Ep. 48 – Outputs: Rethinking Performance. Guest Ben Sporer

@0:27 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

It’s so good to have you on the show. 

@0:30 – Sporer (resync)

Oh, thanks. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. It’s good to get to catch up again and reconnect.

@0:37 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

You know, I think we’re going to use a few metaphors today, but it’s like a our relationship is a bit of a metaphor in itself for this book.

You know, if I think back to like the late 90s, yeah, you would show up on the track. You were one of my first ever strength coaches when that was kind of new to be honest.

@1:00 – Sporer (resync)

Yeah, right.

@1:02 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

And the likes of Jason Keene, Trevor McCall, Mike Funk. So yeah, all have gone on to do their own thing, build businesses wildly successful in their own rights.

so, you know, God, you’d show up in your bike shorts in your helmet, then 25 years later, I see you in your bike shorts and helmet at some bike race that you and my wife were both in.

@1:25 – Sporer (resync)

then I see you. I wasn’t actually running.

@1:27 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

was watching.

@1:29 – Sporer (resync)

Okay, the metaphor is totally out the window.

@1:33 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

Yeah. So, yeah, yeah, so so good. So we’ll just like jump right into it. And I think.

@1:43 – Sporer (resync)

to see you. Yeah. Are we excited to hear how things go for you?

@1:48 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

Yeah, thank you. So over like 30 years, your journey, seeing you stick with it and just keep The evolution of your own brand and education and the rules that you’ve played over the years, your book is called output.

We’re going to talk a lot about the difference between output and outcomes. But I see your journey because I’ve witnessed it from really far away.

@2:15 – Sporer (resync)

In fact, it disappeared for a few decades and here we are today.

@2:19 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

The thousands of high quality outputs that you’ve created to give you the outcomes that you’ve achieved. Yeah, don’t you, in your own words, tell us a little bit about why this book and why now?

@2:33 – Sporer (resync)

So yeah, great. Great, this is start. Look, book, Why Now? To be quite frank and honest was we had a pandemic and that was really the stimulus to get it going.

Why this book was really over the years, we had lots of people. As you become, you’re doing a lot of work in different areas.

I was doing some talks to different organizations. Across the spectrum from at a conference or giving talks to a group of young developing athletes parents or at an organization in a workspace about things we learned from sport and telling some stories about it.

And even clients that knew me, I had often people coming up either after those situations or just in a casual conversation.

@3:28 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

I hey, do you mind just something quick, Jack?

@3:30 – Sporer (resync)

often they were just really curious around the experiences I had and how I could see it relating to them.

And they often would ask their own situation. Oh, here’s the context of our situation. Here’s the context of my situation.

What would you suggest in this situation? Have a young athlete or a young child who is really thinking about becoming a lead athlete or I like acting.

And so that kept reoccurring and the questions were often the same. And so Nate, one of the things I really enjoy is I really enjoy working with people.

I really enjoy helping people. Even back from the very early days and why I got into this space, I love high performance.

And I love being able to help facilitate people on their path to get there in sports at Great Avenue because I love sports.

So all those opportunities, I would love to spend time with them. But there’s only so much time in the day and I’ve got lots of other commitments and I do lots of things.

it really was something that was on the thought process. People would say it be great if it was in a book.

would be great if you had access or resources, piece of information. And then COVID hit and we live in North Vancouver up by the mountains in Canada here.

And one of the things we’re able to do is go up for hikes. And so every day, train. My wife and you remember trainer from way back when?

Yeah. And so we love to get out and she just say, hey, we’re headset. And we’ll just record your thoughts, the last few questions.

And it sort of spurred, I mean, maybe over four or five months of just constant, you know, two to three hour hikes.

And these questions that would be recorded and pulled down. And it started to form, it was a mess.

@5:22 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

It was a mess.

@5:25 – Sporer (resync)

It was a real mess at the time. But it started to say, you know what? We could put this into a format that we think would allow for all those questions to be available.

And it’s really based on my experiences and my perspective on performance. And sure, there’s lots of ways to look at performance.

But this is one that I found, you know, watching high performers across multiple environments, multiple sports, and then working with them to help support them.

I find it is sort of ring true over and over and over again.

@6:00 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

Let’s back up a little bit to your PhD to the work that you’ve done with Olympians in multiple sports, players, high level athletes, very academic approach to all this over the years.

Just that background on your PhD and what has brought you to this work.

