2026 Uphill Athlete Coaches Goal Setting Summit

Alexa: The biggest one I see is, well, when I was 20 I did this. So I wanna try and replicate that and they’re in their forties or fifties. And what I always say is, you have to train and make goals for where you are now, not where you were 20 years ago. CTA: If you’re enjoying the show and want to take the next step in your training, join our newsletter and receive a free four weeks. Sample training plan. Head on over to uphill athlete.com/ let’s go, and once you sign up, you’ll instantly get a link to try out some of our most popular training plans. It’s a great way to get a feel for how we train our athletes for big mountain goals. Check it out at uphillathlete.com/letsgo. uphillathlete.com/letsgo. Steve: Welcome to the Uphill Athlete Podcast. My name is Steve House and here today with Alexa Hasman and Chantelle Robitaille. Welcome. Chantelle: Hello, Alexa: Hi, having us. Steve: So most endurance athletes don’t fail, not because they don’t want their goal badly enough. They fail because the goal is too vague or the plan is inconsistent, or the daily behaviors don’t match the story that they’re telling themselves. So today we’re gonna talk about how to set goals that. Actually will hold up when your motivation kind of seems to be slipping away and will get you to your goals. Chantelleand Alexa and I are going to talk about a few different things. We’re gonna talk about sort of this idea of outcome versus process goals, which is probably familiar to a lot of it. A lot of you we’re gonna talk about. And Alexa has some great insights here on this idea of self-identity and building systems and frameworks to help you get to your goals. How to build goals inside of the constraints, if you will, or with inside the, I guess a structure is a better word, how to build goals inside the structure of a training plan. How different forms of accountability can, can help you. Um, how to communicate and build goals with. The help of others, whether it’s a coach or a training group, and just some of the most common traps and kind of how to avoid them. So let’s dive in, Chantelle. What is one of the most common goal-setting mistakes that you’ve seen? Chantelle: Well, tis the season right to be asking these kind of questions. I think that the, probably the biggest one that I see that gets in people’s way is building, building a goal around an outcome. So the goal is a summit of a mountain. Um, a time in a marathon, a particular race result or podium spot, and they have these goals without being anchored to the reality of the daily behaviors and other constraints that will make this goal realistic for their life and how they live. Steve: That’s Alexa, what, from your insights and, and you’ve studied sports psychology and are in a doctorate program around this topic, what is the biggest misconception that people have about this concept of motivation that we humans have created? Alexa: Yeah, I think we need to look at motivation as all encompassing, not the final outcome and goal, right? We always sort of put it on this final. Anchor of what’s gonna happen at the end when really the motivation needs to be tied to the daily aspects of it. Right? And so I try to teach my athletes that the summit or the race or anything like that is the cherry on top of all the work, which is actual motivation and the process of going about your daily life completing these tasks. Right? So motivation isn’t the end piece, it’s the entire process. Steve: I love that. Yeah. I mean. This is, this is, we are, we are whole humans after all, right? Like, we’re not living in a vacuum. And I think that this is so important. Like so many times people try to train like a professional athlete without realizing, well, the professional athlete, that’s their job. They, they eat, sleep, train. That’s all they do. Not all they do, but that’s the, that’s their primary, uh, day to day. Chantelle, I wanted you to kind of walk us through some of these concepts. Talk about the difference between an outcome goal, and performance goal and a process goal. We hear these terms kicked around. Maybe start just by defining what an outcome goal is, for example. Chantelle: Yeah, I think when people are thinking about goals and as people are, are coming up with goals and plans, um, and this is not just January, right? Like there’s nothing magic about the month of January. It’s like there’s nothing magic about a Monday, right? So you can. You can change your goal. You can have a new goal and it can, they can be big, they can be scary, they can be small. But any kind of goal has to be specific. You gotta be able to back it up with some action. It’s particularly helpful if you can actually choose goals that have, that are connected to your own personal why. And you also need to have some clear non-negotiables to make that. Sort of thing possible. So if we think about outcome goals and performance goals, um, an outcome goal could be, uh, a summit of a mountain. It could be I wanna run a hundred miles, it could be I wanna improve my I marathon time from four and a half hours to four hours. So that’s, that’s a very specific outcome. And so if we think about it from a, the performance perspective, that’s measured by results. So that’s stuff that is mostly in your control, but not all in your control. So things like, you know, you’re gonna have to, if you’re running the a hundred mile race, right, that’s your outcome goal. You wanna be able to run that race in 30 hours. Or if you wanna looking to improve your, your, um, marathon time, maybe that’s improving your lactate threshold by 5%. So you can mostly improve those things, but there’s still gonna be stuff that you can’t predict that might get in your way of, of making that happen. The process goals are. Completely within your control. So they are controllable actions and behaviors that you have to be able to show up and execute on to be able to make things happen. So those would be things like, um, ru working up to running five to six days per week. Strength training three times a week, or even one time a week. If you’re not doing any of it at all, having one full rest day per week, um, improving your sleep habits, you know, and then, you know, sleeping solidly seven to