Your Memory Sucks

If you are going through training for a mountaineering journey, don't fool yourself into thinking your memory is reliable. This episode explores why this is an important subject to be aware of and a simple strategy to help. 

Episode Transcript:

[0:00] All right, hello, hello, ladies and gentlemen. So in today's episode,

[0:03] we are talking all about how your memory sucks. And if you're a mountaineer who is taking their training seriously, you should not be relying on your memory as much as you can. Now, let me explain this and kind of where I'm coming from here. Now, if I asked you to talk me through the exact details of what you did for training last week? Most people probably could give me a pretty good answer. You could probably tell me, okay, on Monday I did this, and Tuesday I did this, and Wednesday I did this, yada, yada, yada. You could probably tell me exactly what sessions you did, what felt hard, what felt easy. You probably, for strength training, be able to tell me what type of weights or reps you did for cardio or intervals. You could give me some good guidelines, that. If we were looking at last week, most people would be pretty good there. If I ask you to talk me through this from two weeks ago, You know, most people, not old people, but most people can probably remember most of it. Some things may be a bit misremembered. Some of the specifics might not be quite there, like the reps or the weight or the speeds. If you've had a particularly busy or stressful week and you're like, oh my gosh, I can't even remember two weeks ago, that may be a little bit tricky.

[1:23] Three weeks ago, if I asked you to tell me what you did with your training three weeks ago, Most people still right now are going to think, okay, I probably know what I did. And most people will give some confident answers. But more than likely, even in a perfect world, if you haven't had a stressful week or things haven't been going on, you're probably going to get a substantial amount of it wrong. You may misremember certain days you did certain sessions. You may misremember how hard certain things felt. You may mix up your weights or your speeds or whatever it may be. If we took that out to four weeks you probably barely have an idea if you took it out for two months there's no chance at all you could give me a good clear and accurate description of what your training was like two months ago if you're relying on your memory we all think our memory is pretty good we all think we can think back but if you actually put it to the test and put it against something that's actually a record we'll find out that.

[2:22] In reality, your memory is not incredibly reliable and you need to be aware of this. Because one of the biggest mistakes I see from mountaineers with their training is thinking they can actually rely on their memory. They can rely on knowing what they did previously, what they did week by week or whatever may be. But when it comes to the situation where they actually need to look back and they actually need to look back and see what they've done, really, really, really, really, it is important to know, you know, it ends up falling short.

[2:54] Now, there are a few situations where this is tricky because if you're misremembering things, it can really, really trip you up with your training. And this is both short and long-term. Now, in short-term, when we're talking about week by week or every couple of weeks or whatever may be, you know, this can really realistically just get in the way of us tracking our progress and making sure we're having a slow and steady build-up. Because if you're doing your strength training and you're just relying on memory for how much weight you did each week with exercises or how much how many repetitions you did with each, exercises you know what if you're not getting that right you may not really be progressing you may go really hard one week and the next week be quite a bit lighter and then the next week and quite a bit heavier and just kind of all over the shop i've seen this so many times over the years of people who are in the gym every single week but they're just constantly kind of guessing with their weights because I don't really know what they're doing.

[3:48] Or if you're doing something like interval training, tracking what speeds or resistance you do, whatever it may be. In the short term, just relying on your memory can often just get in the way of that short-term progress and that consistent progress, which is bad enough. But where this really, really, really comes into problem and can really, really, really hold you back is when we are looking at the long-term. And realistically, when we are looking and trying to look backwards and do a little bit detective work around what you did three weeks ago or four weeks ago or five weeks ago or whatever may be. And this is where it's really, really, really important. And this is the type of thing where you don't realize how important it is until you need it.

[4:28] And it can be really tricky because there will often be situations in our training journeys and in our training lives where we do need to look back on the previous weeks and months to do some detective work and just figure out what's going on. A classic example of this is if you get an ache or pain creeping up in your training. Now, sometimes with an ache or pain, we can be like, okay, cool. I got it on this day from this exercise, from this workout. It's very, very easy to pin down. But all too often, it's not a single incident that causes stuff. All too often, it kind of creeps up out of nowhere. And all too often, you're like, well, I don't really actually know what caused it. So one of the most important things to do in this situation is be able to look back in the last two or three or four or five weeks worth of training and really get a good idea around how much you've been doing, how the body's been feeling, what's been going on. And if you're just purely trying to rely on memory here, well, it's not really going to work. And that in itself is one of one significant reason why so many people, especially endurance athletes, struggle with pain and they just can't find a solution because they just do not know what's going on and what's sort of contributing to it.

[5:37] Or another classic example, and it's very, very similar to this, is energy. Like, you know, if you're going through periods of low energy, it's often useful to look back what you did the last two or three or four weeks. And if you're trying to remember and your memory is not so great, you may be working off false information. Or another situation, if you have been training and you feel like you've been training really, really hard and you feel like you've been training really, really consistent, but you're not really seeing results, you're not seeing the improvements that you want.

