Matt Fitzgerald > Quotes

“Gratitude” is about letting go of desired outcomes and fully embracing the privilege and process of pursuing goals and dreams. “Believe” refers to the confidence that arises naturally through this process, a self-trust that is the antithesis of the doubt-fueled fixation on goals and dreams expressed in Siri’s nightly fantasy of having the perfect race at the 2000 Olympics. Siri”
― Fitzgerald Matt, How Bad Do You Want It?: Mastering the Psychology of Mind over Muscle

“One cannot improve as an endurance athlete except by changing one’s relationship with perception of effort.”
― Matt Fitzgerald, How Bad Do You Want It?: Mastering the Psychology of Mind over Muscle

“Low-intensity, high-volume training develops the sort of suffering tolerance that enhances fatigue resistance more effectively than does speed-based training. Fast runs may hurt more, but long runs hurt longer. The slow-burn type of suffering that runners experience in longer, less intense workouts is more specific to racing.”
― Matt Fitzgerald, 80/20 Running: Run Stronger and Race Faster by Training Slower

“Studies on the phenomenon indicate that a person with a high tolerance for pain is likely to also have above-average capacity to cope with the stress of a job layoff or a cancer diagnosis, and this same person is more likely as well to have experienced a moderate amount of psychological trauma in his or her past. It would appear that a certain amount of misfortune is needed to toughen the mind against suffering and hardship, but excessive trauma leaves scar tissue.”
― Matt Fitzgerald, How Bad Do You Want It? Mastering the Psychology of Mind over Muscle

“What is the logic of punishing yourself each day, of striving to become better, more efficient, tougher?” He went on to answer his own question. “The value in it is what you learn about yourself. In this sort of situation all kinds of qualities come out—things that you may not have seen in yourself before.”
― Matt Fitzgerald, How Bad Do You Want It? Mastering the Psychology of Mind over Muscle

“More often, they insist that their advantage lies not in having more to give but rather in being able to give more of what they have. Past”
― Fitzgerald Matt, How Bad Do You Want It?: Mastering the Psychology of Mind over Muscle

“The vast majority of runners, however, seldom train at a truly comfortable intensity. Instead, they push themselves a little day after day, often without realizing it. If the typical elite runner does four easy runs for every hard run, the average recreationally competitive runner—and odds are, you’re one of them—does just one easy run for every hard run. Simply put: Running too hard too often is the single most common and detrimental mistake in the sport.”
― Matt Fitzgerald, 80/20 Running: Run Stronger and Race Faster by Training Slower

“Every athlete who has pushed beyond his or her known limits of endurance in the quest for improvement understands these sentiments. There is no experience quite like that of driving yourself to the point of wanting to give up and then not giving up. In that moment of “raw reality,” as Mark Allen has called it, when something inside you asks, How bad do you want it?, an inner curtain is drawn open, revealing a part of you that is not seen except in moments of crisis. And when your answer is to keep pushing, you come away from the trial with the kind of self-knowledge and self-respect that can’t be bought.”
― Matt Fitzgerald, How Bad Do You Want It?: Mastering the Psychology of Mind over Muscle

“It is important to understand that the duration of exercise matters far more than does the intensity of exercise with respect to the goal of enhancing fatigue resistance in the brain. What counts is not how hard the muscles are working but rather how long the brain is required to stay focused on the task at hand. In fact, research has shown that the brain can be fatigued at rest in a way that increases fatigue resistance and physical endurance.”
― Matt Fitzgerald, 80/20 Running: Run Stronger and Race Faster by Training Slower

“Trent Stellingwerff, a Canadian exercise physiologist and coach, who administers carb-fasted training with elite runners, including 2:10 marathoner Reed Coolsaet.”
― Matt Fitzgerald, The Endurance Diet: Discover the 5 Core Habits of the World's Greatest Athletes to Look, Feel, and Perform Better

“The less we choose to need, and the less we rely on comfortable, favorable circumstances for peace of mind, the more control we have over our thoughts, emotions, and behavior. “Pain is the purifier,” he taught. “Walk towards suffering. Love suffering. Embrace it.”
― Matt Fitzgerald, The Comeback Quotient: A Get-Real Guide to Building Mental Fitness in Sport and Life

“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive, well-preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, wine in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming, ‘Woo-hoo! What a ride.”
― Matt Fitzgerald, Diet Cults

“It’s all about expectations – hell’s a bit more bearable when you always knew you were going there.”
― Matt Fitzgerald, Iron War: Two Incredible Athletes. One Epic Rivalry. The Greatest Race of All Time.

