Journal · The Mind

The Mind.

Nervous system, meditation, breath, and the head you race with.

Articles

17 pieces

All114 The Swim12 The Bike13 The Run11 Triathlon39 Strength & Conditioning13 The Mind26
The Mind6 min read Environment Design for Consistent Training The gap between deciding to train and starting is where most sessions die. Friction is the variable you can actually change, and it costs nothing. Read the piece →
The Mind6 min read Athlete Identity: Every Session Is a Vote You do not become an athlete by deciding to be one. You accumulate evidence, and the short sessions on bad days count for more than the good ones. The Mind7 min read Your Body Keeps One Stress Account. Why life stress shows up in your HRV, why some athletes cannot rest, and why consistency comes from alignment rather than discipline. The Mind7 min read Why Endurance Training Plateaus Before It Works There is a lag between doing the training and seeing the result, and almost everyone quits inside it. How long each adaptation really takes. The Mind5 min read Is It Worth It? Around three thousand pounds and five hundred hours taken from everything else in your life. An honest attempt at the question, including the case against. Read the piece → The Mind5 min read Deadlines and Long Rides in the Same Month Every eight-month block contains at least one period where work becomes impossible. The protocol for surviving it without losing the block. Read the piece → The Mind7 min read Athlete Recovery: What Actually Helps You Adapt Cold plunge, sauna, contrast, breathwork, yoga. Some of it shifts your nervous system, some of it is another training stress wearing recovery's c The Mind5 min read What Age Is Too Old to Start? Someone raced their fourteenth full distance at the World Championship at seventy-one. The age question is real, but it is a question about recovery, not capability. Read the piece → The Mind4 min read Motivation Will Not Get You There Eight months is far longer than motivation lasts. What actually carries people through the middle of a block is much less inspiring and much more reliable. Read the piece → The Mind7 min read The Goldilocks Zone of Endurance Training Motivation is not a personality trait, it is a difficulty setting. The narrow band where training holds your attention, and how to find it. The Mind7 min read You Are Not Undisciplined. Willpower is not what gets people out of the door at five in the morning. Clarity is. The three levels every athlete moves through. The Mind7 min read Ten Days of Silence. I sat still for ten days without speaking, reading or writing. The physical part was easy. What surfaced when there was nothing left to distract me wa The Mind5 min read Your Job Is Training Load A hard week at work and a hard week of training draw on the same account. Most athletes only track one of them, which is why month five arrives as a surprise. Read the piece → The Mind4 min read Do You Need to Quit Your Job to Train for an Ironman? Some people genuinely consider it. Here is what actually happens to the training of people who suddenly have unlimited time, and why it rarely goes the way they imagined. Read the piece → The Mind5 min read Recovery When Your Job Does Not Care Recovery is not ice baths and massage guns. For someone with a demanding job it is four specific things, and only one of them costs money. Read the piece → The Mind5 min read How to Train for an Ironman With a Family Every article about training around a family gives you a timetable. The timetable is the easy part. What it costs the other adult in the house is the part nobody writes down. Read the piece → The Mind5 min read Sleep Architecture for Athletes: Deep Sleep and REM Deep sleep rebuilds tissue. REM consolidates the motor learning you did this morning. Miss either and you trained without collecting what you trained The Mind4 min read The Hardest Part Is Not Where You Think Everyone braces for the swim or the marathon. Ask finishers and they name a different place entirely, and it is the same place almost every time. Read the piece → The Mind9 min read HRV Training for Triathletes: How to Use Heart Rate Variability to Train Smarter What heart rate variability actually measures, how to read your morning HRV, and how to use it to decide whether to train hard or recover today. The Mind10 min read Nervous System Recovery for Endurance Athletes: Why Muscle Recovery Isn't Enough Most endurance athletes recover their muscles and neglect their nervous system. What nervous system recovery means, and how to actually do it. The Mind7 min read The Performance Identity Trap: Why Triathletes Can't Rest How elite athletes become psychologically addicted to training volume, mistaking compulsion for discipline. Discover the R.A.C.E. framework for genuin The Mind6 min read Motivation Is a Lie. You Need a System That Survives Real Life. A framework for time-constrained athletes managing family, work, and training. Your week should be designed for disruption, not perfection. The Mind9 min read You're Not Lazy, Your Brain Was Hijacked Dopamine dysregulation across sugar, gaming, pornography and social media, and how to reclaim your attention from systems designed to take it. The Mind8 min read The Biggest Mistake: Treating ADHD Like a Character Flaw Instead of a System That Needs Design ADHD is executive function disruption, not a moral failing. Time blindness, rejection sensitivity, and emotional dysregulation need design solutions, The Mind8 min read Social Media's Biggest Lie: Comparing Your Chapter 1 to Everyone's Chapter 20 Social comparison hijacks threat-detection. Fifty daily comparisons means fifty nervous system activations. Build performance on internal experience i The Mind5 min read The Biggest Mistake I've Made: Treating Caffeine Like Recovery Instead of Debt How caffeine masks the signals your body needs you to hear. The hidden cost of borrowing energy from tomorrow to perform today.

Go deeper

The full framework is in the book.

Everything in these articles points back to the R.A.C.E. Framework. The book puts it all together in one place.

Read About the Book