@6:17 – Sporer (resync)

Sure. one of the things that I’ll go as far as back is when we started to work together, was general master’s degree.

I really had a thirst for learning more. I had lots of questions. I’ve always been curious. I had lots of questions.

So your podcast title is actually fantastic. That’s right. I had lots of questions. And I found that, you know, I actually, to be honest with you, I had a really fantastic mentor.

mentioned him a lot in the book, Dr. Huyerwanger, an incredible man, an incredible human. And he really spurred a lot of that curiosity to say, well, or how does this happen?

Or what is the reason for that? I felt at the time, what I learned I loved being able to practice with people, so I just wanted to continue to learn.

So I was working continuously throughout my master’s in my PhD. I went on to pursue my PhD in Vancouver at UBC at University of British Columbia with Dr.

McKenzie, who’s an incredible mentor as well, another fellow mentor. And through that time from my master’s to my PhD, I had actually started working in Olympic sport.

And the reason I went to do the PhD is because after I’d done the master’s, felt there was still more to understand, and I really wanted to dive into one area and really be clear and know how much detail is enough, how much detail is too much.

And learn those boundaries about interpreting science at a very deep level, but then also working at the same time and applying that science in a very individual specific level.

And so I found the balance between those two served. two sort of needs in myself, the curiosity and thirst for learning tied with the ability to apply.

And so that’s how I sort of why I did my PhD. I’m super glad I did. And then from that space I really moved into Olympic sport.

was actually in Olympic sport at time, but really started to thrive in the Canadian sport institutes and doing a lot of work in the Olympic space in Canada.

And after that I transitioned over the last 12, 13 years.

@8:32 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

You know, as the title would suggest, a very curious guy myself and I love that question, how much detail is too much?

@8:40 – Sporer (resync)

The detail in the background, I hope my fire crackling beside me makes it into the audio of this episode because I can’t hear it.

Sorry, my God.

@8:49 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

Too bad because to be sitting by my fire having this conversation with an old friend is So how much detail is too much?

That’s interesting. When you look at the… the working with Olympians, for example, so output, optimizing performance with lesson learned from sport.

These ideas that transcend sport sport is no longer just a metaphor for guys like you and I, it is actually literally the same thing.

So when you’re helping optimize performance, how much detail is too much?

@9:22 – Sporer (resync)

It’s a great question and I think I always will come back with this and I mean lots of people say is it really depends.

It depends on the personal context. think one of the things that we can get caught up in is too much detail.

And we become distracted from paying attention to things that really matter. And I think when you are at that space where you’re starting to lose the focus on the things that matter, or the return for the investment in further detail is very minimal or it has a negative net performance impact.

That’s where I would draw the line on the level of detail.

@10:02 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

And so that’s a very sort of global perspective. yeah, when he’s just to get in the way, right? I mean, the book, God, I love the chapter about the downhill mountain biker who is in this, I think, a World Cup event and his chain break.

So all this preparation that has gone into this three or four minutes of his life and suddenly thrown a curve ball like the chain breaking.

Let’s if we could, let’s use that guy.

@10:29 – Sporer (resync)

Sure.

@10:30 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

As the example here, the difference between output and outcomes. Talk about the output that went into a guy like that preparation for that event and how it helped him in that moment of crisis.

Well, from a from a lay person from a fan, a moment of crisis when the chain breaks, but maybe he didn’t see it that way.

@10:48 – Sporer (resync)

Yeah. So first off, years and years of technical and tactical expertise, like you don’t get to that level until you put in that work.

It just doesn’t happen overnight. When we talk a lot about talent and there’s people that are talented in many areas and they have some aspects of talent, but those talents really are Things that are refined They’re not sort of just you don’t born.

I are born being a will cut downhill mountain biker Yeah, have a good sense of balance. You may have a good anticipation You may but those things those attributes become refined over time So to the question of you know, how does he handle that moment?

How does he prepare? One of the big things in an athlete like that is the ability to prepare For the output that you’re required to deliver on now the output that he’s required to his right is mountain bike downhill really really fast Yeah, it’s balanced maintain focus when things are happening and then be able to respond to things that come up You can’t anticipate a chain.

You don’t prepare for the chain Chain break, you know it’s a possibility, but you don’t prepare If that had happened in the first third of the course, there’s no way he would have been able to complete that.

@12:06 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

Complete it and win. Complete it and win.

