was one of the harder things I’ve ever done. But it was also the final gift I could offer him, a clean slate which hopefully opened his eyes.

    Your values are the soil you build in. Get those right, and everything else: your relationships, your work, your health; has something solid to root into.

    Taking ownership doesn’t mean controlling everything. It means committing to the path. It means choosing to build with intention.

    You don’t need to have it all figured out.
    But you do need to take ownership of the direction you’re heading in.

    Reflect deeply.
    Plan wisely.
    Live fully.
    Love well.

    Build your life like it matters. Because it does.

    Flo

    www.konaendurance.com