eight hours per night if that’s something that’s getting in your way. So thinking about the things that are, you know, that specific goal that you’re working towards, and then the, the things that you need to repetitively be able to do. To make them happen because, you know, Alexia, you had some great things to say about motivation. It doesn’t drop out of the sky, and sometimes the motivation is there when you wake up and sometimes the motivation doesn’t come until you begrudgingly put your running shoes on and you’re moving for 20 minutes after you’ve pushed yourself out the door. So it’s, it’s that continual part of showing up that’s really necessary. Steve: Yeah, that’s great. And it’s interesting, you know, if we think about why people come to coaching or even a training plan or training group, you know, that’s usually, or very often for an outcome goal, they want to. Finish a race or climb a mountain. And usually what we end up working on is the, the process, the daily actions, the process goals. So you define them Chantelle, like how much sleep are you getting? Um, you know, how, how much, how much strength training are you doing? How are you running? Are you training consistently or not? You know, it sort of goes back to some of the. The core fundamental parts of of training, which is consistency, gradually increasing the training load and modulating the training load. And you know, I, I like that idea that outcome goals are not very controllable. Like we can’t. Control very much about whether or not we’re gonna be able to climb Mount Rainier on July 15th, 2026. We can’t control the weather, we can’t control our partners, we can’t control all kinds of things, but the things we can control for are like, did I, did I sleep eight hours? Did I, you know, get trained? Did I train five days this week? Did I do my strength sessions the way they were prescribed? And those kinds of things. So I like that. I like that lens a lot. Chantelle: Yeah, so like I think having a plan’s important, right? Like you’ve gotta look at the goal and you’ve gotta sort of zoom away from that goal and think about what are the things that are gonna be important, what are the success factors? Right to climb Mount Rainier or to run that race that you’re planning to do. What are the things you need to be successful? Where are you starting from? And then you’re gonna, you know, have your plan to block out how you’re going to make that happen. And then you’re going to intentionally train and do those different things day to day. And then also think about the things that. Support you. You know, you, like you said Steve, at the beginning, no one lives in a vacuum, right? You have, people have, most of the athletes that we’re working with, they have jobs, they have families, they have other responsibilities outside of this. So you have to have some supportive frameworks to, to give you the time and the space that you need to take those actionable steps every day. Steve: Mm-hmm. So the outcome goals are the inspiration and the process goals are the, the building blocks of success. Chantelle, what are some practical examples that would apply to an endurance athlete? Like let’s say the outcome is, I want to, I wanna run UTMB next year. What would be the performance and the process goals in that example? Chantelle: Yeah, so, well, it’s a good timing to ask that question. First of all, you gotta get chosen in the lottery. Uh, that’s happening today as we, as we speak. Um, so you gotta be chosen. So let’s say you’re chosen and you know you’re gonna be there and you wanna, you wanna complete UTMB, right? So that’s your, your goal, your outcome goal, your performance goals. There could be quite a few of them, right? You’ve got time, you’ve got the amount of vertical that you’re gonna have to. To, um, climb all of that stuff. So having a, how fast are you gonna have to move on some of that terrain? Now again, you can prepare for that in your training, right? That’s part of your process. Goal would be working up to, um, you know, over a given week, making sure that you have about 200 vertical feet of climbing per mile. So that’s very specific. You can plan that out. You can make a route, whatever. Um, and you can work up to a certain vertical rate of climbing in your regular routine. What you, you know, the performance goal is maybe to be able to climb at a certain vertical rate that’s part of maybe your, your race plan or your race strategy. But on the day, what you can’t predict is how is the weather gonna be? Is it going to be very hot and you’re not gonna be able to work quite as hard, you know? So that performance goal might be kind of hard. Um, if you have an outcome of being, um, let’s say top 10 in your age group. Um, that’s, that’s a goal that you might have. You don’t know who else is gonna show up on that day and how they’re gonna perform. So we wanna make sure that, obviously outcome goals are important. Having performance goals are also important. They challenge us. They give us something to, to, to chew on, to, um, to fight for on those days that we don’t really feel like we wanna get out the door, but we’re gonna be spending the vast majority of our time taking those daily actions. Making sure that we are doing the training, that we are being consistent, that we are supporting our training with good sleep, good stress management, good nutrition, good fueling and hydration when we’re out on the run. And that’s gonna take far more time than anything else, and they’re gonna give us the best chance of achieving those performance goals and those outcomes. Steve: I like that. I mean, I think performance goals are so seductive in a way. You know, they like people make up these benchmarks for themselves. And I think uphill athlete, in our early years, we ca we. Succumb to that, and we said, okay, like we think that if you have, we tried to tie it to the chronic training load. If you could have a, if you can train in this way for mountaineering and you have a CTL of a certain number for a certain amount of time, you’ll be fit enough to climb Denali. You’ll be fit enough to climb Everest or whatever. But, you know, after a year or two, we realized that was complete folly because, for a variety of reasons. Um, but people loved