@12:08 – Sporer (resync)

he probably would have able to complete. Let’s be less okay.

@12:10 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

Yeah, I it and win.

@12:12 – Sporer (resync)

But what happened was, is that, you know, where it happened on the course still provide an opportunity for him to stay focused on what he was able to do.

His preparation on knowing the course, the insides and outs of the course, the turns, the angles. His preparation on being able to understand his bike and how he has to create speed and where he can lose speed potentially to avoid those situations.

His preparation on his tactics online might have changed in the moment, but he knew there’s either or another opportunity.

So it really comes back to the preparation. one of the things I talked about in the book is this concept of building excess capacity, right?

And so, you know, I would classify the chain breaking as, you know, whatever to an ability. book as a moderator.

One of these unpredictable events that may happen, there’s lots of different types of moderators, but you have a profile that you’ve prepared to deliver on a performance and then something happens.

In a normal person’s life, it might be your child’s sick and you have to go to a big presentation at work.

Your child calls in sick from work and you need to change in what’s going on. It’s a rapid. How do you adjust?

@13:28 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

That’s a moderator.

@13:30 – Sporer (resync)

That thing that’s been thrown at you. Well, no, that’s an event, but an event can be a moderator, yes.

moderator is anything that will influence the ability of your profile to deliver your output. So, he, altitude, culture, there’s a lot of different things that can influence that fatigue, recovery, nutrition that day, lack of sleep.

There’s a variety of things that will influence your profile and they’re really, I would call from sort of these short-lived moments.

This is an extreme one. It’s sort of one of the things that you have no control over that happens and it may influence the outcome.

But at the end of the day, if he actually wrote it, he didn’t win that race, but he finished within, you know, point two seconds of the leader, he still would have delivered an incredibly high performance.

@14:20 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

And it would have been a high performing relative to his, but there would have been a mechanical that happened that he wasn’t able to control.

So let’s dive into this output outcome thing, because I can sense, I can feel in your writing, your passion for this.

people are, high performing, high achieving people are often very results-oriented. you argue, just wanting to win is not enough.

So that the outcome is winning that race. The outcome is winning the championship. outcome is, you know, revenue in a business or net profit, you’re measuring.

Let’s talk about output.

@14:57 – Sporer (resync)

Yeah, sure, great. I think it’s really- I’m not anti-O-CO. I think that’s something really important to state because You know outcome is really related to your objectives And I think that you you have to have objectives you have to have a target of where you’re trying to go Yeah, but what I try to emphasize in the book is that you have no control over the outcomes There’s always something that when you come to play that’s out of your control that can actually change the outcome and in sport It’s really easy you run up against a team is just better than you They’re better prepared than you you have a bad referee makes a call You have a chain break, you know the weather a weather comes in you have to play in pouring rain in a mud pit and you just Don’t have the right setup for and things happen but what you can control always is your output and you can control your ability to prepare to deliver the output that’s required to achieve your Objective or your outcome that you want and so I think that’s often where I See people not being

aware of the output that’s actually required to achieve their objective. And that’s a pretty critical piece. so, whenever I find myself working with clients, whether they’re and I give you a perfect example from an executive lens, is that I have an executive approach to me quite often.

Through the cycling world, maybe it’s, you know, this was a big boom. started probably 2008-ish. Everybody’s getting into cycling, and it’s still pretty prevalent out there with executives.

But I was working a lot in cycling, and people said, I want to be the approach to say, can you do what you do for cycling for me?

I just come back from the Beijing Olympics. We have some great performance with the Canadian cycling team. I said, absolutely I can’t.

I said, know, I’m happy to sit down and chat with you. one of the things that came really clear to me is that people wanted to be this great cyclist.

And they would relate it to, I’d like to be… I like what you did with X, athlete. can you please do that?

with me?” I said, well, let’s talk about that for a second. Exactly. is full-time athlete. You also, do you want to be a good cyclist and run your business and be a parent and be a good partner?

And so what happens is people often think, are they compared to, this is what the pros do over here.

This is what this athlete who won Ironman does all the time, this is, context. And this is like from an elite athlete’s perspective, as well as an executive or an individual’s perspective.

And so they’ll take these pieces that are related to somebody else that they’ve seen do X, but they forget their personal context.

And I don’t maybe forget it’s not the right word.

@17:48 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

They know their personal context.

@17:49 – Sporer (resync)

But sometimes they forget to understand the output that’s required is different from what they’re looking at. than their own personal content.