“Tolerance for suffering is also trainable. Once a runner has discovered that she can suffer more than she thought she could, her perception of effort changes in a lasting way.”
― Matt Fitzgerald, 80/20 Running: Run Stronger and Race Faster by Training Slower

“The week of slow is the running equivalent of a juice fast. Some people use short-term juice fasts to hit the reset button on their diet. The fast is not an end in itself. The goal is to make permanent changes to their diet, replacing bad habits with good ones. But instead of just making these changes from one day to the next, they first take a few days to break their attachments to the old habits by consuming nothing but healthy fruit and vegetable juices. Then, once they are no longer craving potato chips or whatever else, they return to a normal but improved diet.”
― Matt Fitzgerald, 80/20 Running: Run Stronger and Race Faster by Training Slower

“Mindless performance may be especially helpful in endurance sports because of the supreme importance of the capacity to suffer. The more science and technical detail an athlete incorporates into the training process, the more distracted he becomes from the only thing that really matters: getting out the door and going hard.”
― Matt Fitzgerald, Iron War: Dave Scott, Mark Allen, & the Greatest Race Ever Run

“Starting today, you’re retired. The way you look at this sport and the pressure you put on yourself are just all wrong. You started doing triathlon because you loved it. Let’s go back to that. Let’s just see how fit, how fast, and how strong Siri Lindley can be—and have fun doing it.”
― Matt Fitzgerald, How Bad Do You Want It?: Mastering the Psychology of Mind over Muscle

“The magnitude of the satisfaction that a triathlete experiences upon crossing a finish line is directly proportional to the amount of suffering he has overcome to to get there. This reward knows no ability. Even the slowest of the slow can push themselves beyond existing limits and finish with tremendous satisfaction. But winning often demands and inspires the greatest suffering and thus confers the greatest sense of pride. Often, because of the nature of competition, it is precisely he who has the most guts who is the fastest and experiences the most intense fulfillment at the finish line.

Theoretically, then, the most deeply satisfying experience a triathlete could have in the sport (and among the best in life) would occur at the finish line of a race in which he has overcome as much suffering as he could possibly ever endure, and knows it.”
― Matt Fitzgerald, Iron War: Dave Scott, Mark Allen, and the Greatest Race Ever Run

“The truth of the matter is that the stronger or more capable the body is, the weaker or lazier the mind can afford to be.”
― Matt Fitzgerald, How Bad Do You Want It?: Mastering the Psychology of Mind Over Muscle

“That it’s possible. You just have to fight. It will not be easy. But you can manage. Because life is giving you as much pain as you are capable [of living] with. And on the end of that path, the goal will be reachable. You will have suffered to do [it], but it doesn’t matter.” I can think of no better words to encapsulate what it means to accept the reality of a difficult situation. It will not be easy. You will suffer. But it doesn’t matter.”
― Matt Fitzgerald, The Comeback Quotient: A Get-Real Guide to Building Mental Fitness in Sport and Life

“According to the brain-centered model of exercise performance, a runner achieves his race goal when his brain calculates that achieving the race goal is possible without catastrophic self-harm.”
― Matt FItzgerald

“Confidence is not some nonphysical quality snatched from the spiritual dimension and installed in the mind. It is the feeling that arises when the body's knowledge of itself is in harmony with a person's dreams.”
― Matt Fitzgerald, RUN

“Even most training errors, such as overtraining, originate in the fear of suffering.”
― Matt Fitzgerald, How Bad Do You Want It?: Mastering the Psychology of Mind Over Muscle

“Where do such numbers come from? I’ll tell you where they don’t come from: They don’t come from the body-weight tables and formulas created by health experts. These tables and formulas, which include height-weight charts used by life insurance companies and body-mass index guidelines used widely by doctors, are far too general to help individual men and women determine an ideal body weight.”
― Velopress, Racing Weight: How to Get Lean for Peak Performance, 2nd Edition

“Molly almost goes out of her way to describe how loving and supportive her parents have always been, emphasizing in particular the fact that, while she was growing up, her mom couldn’t have cared less whether Molly ran or didn’t run, and if she ran, whether she ran well or poorly, as long as she was happy.”
― Matt Fitzgerald, The Comeback Quotient: A Get-Real Guide to Building Mental Fitness in Sport and Life

“Refined grains (regular old spaghetti being an example), fatty meats (hard salami), sweets (blueberry pie), and fried foods (bacon) are not poisonous. They are foods that just happen to be less wholesome than some other foods. There”
― Matt Fitzgerald, The New Rules of Marathon and Half-Marathon Nutrition: A Cutting-Edge Plan to Fuel Your Body Beyond "the Wall"

“Bracing yourself—always expecting your next race to be your hardest yet—is a much more mature and effective way to prepare mentally for competition.”
― Fitzgerald Matt, How Bad Do You Want It?: Mastering the Psychology of Mind over Muscle

“His key insight was that yearning, or wishing things were different than they are, is the root of all suffering, and that letting go of this desire is the secret to happiness.”
― Matt Fitzgerald, The Comeback Quotient: A Get-Real Guide to Building Mental Fitness in Sport and Life

“The Seven-Hour Standard is doing seven hours of running per week distributed across either six days with one day of absolute rest or seven days with one day of relative rest.”
― Matt Fitzgerald, Run Like a Pro (Even If You're Slow): Elite Tools and Tips for Runners at Every Level

“By far the most important contributor to bone health is weight-bearing exercise.”
― Matt Fitzgerald, Diet Cults