it. And, and it kind of was hard to back, back out of, and people are always asking me like, how many vertical meters, um, a week or a month do I need to climb to be, you know, you know, top 1% or those kinds of things. And, and those are, they’re seductive, but they’re hard questions that you ultimately have to, they have to be very personal to you. So we talk a lot about sort of, um, like a events, B events, C events, this kind of thing throughout a season, particularly with Trail Runner, you know, an A race, B race. Talk about that for a minute. What does that mean to you as a coach? Chantelle: So if we think about the, if you think about, um, training for different things over the year, I think it’s helpful for people to have a yearly plan. So if you start with like a yearly calendar and you block out, okay, these are the things I’m gonna, I wanna. Do. So let’s say if you’re gonna climb, um, you’re gonna take a, you’re gonna climb Mount Rainier, well, maybe as part of your preparation. So that’s an a goal, right? That’s a most important goal. So you’re gonna label that with an a on your calendar. That’s, that’s a big priority. And then to prepare for Mount Rainier, let’s say you’re gonna go do a, a mountaineering prep course. Well, that’s gonna be pretty significant, right? It’s gonna take a lot out of you. Um, physically, mentally, uh, maybe even emotionally. So you put that on the calendar too. And that’s not an a goal. It’s very important, but, um, you know, it’s more of a probably b goal in terms of, you know, it’s not the, the most important thing on the calendar. Um, so maybe you’re gonna label that as a b goal. And then in this case, an example of a seagull might be you’re gonna run a, your, your family has a little challenge to run. A, um, a local 10 K race or a local 5K race or something like that. So you still wanna show up and you wanna be prepared because if you, if you don’t, um, you know, and you go to to run and you’re not running at all and you think, ah, it’s 5K, it’s three miles. And you decide like, yeah, but maybe I could win a prize. And you go all out, you, maybe you’re not gonna be able to run Rainier. You get, you hurt yourself and you can’t go on. So that’s a seagull. Something that’s like less important, but still something that you wanna plan for. And then map those out on your calendar. And you know what those are, right? You have them there and then you can think about how do you, how can you organize your training to be most prepared for those things? The B and C goals often can be training and good preparation for the A goal. So the things you learn on your mountaineering prep course are gonna be things that you’re gonna take back to your training after the fact. You’re gonna learn that. Oof. I really, um, do it, did a poor job with, um, fueling myself during the prep course. I gotta work on nutrition. I gotta add that as a new goal. Now, leading up to Rainier, I’ve gotta get faster, I’ve gotta get fitter. Uh, maybe you have a 50 K race that’s prepare as a b race that’s preparing you for. Um, for a hundred K race, um, something like that. So you have other goals that are maybe feeding into other goals, and when you block them out on the calendar, it also helps you stay focused because let’s say you get invited to something along the way and you have your friend invites you to go, uh, do the Grand Canyon, and that’s a three week trip where you’re not gonna be running, you’re not gonna be climbing, you’re mostly gonna be sitting. that a, a great opportunity, chance of a lifetime? Absolutely. Is it gonna get in the way of you completing your goals for UTMB? Maybe? So you wanna be, if you have them blocked out on the calendar, it really helps you to stay focused to either no, whether to say no to extra things that might get in your way, or maybe then you have to adjust your goals. Um, for other things, if you decide to add something new in. Steve: Yeah, when I was climbing full-time, I mean, that was my, my personal mission statement was to become the best climber I could be. So I used that filter for a lot of those decisions. Two, in some cases, as you said, the detriment of missing out on amazing opportunities, of going on incredible trips with great people. But I had to have the, you have to have a decide what your priorities are. Chantelle: Yeah, absolutely. Steve: Alexa, let’s talk a little bit about the directionality of goals and how to create systems to create pros progress. How do you, uh, talk about, how do you think about systems when it comes to training? Alexa: Systems when it comes to training and creating goals, I mean, you wanna look at basically what your overall picture is like Chantelle said is you break it down into your A or B or C goals. Now look at your A goal. What is your ultimate goal for that? And you wanna build not only that outcome goal, but also that process goal because those process goals are gonna get you there. And within that race also we want process goals. So my goal is to eat every 40 minutes. My goal is to stay at this RPE for the entire first hour of this race, right? So we gotta look at it in this broad stream of things, and then we wanna break it down of like, if this is my goal, how am I gonna structure the rest of my life around that? Or vice versa, right? So we have to fit it in. We all have other stuff outside of training going on, like that’s just how life is and things come up randomly. But how do we fit it in and how do we make it. Viable for our our life, right? Like, does that mean I have to wake up at 5:00 AM? Does that mean I have to stay up late and get this done? And is that realistic for my life and what I wanna do? And if it’s not, then we need to change our goals, right? If it is, yes, I can wake up at 5:00 AM and I can get my long run in, great, let’s keep working towards that goal. If that’s not gonna be possible, then we wanna adjust from there. Steve: Yeah, and you know, I could have paraphrased James clear of Atomic Habits fame, where, you know, he talked, was talking about habits. But if we shifted a little bit, I would rephrase his famous maximum and say, you don’t rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your. Training systems and training is a system. It’s, it’s, it’s a schedule. It’s