@18:02 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

And that question, if I say yes to this, doing this with Ben to become this elite level recreational cyclist, what am I going to say no to?

What outputs can I no longer pay attention to? Possibly, for example, worse partner, less or more absent parent business suffers.

@18:22 – Sporer (resync)

Right? Can’t do that. And that’s why it’s really clear. I spend a lot of time with people early on to say, look, if you want to get fast and any others use this as one example.

If you want to get fast, I can get you fast, probably pretty quick. You know, you can put it all the time.

We’re going to push you hard. But you may not be able to maintain that. You may not be able to keep that past six to twelve weeks.

There’s some other things that are going to compromise. But if your objective is you really want to be the best cyclist you can be, be social with your friends on the bike.

You want to feel like you’re competing in these events of grandfondos or whatever they might be. but you still you want you have to run your business you’re an owner of a business you’re exactly be it worked 55 hours a week you want to coach your kids that’s your objective let’s not forget those pieces because what will happen and this happens regularly is you will focus on this one piece of your objective and you will be trying to think that that’s the output that’s required but you then have to go to work for 50 hours you are only going to be able to get five hours sleep a night because of your you know you only have so much time in the day because now you’re coaching and you’re driving your kids back and forth so you have to be honest about that and so if you really want to achieve that objective then we have to be honest about what you’re what you’re capable of achieving and where you are relative to that so it all starts with being clear on your objective and then being honest about what’s the output that’s required to actually deliver all that to start of this you mentioned something I’m very

@20:00 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

very passionate about that outcomes are totally out of your control. When you work with high performance athletes, for example, how can that fact of there are things in life that we can’t control plus owning and controlling the outputs?

How can that help with resilience, mental health, grit, willing to get back into the next competition, dealing with defeat, dealing with loss, dealing with failure, knowing that you still have your foundation of outputs that you can control?

@20:34 – Sporer (resync)

What comes to mind for you? I think first and foremost is that you actually have to measure your performance based on your output.

@20:42 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

Let’s say that again. Let’s say that.

@20:44 – Sporer (resync)

We absolutely have to measure your performance based on your output. performance is an act. It’s your ability. You execute a variety of tasks to achieve an objective.

That’s pretty much what a performance is. You can look at it up, there’s a variety of different definitions of it.

But if we think of an actor, they go on stage, they do a performance. They may not win the best movie, they may not win the best actor award, but they delivered a performance that was unbelievable.

It connected with the audience, was at or above their expectations. But we also see performances from actors where they go and they act through a thing, and we look at it and we go, yeah, that wasn’t their best movie.

@21:26 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

Right?

@21:26 – Sporer (resync)

And we judge your performance based on their performance, not on an outcome. And so when we think about sport, is really what happens between the start of the game and the end of the game, from the start of the race to the end of race.

Your performance is your actual output. The outcome, as we talked about, is where that sort of fits in a win for reality.

And because you can’t control the outcome, there’s lots of things to influence that outcome. I’m a referee, better prepared athlete.

You happen to be in a sport when there’s just this genetic streak that will dominate the sport. it happens, right?

Why do you tie this back to dealing with that as an athlete is that, first off, we frame and evaluate a performance on what we’re trying to achieve.

We’re framing and evaluating our performance on the output that we’re trying to deliver. And when you define your objective and you really clearly articulate the output that’s required to achieve your objective, what you’re doing is you’re preparing yourself to perform at a level that has a bandwidth that’s high enough to most likely achieve that objective.

And narrow enough that if you are actually achieving that you’re delivering that output, you’re increasing the likelihood of achieving your objective dramatically.

That makes sense.

@23:01 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

It does. It’s reminding me of you and I are both in service to other people and I have a strong feeling that being proud of that work when we go to bed at night and put our head on the pillow and our feet hit the floor in the morning.

Regardless of where it goes or the accolades, the act of being in service to people, of that output day after day of being fully present for our clients to help them get from where they are now to where they want to be.

When I measure my own performance based on daily consistent ethical, proud outputs, that’s all I need.

@23:48 – Sporer (resync)

Yeah. And that goes back to your question and the next piece I was going to say to you an athlete’s perspective is that if you are judging, your ability is being a hobby.

high performers and athletes on whether you win, right? Or whether you finish third. But your capabilities and your profile, and you’ve got a family at home, you’re going to school as an amateur athlete, and your ex, and your genetic capacity is at a certain level that may not be at the genetic capacity as the others.

