EKAITZ SAIES

There’s a phrase that an Olympic triple medallist once shared with me many years ago that still resonates in my mind: “If you want to enjoy competing, your training must be tougher than the competition itself.”

Of course, not every training session can or should be punishing. Personally, I lean toward a polarised training model, where athletes accumulate substantial mileage and technical practice at lower intensities (enabling better recovery and avoiding excessive wear on the body) and also experience sessions where they give everything they have, pushing themselves to the very limit. But from what I’ve observed across a range of disciplines, some athletes are too comfortable staying inside their safe zone. Too often, they protect themselves from discomfort rather than pushing their boundaries.

And it’s not only athletes who can be risk-averse. Coaches and support staff, myself included, can be guilty too, becoming too focused on measurable metrics and sticking rigidly to the programme, frightened to stray too far off-script.

When it comes to competition, there are also athletes who compete too infrequently, fearing that secondary events will derail them, or worse still, fearing the psychological impact of a subpar performance. But in my view, when you put yourself in a position to lose, you also prepare yourself to win.

As sport scientists and theorists often say, we adapt to what we train. But I’d add that we also truly learn to compete by competing. That said, there are nuances. Occasionally you’ll see a young athlete with little racing experience come out and win, driven by other powerful factors — whether that’s raw talent, the absence of fear, or a surge of adrenaline and youthful resilience. Even in these cases, though, it’s the accumulation of hard lessons over time that shapes an athlete into someone who can compete — and win — when the stakes are at their highest. Some athletes rise to the occasion and perform better under pressure, while others struggle to reproduce their training brilliance on race day.

There are elements of competition you simply cannot recreate in a training session. That’s why, if we want athletes to grow tougher — both physically and mentally — or, as Nassim Taleb might say, become truly antifragile, then they must embrace competition as part of their regular toolkit.

That said, some aspects of competition can absolutely be prepared for in training. One of the most vital is learning to persevere when the going gets tough.

Too often, athletes give up on reps or sessions because they feel outside their comfort zone or because they fail to hit a particular target. Repetition is a powerful teacher, for good habits as well as bad. Just as a farmer’s brand is burnt into a cow’s hide, every repeated action carves a groove in the athlete’s mind. If a habit of bailing out is etched into their mental directory, that is exactly the habit they’ll draw on when competition reaches its most difficult moments.

In short, the beauty lies in the toughness. That is why our athletes must learn to walk on firm ground, not fragile porcelain.