having, you know, backup plans. If you are planning on doing, uh, a gym, but it was a holiday and the gym is closed, what do you do? Uh, it’s having accountability. It’s having someone. You know, whether that’s yourself, if you’re self-coaching or a coach reviewing your training and, and giving you input. I mean, that is a system that is, um, self, self sort of self-feeding. How do you look at those systems? Like, you know, we kind of have these almost three variations, like kind of self-coach, self-directed. Maybe you’re using a training plan, maybe you’re just using a book. Versus like what, what you’re managing every day and coaching in every day, which is our training groups versus, you know, CO one-on-one coaching. How do you see those different systems and how do they benefit different people in different ways that are right for them at different stages, et cetera? How do you think about that? Alexa: Yeah, I think there’s different. There’s different types of personalities and each version fits into a different section of that, right? So you have to, to do like a training plan and be self coaching, you have to be very motivated and accountable to yourself or somebody else outside of that. And that can be really difficult for the majority of people because you have nobody checking and being like, Hey. Are you doing this? Um, then we move on to training groups, which offers a little bit more accountability, but you still have to be pretty self-motivated ’cause nobody’s in your calendar every day checking on you. But you do have a community of people that you know are also training alongside you for their own goals. So you have that accountability. Then you go to coaching one-on-one coaching, and you have that accountability from your coach, right? So like, my athletes know that I’m going to message them if I see, um, that they didn’t complete a workout. I’ll be like, are you okay? What’s going on? Do we need to move this? Right? So you have these different personality types. And it works for each of those. Some people don’t want that accountability. It doesn’t work for them. It’s too much pressure and that’s okay. So for them, a training plan might be great, and as long as it’s uploaded into training peaks and they see that, that’s enough motivation for them. Then there’s the other end, which are people like me. I need somebody that’s like watching me because if they’re not, then I’m gonna, I’m gonna play with the rules a little bit. Right? So, yeah, it’s definitely a personality type. Steve: Mm-hmm. like that a lot. Let’s talk about sort of the identity aspect of being an athlete, and this is something that you’ve thought a lot about. How do you think about that and how do you communicate about around identity with athletes? Both on, on both ends of the spectrum. There’s, there’s those of us perhaps over identify as athletes and those of us that under identify, if that makes sense. Alexa: I think we have a real issue with identity in this sport, in that a lot of us. Under identify as athletes, right? There’s so many times people are like, I’m not a runner. Like, well, but you’re running so like you actually are a runner. So we need to change this concept of like what an athlete is. I mean, it could be as small as running a mile or even hiking a mile, whatever it is that makes you an athlete. It doesn’t, the um, the bigger, the goal doesn’t define what kind of athlete you are, right? We don’t need you climbing Everest to say that you are an athlete. Uh, that’s unrealistic. And. Sort of what our society has created around this is like if you’re not running a hundred mile races, you’re not an ultra athlete. That’s not true. If you’re running, if you’re out there, if you’re working towards these goals, you are an athlete. And so we need to change our society’s thinking about what that athletic identity is, and we need to work on that as individuals as well. Steve: Yeah. I, I, I think it’s, that’s really powerful and I, and even to take it a step further, I think it’s really important for people to. Frame it in again, like going back to sort of the outcome process, performance goal kind of, um, viewpoint is if we can have people think about themselves, as you know, I am a consistent endurance athlete. I show up. I’m the person that shows up for myself to train six days a week, and I take one day, one day off, one day rest day, and that’s, that’s who I am. And I think that that’s super helpful because a lot of times I’ll tell people, you know, Hey, if you’ve only got. 20 minutes to do something like do that, like it’s way, it’s infinitely better than doing nothing in terms of progressing towards your fitness goals and you’re, you know, gonna feel better and you’re gonna uphold the sort of pact you’ve made with yourself and your identity as to like what kind of person you are. You’re the person that does your best every day, shows up the best you can every day and, and, and, and puts it out there. And I think that that’s, that’s really important. Alexa: Yeah, there’s this huge imposter syndrome around calling ourselves athletes, right? We feel. Like we don’t have the right to do that. In reality, we do, right? Even if we’re just showing up as much as we can. We are athletes out there. So I really want everybody that’s listening to work on telling yourself you are an athlete and really resonating with that. Try and tell yourself that every single day. Steve: And, you know, just to, to plug the Voice of the Mountains podcast, the, the day we’re recording today, the podcast with John Windsor dropped, uh, which was early January, 2026. And John is this incredible guy who’s a, you know, a professor apparatus at Harvard and an incredible athlete his whole life and on and on. And he talked really. Eloquently about imposter syndrome in that podcast. So I recommend people give John Alyssa, he’s an incredibly wise, uh, man and incredibly accomplished and he had to struggle deeply with, with this, and it’s really common, um, in endurance athletes. How many of us have struggled with this idea of I imposter syndrome? And so I, I think that’s something for us to all work on. Let’s talk about one of the things that, and Chantelle, you probably have a lot to say about this too. One of the things that, uh, we’ve