But you’re delivering at that level day in and day out, and you’re getting honored role at school. And that, because those things are part of your objective, they’re not separate.

You’re hyper-horror. this is an important thing I have discussions with athletes and clients all the time, that the minute you start thinking, and I’ve got to be really clear, this isn’t about settling, because that comes out.

It’s not settling for less. It’s being honest and clear about what your true objective is. And often, we find what we inspire.

first and in personal life is that we absolutely measure, right, our performance based on not just our objective, but externally external objectives.

What do other people think is success in this and in our personal situation? Well, you actually, you wrote, would you write at the grand condo?

Well, I wrote four hours and 10 minutes. Oh, yeah, you weren’t under four hours? No, I wasn’t. Oh, we were 355.

Oh, congratulations. Great for you. My objective is to be able to finish to push myself to a space where I can ride 123 of kilometers in four hours in 10 minutes.

I’m doing all these other things. I’m not training to be there, but I actually challenge myself to to be able to fit this in in four hours and 10 minutes with everything else that I’m doing.

And I’m delivering on it.

@25:56 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

Yeah, it doesn’t mean I’m settling. And you beaten up by three. three and a half hours in his grandfondo time.

@26:02 – Sporer (resync)

Oh, Yeah, know.

@26:04 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

I just think.

@26:05 – Sporer (resync)

Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s not.

@26:09 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

It’s, it’s, it’s almost. It’s taking me this place of contentment and actual happiness. You know, when you, when you talk about maybe moderators, you talk about genetic makeup.

we go back to that group of guys, we mentioned that you helped train and then we add in the guys that played in the NHL, like Matt, Pettinger and Jesse, February, Mike Stutzel, Jamie Pollock.

When I looked at my hands compared to their hands or I held a stick and they held a stick and ripped a puck.

I was fortunate enough to play in one of the best things outside of the NHL and it would only take me five seconds to realize, oh, yeah, I can’t do that.

And so my, my measurement of success cannot be that it needs, it needs to be unique into myself. And it’s not about what someone else thinks I should have got to or whatever level I should have played.

So it’s not about settling, settling, it might be about contentment and, and, and, and, like, you Inner peace.

@27:00 – Sporer (resync)

What you make of that? Yeah, I like to use the word honesty like Contemement, I think is good to inner peace.

I think is good I like to use the word honesty when I’m speaking with athletes and clients. I think Are you honestly are you being honest about what your real objective is right now?

you being honest yourself like and and I got to be careful I need to make sure I mention this is that In the book I talk a lot about this is that the purpose of the book was to simplify my perspective on the book Right, so it was it was accessible to people It doesn’t mean it’s simple It doesn’t mean it’s easy It’s simplified in the book If you’re a high performer and you and you and you address it in the way that I think and I discuss it in the book Around optimizing your output preparing your output to deliver yourself to deliver the output on demand

That’s required to achieve your objective. That’s not easy. It’s hard work. It’s hard work to be run a business and get up at five in the morning to train because that’s the only window of time you have to train for your bike race or to do it to not go out with, you know, to sacrifice a couple of areas because you’re choosing this.

It doesn’t mean you’re slacking. It means you’re just very focused and you’re aligning your actions with your purposes.

@28:29 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

It’s at the end of the day. And this measurement of success I’m thinking right now and the expression is, it’s another book that’s really popular right now.

But this idea of also measuring from where you came. know, I was reading, I was lucky enough to be pre reading your book before it’s launched on a train from Amsterdam to Hanover in between clients.

And here I am decades later after you and I first made those contacts in the 90s and you see, sounds poetic, but as I see

the European countryside zooming by me, I was reflecting back on all of the things that have happened to both of us over that time and how far we’ve come.

And so while there’s, I don’t know if this is directly related to this performance idea, it is to stop and take a minute to look out the window and measure success how far we’ve come, not just where we’re headed, not just Yeah, I mean, first, I think I’ll use a sport analogy of this one because it’s pretty simple.

@29:34 – Sporer (resync)

It helps clarify the little bit is that, you know, if you do, if you say my objective is to win the Olympic Games in discipline, in this sport, sport X, an individual event, I’m an 18 year old athlete, and I look at where it currently is, my objective might be realized in four to six years out.

Yeah, right. I can’t expect to win that now. And in sport, we actually are really smart about that because I think when we think about Olympic athletes, we do quadrennial planning.