[6:06] You may just be completely deluding yourself in regards to how much you're actually doing. And I cannot tell you the amount of times and the amount of conversations I've had with people over the years who really think that they've been doing everything right. They're really convinced that they've been ticking things off and being consistent and this and that. And when you actually investigate it and you say, okay, what did you do last week? Well, I did 75% of my sessions. What did you do the week before? Oh, I missed this session. What did I do on energy, not energy, we're just relying on memory, that can sometimes give us a false sense of confidence if we're deluding ourselves there. Or even a longer-term thing, if we have a tough expedition, say we train for six months leading into an expedition, we get on the mountain, we're like, wow, that was way tougher than it needed to be. Something was tough there. Trying to rely on our memory for what we actually did in our training, it's going to fall short. Or on the flip side, if we have a really great expedition, we're like, yeah, awesome. I felt great. Well, memory of what we need to replicate can sometimes be a little bit tricky. So all of these situations, we can sort of say, okay, if we're looking backwards and memory isn't super reliable, well, it can get us into a bit of trouble.

[7:21] So what's the solution here? Well, you've probably thought about it already, but it's literally just track your training. Keep a record and keep a log of what you were doing with your training. When you do sessions and what you do. That's it. It doesn't have to be more complicated than that. Take the memory out of the equation. Don't go into this thinking your memory is better than everyone else. Don't delude yourself thinking you can remember what's happened a month ago.

[7:50] Track your training please now there are so many ways you can go about this and so many different levels of it at one end of the scale if you love planning you love tracking and you're probably already tracking your training if you absolutely love it but you can go down the route of keeping a meticulous log of everything you can track every minute you do of cardio with heart rate with pacing with speed with all of that you can track every single repetition and set of strength how much you do weight and this and that. You can keep these great spreadsheets of saying exactly what you did every single day. And that's great. And this absolutely can be super useful. But if you are a little bit averse to this and you're like, oh, you know, I just do not enjoy that. It doesn't have to be that complicated. That absolutely works, but it's not the only way.

[8:38] If you hate this type of thing, don't think it's all or nothing.

[8:41] You don't have to go that deep. At the very, very, very least, keep a calendar where you can just tick off the days that you do sessions. Say, okay, Monday I did a strength session, Wednesday I did this, and keep a log in a calendar of what you've done. And just have somewhere where you can just write down notes which are significant. About, okay, today I was super sore on my knees. Today I was really low energy. Today I really pushed it, or whatever it may be. And just keep a few little notes here. And even better if you can keep a running log of what weights you use so you're not trying to figure things out every week but just keep a little notepad in your phone of just like what weights you did on what exercises or whatever but please do something do that bare minimum it's so important for a long-term training journey for me as a coach when i'm working with people and we have to do a bit of detective work and we're like hey we actually need to investigate this or see what's going on or maybe someone who's just coming with me brand new and i'm like hey what happened for your last expedition, what's the issue? It's really, really, really hard to give good direction when we can't get a clear record. Because if someone's pulled up with pain and they got knee pain, like I don't know where it came from. And I ask you, okay, what have you done the last four weeks of training? We look back on their training logs and it's all empty.

[9:51] Well, it's really, really tricky. So as a coach, if you're working with a professional, it's so valuable for them. And if you're training yourself, then you need that data there because again, your memory sucks. You do not be overconfident with your memory. It cannot be trusted. It cannot be relied on when it comes down to this stuff. And you do not want just your memory and you misremembering things be the major reason why your training is not successful, why you're not seeing the results you want, why you can't get out of pain, and ultimately why you fail on your expeditions or they just feel harder purely for this such a simple thing.

[10:26] So that's my call out today. If you are going through a training journey and you are not doing the bare minimum of tracking, now's the time to start. Make it happen. I promise you it is so important. And if you're already doing this and you're ticking things off, great, keep on doing it. And if you're the type of person who you're like, I'm not really convinced, I can just remember what I did. Maybe you can think back to three or four weeks ago what you did. That's great. But let me ask you, what if you have a super busy week at work? What if you get sick? What if something comes up which takes over your thoughts?

[11:01] They always do, and that's going to make things even tougher. Don't rely on it. Don't fall short. Track your sessions. I cannot stress it enough.

[11:10] So with that being said, I'm going to wrap things up here. Last thing I will sort of say is, you know, as I always do on this podcast, if you were interested in getting a bit of help with your training, the way we go about our tracking through our online personal training for mountaineering is through our training app. You know, some people don't like Excel spreadsheets and don't like, you know, complicated things or whatever it may be, which is absolutely fair enough. Beauty of the training app is you have all your sessions logged in there, and it's very, very, very simple where you just tick things off if you complete it. For people who like a little bit more data, like a little bit more structure or whatever it may be and getting into the nitty gritty, you can add in all your reps and weights and all of that. But it does make things quite simple in regards to keeping that measure. Now, there are a million and one training apps out there, so maybe that's another route you can go down yourself. Or if you're interested in finding out what we do and how we help mountaineers, you can you can go to summitstrength.com.au slash mountaineer. On that page, there's a big video, talks a lot about our program. And if it sounds like something you wanna learn a little bit more about, there's a link to that page. You can book a free call with that team for a chat. So with that being said, if you wanna find out more, go to summitstrength.com.au slash mountaineer, and we can take it from there. So thank you so much for listening. I hope this helps a few people. I hope it prompts a few people to start taking this seriously. And I really do think it will make a difference for you over the long term. So thanks for listening. We'll talk to you soon. Bye. Thank you.

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