tried in the past is to say that we need to have, like if someone signs up for coaching, we used to say like, you have to sign up for no less than four months. Um, and people thought that was like a money thing, but actually it was about. If you could give us 16 weeks to work with a coach, you’re gonna see incredible, tangible results. And a lot of people just aren’t that patient and. We have to talk a little bit about how, particularly with endurance and I think with strength athletes too, but particularly with endurance, the results lag pretty far behind when you do the work. Like you do the work for weeks and even months before you actually like can measurably notice that you’re running faster or climbing faster, or feeling better out in the mountains? it’s one of the messages I want to get across in this as we talk about these goals, is to have, and I know you’re a huge fan of this, Chantelle, have that long-term view, make that annual plan. It is seasoned for building our annual training plans, by the way, for all, all the uphill athlete coaches that eliciting. This is a reminder. We need to build our ATPs for our athletes and trust. Chantelle: should be already done. They should already be done. Steve. Steve: They should already be done. I’m gonna say that I’m, I’m guilty. I’m not fully, uh, caught up there, but, um, yeah. Got it. Boss. Chantelle: Yeah, I think the long-term mindset is, is really key because it’s, you know what? A couple of things on that one. If you just work with a coach for one month. Are you gonna learn a few things? Sure. But are you gonna get the most outta the experience? No, you’re not. Because for most of the things that the, the types of athletes that we work with are doing, they have long-term goals. There’s of course there’s, there are the odd per people that have one very specific goal to, um, climb. Let’s say they wanna climb Mount Baker, they’re gonna go with a group of friends, and that’s a goal. They’re gonna. Climb Mount Baker, they’re gonna ski down. They want help for this very specific thing. They’re not gonna need any help after this. Well, chances are they’re gonna do that. They’re gonna have a great time, or they’re gonna have a challenging time and they’re gonna wanna do more of these things and they’re gonna wanna, they’re gonna wanna. Improve and, and do more stuff. So for more, most of us, we wanna keep doing these exciting things for a very long time. And so having that long-term mindset is really important. And then you have the opportunity to sort of review each how each season or each year went, make some small deliberate changes over time so that you’re continually getting better rather than just repeating the same, you know, well, that worked last year. Let me try it again. You may not be the same athlete you were last year. Maybe you have a new baby, uh, or maybe you are a now an empty nester, so your life is actually not the same. Maybe you have a new job. So things should change a little bit each time. Right. And it’s also helpful to keep some form of structured training all year long rather than having like, well, I climbed Aconcagua and I’m gonna stop coaching now and I’m gonna do my own thing until I’m. Till next year when I’m gonna prepare work with a coach for three months before Denali, well, many people will continue to be accountable and continue to train. Most people are going to slack off, fall off, and then when they come back to that coach in January, whoof, they got a lot of work to do to get ready for Denali, and they feel really discouraged because they know how fit they felt eight months before. That’s not how they’re feeling now, and they feel like they’re going back to square one, and the older we get, the harder it is to start over. So having that long-term mindset is really important for many different reasons. That, and to, to think about having a plan that is. Long range that is organized, that is periodized. And starting with that as a framework helps us to stay more consistent, helps us to think about, um, supporting ourselves well with good sleep, nutrition. Strength work, recovery days, all that stuff is part of your training. By the way. It’s not extra stuff. It is your training. And they adapt. They, they have space to adapt when life stress comes in, if injury comes up, if illness comes up, because they have a long-term plan, if they don’t, those things can derail people really quickly. Steve: A hundred percent. And the other thing, I mean, we won’t have time to get into this today, but actually be a great podcast. Just on its own is just sort of the physiology of endurance adaptations and how they degrade and which which adaptations degrade first and which take the longest to, you know, which stick around the longest is the other way to put it. And that, that. That slide is, is a thing, and they are starting over. As you said. They, they’re almost starting over, but they actually almost are starting over. The other thing that keep in mind, and this was hugely motivating when I learned this, when I was early in my training, I’ve been training, I think for about two years, and I was out with, um, a Nordic ski coach, uh, and in Nizama Washington. Uh, flash, if you’re listening, it’s shout out to you, but. He and I were talking about this and he said, and I later looked it up and I found this, you know, it has been referenced multiple times in the scientific literature that the it, the average time it takes someone to fulfill their genetic potential as an endurance athlete is about 120 months. That’s 10 years. So if we think three months or six months or nine months is long, we’ll try 10 years. And I think obviously like. Age can play a role. I was probably in my mid twenties when, when I, when I was told that. And obviously as a 55-year-old, I’m not gonna be probably a lot fitter at 65 if I start training, uh, religiously, uh, from this point on. But I’ll be in a heck of a lot better shape than I will if I, if I don’t do anything. Chantelle: Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Steve: So, Alexa, I’d like you to put your kind of sports psychologist hat on and talk about. About bit, you know, the relationship between goals and identity. When is a, when is a goal too big? Alexa: Oof. When is a