We do, you know, each year we build on the prior year. We think how are we going to get there over these period of, let’s say it’s three or four years that we think it’s feasible.

We plan that out. We have benchmarks throughout that process and it might sound really familiar to you if you work in business.

@30:27 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

It’s not a metaphor.

@30:30 – Sporer (resync)

Yeah, it’s, it’s, but I think what we do is that is when we measure our performances along that way, our outputs, we have to be clear on what the outputs are for each of those stages, not whether you finish first or whether you finish second, but we’re actually pretty good at saying, no, we don’t expect you to win right now or we don’t expect you to finish at the top right now, but we expect you to be here by the end of this year.

or here by the end of next year. And so relative to your time perspective is like, and I actually see as a lot in young practitioners, young practitioners come in and they wanna work in sport and right away they wanna be working at the very top and they wanna have all this experience and they want to have a massive impact at the very top level.

But there’s a whole bunch of steps that go through to get to that space. And if you’ve only worked for a year or two or three years, your experience, your interactions with people, your ability to read situations is not the same as it is 15 years down the road.

And same thing in sport. If you’re a 20 year old athlete coming into a league that’s full of veterans who go up to 35, let’s say the NHL as an example, the nuances.

You read different personalities. How do you deal with certain situations and pressures and stress?

@32:00 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

Wisdom is a compilation of thousands and thousands of outputs and experiences. Yeah Experience You know I wrote down here like it’s about Planning your work in working your plan so that do I deserve to be disappointed?

Have I done what is required? This quadrillion plan this four-year plan Have I done the steps required? So that I Basically laid it all out there.

mean these are this seems to be one of those common sense, not common practice issues It’s a simplified book, but it all makes sense when we talk about it.

@32:42 – Sporer (resync)

So how do people get in their own way? Well, I think it’s a big thing. think one of the things that I just thought of when we were talking there is like You know, oh, is my step.

This is where I need to be I’ve gone through this progressive plan and I’m actually executing on my planet

across the way is one of the most important steps that I think gets missed a lot is that first step of being clear about what’s actually required and be honest about it.

so I’ve met many athletes over the last 25 years who know what they want to do. They want to be a professional athlete.

They want to be an Olympic champion. But at some different level, they’re either one not being honest about what’s required to do that, or their team around them is not being honest about what’s actually required to achieve that from where they are to where they need to be.

And or two, they’re not being honest about, and when I say what’s required, I’m not talking about the output at the end of the day, because I am talking about the output.

But what’s actually required to prepare yourself to deliver that output. Because if else, Put X is required and then you are here.

You may need to be put in the training hours. You may need to make sure that you’ve forcefully recover when your friends might be going out.

You may need to make sure that you’re taking the time to watch video or film because you need to understand what’s required to actually deliver that that.

need to prepare yourself to deliver that. There’s a disconnect between what they think that’s required and also what they’re willing to actually prepare and where they think they are relative to that.

It seems simple, right? It is simple. Actually, this is one of the things for the book, for me personally, I’ll just be vulnerable here for you.

But as I wrote the book and I went through the process, I kept struggling. probably in what’s saying, it’s too simple.

It’s, I’m simplifying it too much. But every time I went back to read it and then articulate how you people read it from the like, no, this is exactly what needs to be said.

so sometimes we try to think, make things a little more complicated. And to your question is saying, well, it just seems so common sense.

But, you know, when I talk to people about it, they miss these steps. It’s not, it may be common sense, but we don’t actually.

@35:32 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

Not common practice.

@35:34 – Sporer (resync)

Yeah. Yeah.

@35:36 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

Yeah. Or simply recover. We haven’t talked about that yet. And I wanted to say like that, I told you in that when we first connected.

@35:45 – Sporer (resync)

Yeah.

@35:46 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

You know where we’re going. This is stuck with me. So when Ben was our trainer, back in the late 90s, there was, you know, the bar was cheap on a Wednesday night.

So Wednesday night was when the group was going out. But Thursday was our day off or whatever the day was, right?

You would say, guys, would you please not go out the night before your day off so that your day off is actually a recovery day and not a hangover day?

And I’ve thought of you and failed at that so many times since then, but at 46 years old, I’m starting to listen to you, Ben.

@36:16 – Sporer (resync)

So I want to acknowledge that and thank you for it.

@36:18 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

you know, that forcibly recover to force yourself to recover, force yourself to step away so that you can stay energized.

@36:28 – Sporer (resync)

It’s also a really important part of this that can’t be missed either. Yeah, we see it in sport all the time, but we actually see it way more in the business world.

We see that the hustle culture, right? people talk about it.

@36:40 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

It’s a badge of honor. I only need five hours of sleep.

@36:43 – Sporer (resync)

It’s, you know, the first one into the office, the last one out. I’ve never been a big believer of that.

I believe that that’s don’t get wrong. mean, I’m not saying don’t work hard.

@36:54 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

It’s hard work.

@36:55 – Sporer (resync)

I’ve worked hard my whole life. I work hard at everything I do. But I also believe working hard. Smarter is better than working harder.

So I’m a good example of that is like working in extra two hours That are completely unproductive because you’re exhausted Versus going to get two hours of sleep and coming back the next day Are two hours of more additional sleep or having some downtime mentally to recharge and coming back the next day and and being more productive Is actually more productive now?

There’s times when you need to push it Just like in training there’s time when we need to go deeper To get the response that we want there’s times when you need to induce excessive fatigue So that you get adaptation Just like in life.

They’re but what I what I find is that and I go back to this Know when those times are But it’s not all the time And knowing those times are when you need it forcibly recover And I’ll go back to your example because I think it’s a really good example

If you’ve got a recovery day built into your training, right? And its purpose is to adapt to the training stresses that you put onto it in three or four days leading up to that.

And then you’re coming, you have a day off, and then the training plan to continue on that progression is going to target and hit you again.

Well, if you go in and mess up that recovery day and you turn the screws on a little bit harder and you’re not recovering, now you come back in when you should be more recovered to then put the next adaptations.

You don’t actually get that increased adaptation because your efforts in those training sessions are less. You actually get maladaptation over time.

And it gets, you probably get stagnant adaptation, but then if you keep doing that, you’ll get maladaptation, so less adaptation.

You’ll see performances become less. And so… If you’re someone that’s saying, I don’t need four hours sleep, I only need five hours sleep, I will not come to an I will work with an executive or a business person that says, I need five hours of sleep and then say, well, no, you have to take seven and a half hours sleep.

That’s the magic number. It’s not like I think that’s stupid. Like if I was to ever walk into someone’s environment and say that, it would be a fool to say that.

But what I would say is maybe try to get extra half hour here because all the research on sleep, there’s a window, there’s a personal window, all the research on sleep in the most part, will tell you that sleep extension, I have to 15 to 30 minutes, improves performance across variety of different variables.

cognition, decision making, time, up to a certain point. And that point might be seven to half, eight, nine hours, depending on the person and where they’re coming from.

But if you’re at five hours of sleep at night or four and a half hours of sleep at night.

And, you know, if I just say, hey, try to get 30 more minutes a day. That’s still not a lot of sleep.

But you’ll see your performance is improved. You’ll feel more energized. Is it optimal? Maybe not. Maybe the next step is like once you realize that you’re at this space of being able to go, okay, I actually feel I’m getting more done.

I’m not like I’m actually not falling behind. I’m actually more productive. Let’s try another 15 minutes, right? Let’s take it in these micro doses or micro steps along the way.

That goes back to speak to your aspect of time, right?

@40:38 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

Yeah, yeah. And intentionality. So being honest about what you want and what’s realistic and being really intentional. Those are kind of a couple of key takeaway messages for me and far from over simplistic.

And when I read the book, I just felt your use of story, your ability to be relatable while speaking.

about Olympic level performances was really profound and the translation from sport being a metaphor to being exactly the same to anyone trying to achieve certain levels of a performance in their own personal lives was there and it was an honor to read it and honor to have you as a guest.

Where can people find the book and find you?

@41:22 – Sporer (resync)

A book is output-book.com that’s the website for the book and all the links there it’s on Amazon it’s on Indigo it’s on El Bride at least across the world.

I’m at I’m on LinkedIn just Ben’s Sporer on Instagram it’s a book and Twitter it’s Ben’s Fork HD on Twitter so that’s pretty much where you can meet.

@41:48 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

We will we will link to all those.

@41:51 – Sporer (resync)

It’s been amazing.

@41:52 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

Really enjoyed. my pleasure Ben honors mine and we’ll have all of that information in the show notes wherever you get your podcasts and

@42:00 – Sporer (resync)

Yeah, I really appreciate your time great.