goal too big? That is a question I ask myself before every race. Um, so I think we have to really be careful with outcome and performance goals. Um, specifically. When it comes to comparing ourselves to other people, like placing in races or anything like that, that’s a big one that we need to be careful because we cannot control other people. And that’s the number one thing that we wanna think about when creating our goals. Can I control the other people in my race? No. Um, and then same thing when it comes to mountaineering. And can I control the weather on the mountain? No. So the summit is, again, one of those outcome or performance goals that is like, you can’t really rely on that. So what we wanna do is we wanna think about. Is this realistic? Can I control it? Is it within my control? So like a time that is a great performance or outcome goal that is a little bit more in our control if we’re doing the training right? Um, process goals are obviously something that we can do well. Uh, those are totally in our control. So when we think about our goals, am I in control of this? Can I achieve it if I do the proper training from there? Is this realistic? Yes. Am I setting a goal that’s like, uh, if I wanna go from a five hour marathon to a three hour marathon, is that realistic? Probably not. Right? Chantelle: Maybe not in one year. Alexa: Yes, exactly. Exactly. Like from one race to the next, right? Is this a realistic goal? We wanna look at that across the board. Um. That can be really hard because how do you create those goals? Right? And that’s why having a coach is really helpful because they can look at that with you and be like, Hey, you know, is this realistic? Yes. Maybe if we do this, if we change this in our training, yeah, that can be possible. Uh, so that’s the big value of having a coach. You have somebody else to look at that with you and help create those goals. But otherwise, yeah, I think the biggest thing is to look at, is this in my hands or is this in the mountain’s, hands and the race’s, hands, and other competitors? Or can I control this? Steve: One thing that I will say from my experience, particularly with professional athletes, I’m specifically thinking of a few professional climbers that I’ve worked with as a coach. It when the goal is so big that it’s. In their mind going to define them as a climber in, in these cases, um, I’ve observed that they will self sa self-sabotage the training. And I think that the, the, these things, they get too big, especially when they get public and everything feels a little too fragile and. They just, they self-sabotage. They find, they, they, they do things wrong. They like, they just a myriad a number of ways because the goal was so big that it kind of threatened their whole identity Alexa: Yeah, and I think that the number one clue to that, that you can see is in social media. You can see when people are like, Hey. Heading into UTMB didn’t have the greatest training block immediately there, you’re giving yourself a, a reason of this is why I’m not gonna perform as well, right? So you wanna be really careful about those stories that you’re telling yourself and also the pressure you’re putting on yourself for those goals. Right? Is this gonna be, uh, an athletic defining moment? You gotta remember that one event never defines you athletically, right? One moment never defines you. It’s a moment in a process of, of outcomes. So that pressure usually sabotages us ’cause it’s, it’s just too much for people to handle. Um, but yeah, I think we often see that of people making these reasons why they’re not gonna complete these outcomes because there’s too much pressure on them. And that’s really, it’s, it’s hard to see because. What I would want for them is to reframe it, of how can I still be happy with my outcome, even if it’s not perfect. Steve: I like that a lot. So one of the things I’ve observed both in myself, but also in others that I’ve coached, is that I first noticed this with myself. I’ll use myself as an example where if I am not exercising, whether, whether you wanna call it training or, or not, but if I’m not consistently, say training. More or less every day. I, my emotions don’t regulate as well. Like I’m not as, even, like, I’m more, my, my emotions are more up and down and took me a while of not training to sort of realize the connection between that. So I’m just curious if. That’s an experience for other people and actually a reason that they go back. ’cause it has been for me to being like, oh, I need to, I need to train, I need to do something every day because then the rest of my day is much better because I’m more, uh, easily, my emotions are even and I’m like solid. Alexa: Oh sure. I think we see that a lot as coaches during the recovery weeks, right? Like people just lose it. Chantelle: tap or tapering before Steve: great point. Yeah, of course. Alexa: Yeah. So yeah, I think there is definitely that correlation, but also like, again, it play, it plays with our identity. If I’m not training today, who am I? Uh, what am I doing with my life? Am I gonna get worse? When really what I, I wish people understood is you need that day, you need that week, you need that recovery time. And it’s the same for us as coaches too. I mean, today’s a rest day for me, and I’m, I’m antsy as can be because I’m like, I need to get in my strength training. But it, in the back of my head, I know that that’s not true. I need to absorb the training that I have been doing. Um, but it’s hard to express that when you feel this like angst to get out there and you know you’re gonna take it out on your family later today ’cause you haven’t got that run in. So, Steve: Hundred percent. Yep. Yep. And uh, and I mean, it’s good to, interesting that you say that because those are the people that reflected it back on me where I first noticed it. They’re like, did you notice when you don’t do something? Oh, yeah. Alexa: yeah. Steve: that, that, Chantelle: Or someone important in your life says to you. Do you need to? Do you need to get outside? Do you need to take a walk? Do you need to go run? Alexa: Yep. Steve: Yeah, we see this in our pets, but it’s harder to see it ourselves. Alexa: Yeah. Steve: Chantelle. Let’s, let’s get, let’s bring this to sort of a real practical, like if we’re coaching people, like how listeners actually kind of get some traction, what’s a, what’s a structure that you can offer for how to go through the process of creating some of these goals? Chantelle: I think, um, you know, some of the things we’ve talked about already, I think it can be helpful to take before you start looking ahead to take a look back so you know, what did, what have you been doing? And if, and if you’re kind of new to getting started in training, that’s also okay. Like there’s no right or wrong answer here. It’s just information. So what does the training look like in the last. Three months, six months, one year. If you’ve been training more or less consistently in the year, what went really well? What are you proud of? What, what went really well? What are, and also, how did you, you know, if you had goals last year, let’s take a look at those goals. ’cause often we say like, okay, these are my goals. I’m gonna climb Rainier, I’m gonna run a race. I’m gonna do these things. Tick. What’s the next thing? Like actually. Take a take a moment to recognize what you did and what you achieved. So, and how does it actually feel to know that you’ve done that thing? What are some things that didn’t go well? Why, how does that feel for you? You know? And like, sit with that for a moment. Don’t just breeze over it. And then as you’re thinking forward, what are the new things that you wanna achieve? Are there some lessons and things and learnings that you learned last year or in the last couple months? Or patterns that you’ve changed that you wanna carry forward? Maybe for some people it’s um, you know, in January there’s a lot of people doing dry January. Maybe in January you learn that wow, by just not drinking over 30 days. Uh, I feel less irritable. I feel like I’m sleeping better. Uh, I feel like I have more motivation when I wake up in the morning. Maybe your pants are fitting better. Do you wanna carry that? How do you wanna carry that forward? Maybe you’d consider you wanna have a dry February, or maybe you decide you wanna be a little more intentional about your alcohol intake, right? Just as, as a, an example that’s probably tangible for a lot of people at the moment. So take a look back. How did you stack up? Are there some things that you achieved that actually weren’t even on your list? Like maybe you did place top 10 in your age group in all races that you did and placing. Anywhere at all in top 50 word, not even on your list. Like that’s pretty awesome. So recognize those things and think about all that stuff before you start. Yeah, celebrate the wins. Like we’re so quick to just tick it off and next, but then if something, if we do so, if we have a goal and we don’t meet it. Man alive. We will spend weeks and months beating ourselves up, but we don’t spend weeks and months being proud about the things we actually achieved. So maybe, you know, reversing that pattern a little bit, I think is important. And then think about the goals that you wanna have for the year. And you can be big and you can be bold. Like write ’em all down. Brainstorm them, put them out there. Talk to some people in your life about them. Talk to your friends, your training buddies, your coach. Um, if you’re part of our training group, drop it in there. Put that stuff out there and like see how it actually feels to think about achieving that goal. Like how does it feel in your body? How does it feel in your mind? And then think about really evaluating that goal. What do I need to achieve that goal or those goals, whatever they are, and write down those things. What are the metrics for success? Write them down. And then I find it helpful for athletes to go through the exercise of looking at those metrics of success and thinking where I’m sitting today. How would I rank myself in those things, know? And, and so then again, it’s not good or bad. Infor bad. It’s not right or wrong, just information. It shows you where you have room to work, right? And that helps you put together those. Process goals to be able to reach those goals. And that helps you put together your plan. So then you, you can start to, to kind of like zoom out from those goals to where you’re sitting today and you have those things that you know you need to tangibly work on. Maybe it’s improving your sleep, maybe it’s improving your, um. The way you handle your recovery days, um, having some strategies for handling recoveries, days can be helpful. So instead of thinking about the things I can’t do, I can’t strength train, I can’t run, I can’t ski. What are some things you can do on that day? You could do yoga, you can spend some extra time with your kids. You can, um, work on some other kind of project that you’ve been avoiding for a little while and get something else done. So think about the stuff, like turn the stuff around into something positive that you can do. I know you’re smirking at me, Alexa, but. Maybe you need to hear it too sometimes. Uh, we’re all guilty of that. So think about the stuff that you can, that, the stuff that you could tangibly do every day to move yourself forward. Organize your plan. If you need help and you don’t know where to start, get some help. Um, you know, we have lots of different training plans that, you know, if you need, uh, a template to help you along and you need some accountability and some structure, we can help you with that. If you feel like you need a little bit more of a community because you feel like a lone wolf and everyone in your life thinks it’s absolutely ridiculous that you wanna climb mountains or run a marathon, or, um, run 200 miles, we are here for you. We got some weirdos just like you in our training group. Um, and if you feel like you need, you know, you have more complicated goals or you just don’t know where to start and you really need. Um, really specific and want really specific guidance. Consider working with a coach. You don’t need to be, um, you know. The fastest the, the raddest to work with a coach. Coaching is actually for, for everybody. And I think actually non-elite athletes need coaches more because they don’t know where to start and they don’t know what they don’t know, and they have a lot of doubts. So not being alone in this process is really helpful for, for many different ways. You know, for, for support, for backup and for guidance and working with a coach, I think is, like, I tell people, it’s like you’re still in the driver’s seat. Like this is still your thing. We agree on the destination, right? We agree on the interests. Think about it like a, a road trip. We agree on the destination. Maybe it’s UTMB or it’s Mount Rainier, or it’s. marathon, right? We agree on that. We think we talk together about some of the things that we wanna hit along the way, some interest points. So here are some interesting things along the way. Some, you know, that we wanna, maybe it’s an amusement park, maybe it’s a place we wanna swim or hike or whatever. And then the coach’s job is to plot the best route to get to that destination while hitting all those interest points. Now the athlete is the driver. Coach is just the copilot, but you agree on the destination, you agree on the route, and then the athlete starts driving the car and maybe they wanna take a couple shortcuts. Sometimes that works out. Sometimes it’s a dead end. Again, it’s okay. The coach’s job as the copilot is to get you back on course and get you back to the ne next point of interest. So you’re still the driver, but the coach is there to help you when you get off track to help you take some shortcuts that maybe you don’t see on the map and to help you when you get a flat tire and you know that that sets you back a little bit, they’re there to help you change the tire and get back on course. Um, and so it’s a, it’s a really. Great way to to learn. It’s a really great way to give yourself some challenges because if you do get off course, you have someone to help reroute you instead of you being stuck there and giving up altogether. Steve: That’s all great information. Let’s do a quick lightning round of some of the most common failures and some of their fixes. When it comes to goal setting, and I’m gonna start, uh, one of the things that I’ve seen is a, a trap that people fall into is setting goals based on someone else’s life, someone else’s fitness. People need to be realistic and all. A lot of this is, you know, comes back to sports psychology. It’s very good sort of self, uh, regulation. Emotional regulation, exercises to write goals that match your constraints, the amount of time you have to train and recover your age, your athletic history, the the other stresses going on in your life, positive and negative, and, and, and write down goals. Alexa, do you have a, a common. Failure and. Alexa: Yeah, I think the biggest one I see is, well, when I was 20 I did this. So I wanna try and replicate that and they’re in their forties or fifties. And what I always say is, you have to train and make goals for where you are now, not where you were 20 years ago. Right. And that’s, that looks different and it’s really hard to, to understand that and see that and grapple with that. Um, but that’s the realistic view of it. Steve: A hundred percent Chantelle, what’s one for you? Chantelle: Goals that are too vague or, and or don’t have a, a broad, like, don’t have a real purpose like. Steve: Hmm. Chantelle: I wanna improve, I wanna improve the VO two max score on my Garmin watch. Steve: Right. Chantelle: Well, I think it’s important. Why do you think it’s important? And you get down to the, uh, don’t actually know. So it comes back to like having a goal that is, that actually means something to you and that has a purpose for your life. Because if it’s, if it’s too vague, just like someone says like, well, my goal is to get healthier. What does that mean? Right? So we wanna have something that we, that is, that has a purpose, that is meaningful, and that is something that we can, that we can have some actionable, measurable steps towards, so that we can, we can continually check in every week, every month to make sure that we’re still moving towards that, that goal. Um, every single, every single day. Because if it’s too vague, then we. Have very little chance of being able to move towards that. Steve: A hundred percent. You can’t have 17 priorities. You can only have one priority Chantelle: Yeah. There’s only one actually, priorities, plural, shouldn’t even exist in our, in our language. Right. Steve: Exactly. Yeah, I think that’s a great place to end it and wrap it up here. Thank you so much for all the tips and pointers. We’re gonna write a blog associated with this article and we’re going to try to, one of the things I wanna do is try to come up with a sort of a written. Uh, form or process in this blog post where people can do sort of a goal audit, and I think that that could be a really interesting exercise and we’ll try to link to that in the show notes here. And if you are looking for more structure and accountability and training plans are not working for you. And Alexa talked about different personality types and what works for home. Investigate the training groups. Uh, Alexa runs our training groups and is a head coach for training groups. She does an amazing job in there. I’m in there often as well. And of course we have our one-to-one coaching that Chantelle is, is managing that process of matching athletes and coaches to make sure that everybody, it’s, it’s a little bit like a, a dating game, I think, like matching the right Chantelle: Yeah, I’m a Steve: because so many things go, go into that. Right. That right chemistry, and it’s super important to find that right chemistry. So if you have questions, write to us at coach@uphillathlete.com or send us your goal, what your constraints are, and let us know what keeps kind of breaking in your goal setting process. We’d love to hear from you. My name is Steve House. Thank you for joining us. CTA: One of the most common questions I get is, how should I get started with training? Well, they say the first step is the hardest, so let’s make that easy. We are. Offering free four week samples of our most popular training plans for mountaineering, trail, running, climbing, and more. Go to uphillathlete.com/letsgo to sign up for our newsletter. And you will not only get monthly insights on training for uphill athletes, but you’ll also get a sample training plan. It’s totally free, so why wait? That’s uphillathlete.com/LETSGO.