8 ms·

Relax for the same result (2015)

194 points by absolute100 4y ago

absolute100 4y ago
"When I notice that I’m all stressed out about something or driving myself to exhaustion, I remember that bike ride and try dialing back my effort by 50 percent. It’s been amazing how often everything gets done just as well and just as fast, with what feels like half the effort." -- Listen to Derek Sivers.
Aeolun 4y ago
This isn’t super surprising. Going 5km/h faster when you’re already going 20km/h takes just as much effort as going those 20km/h in the first place. If you keep pushing yourself to 25km/h at the start, you’ll end your ride exhausted and going 15km/h.
- ajuc 4y ago
  Also depends on topography and road quality and where you choose to push hard vs relax. Same effort on a bad part of the road will gain you less time and waste more energy than if you relaxed on that part and pushed hard on the good parts. I've noticed recently that I'm more exhausted (to the point of "hitting the wall" and doing under 10 km/h for the last 5 km) when I'm going 30 km to my parents than after 110 km ride from Lublin to Kazimierz Dolny and back. The main difference is that the first half of the road to my parents is on a shitty brick-paved bike path and it's consistently slightly uphill for like 20 km. The other road is mostly asphalt country roads and small hills and downs every 100 meters so you can rest every few minutes.
dcampagnola 4y ago
The same feeling I had with the car: to go to my girlfriend's house, I have to drive for 40 minutes. I've always driven that 40 minutes at full 130 km/h speed, stressing about traffic and jumping from lane to lane. Once I decided to drive differently in the slowest lane, enjoying the ride with a nice podcast, not worrying about the traffic and with an average speed of 110km/h. The result was that I really enjoyed the ride and it took me ~43 minutes.
- WesolyKubeczek 4y ago
  Exactly. I had a lot of driver pass me quite aggressively (while I was going at speed limit or maybe 1-2 kph less) only to stop at red lights in 300 meters or park near a grocery store in 400 meters. I cannot understand their thinking, if this kind of road rage can have any thinking behind it at all. Those milliseconds saved likely mean a lot to them. The winter is coming, and at least here in Europe all signs are that energy — be it gasoline or diesel or electricity — are going to be quite expensive. For any kind of vehicle out there, the only practical way to save fuel is to drive smoothly, in a relaxed way, without sudden acceleration/deceleration, and not at all at highway speeds. As far as I know, no type of commercially sold vehicle has its optimum speed for maximising range close to highway speeds. Maybe it’s not true about some sport vehicles produced in dozen units total. Could as well just relax and save money, too.
  - bittercynic 4y ago
    I used to be one of the aggressive weavers, and I think I was engaging in a very stupid attempt at activism - "I'll teach these slow sleepy drivers to wake up so we can all get to our destinations more efficiently." Of course, that is completely futile and I was just being a jerk. Life is much better if you regard the other drivers as your fellow humans, and remember that we're all in this together. Being default-courteous has helped me be much more relaxed and happy.
    - orzig 4y ago
      Thanks, it is too rare that we hear perspectives like this
jp57 4y ago
Some sports skills, like driving a golf ball or serving in tennis, require relaxation. You hit the ball much harder if you are relaxed than if you try to "muscle it". In tennis, at least, the principle really applies to the whole game. As my coach said, "you won't play well if you're thinking about winning." It reminds me of the Taoist poem by Chuang Tzu that Thomas Merton translated as "The Need to Win": If an archer is shooting for nothing He has all his skill. If he shoots for a brass buckle He is already nervous. If he shoots for a prize of gold He goes blind Or sees two targets— He is out of his mind! His skill has not changed But the prize divides him. He cares. He thinks more of winning Than of shooting— And the need to win Drains him of power. [EDIT: Trying to figure out how to get single-spaced line breaks here. Not much poetry on HN, I guess. :-)]
- infinityio 4y ago
  I think code blocks might allow for it, at least in clients that apply formatting?
toolslive 4y ago
E = 0.5mv^2 To go a little bit faster you need way more energy or vice-versa: going a bit slower saves you a lot of energy.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  KE isn't really relevant except in repeated braking. It's air resistance scaling as F=kv^2 or P=kv^3 that does it. Doubling the effort drops time by just over 20% in the aero dominated regime. Perceived doubling of effort is more likely 30-50% more power which is 8-13% less time. You're often faster saving those muscles for taking off from the lights or climbing the hill in a commute type situation than adding 2-7kph to the straight.
mejutoco 4y ago
There is a saying in Spanish that perfectly encapsulates the idea of this article: "vísteme despacio que tengo prisa" (dress me slowly, — because — I am in a hurry).
tompazourek 4y ago
People who practice playing musical instruments eventually learn something similar. You shouldn't really push hard, you need to be relaxed and then the speed will come. Plus it's also lot more enjoyable.
obilgic 4y ago
It might be that all the prior 43-min practices made the 45 min ride feel relaxed...
- kirse 4y ago
  Yea, 43 -> 45 minutes is a 5% decrease in performance, which sounds small but actually is pretty significant for any trained athlete. That's 15 seconds if you're running a 5:00 mile. In cycling particularly you have all sorts of day-of considerations like hydration incl. electrolyte balances, RBC counts, sleep debt, glycogen levels etc. Even just having some carb-heavy meals a few days in a row would potentially affect his RPE. But none of that takes away from his deloading principle.
luigi23 4y ago
love it, also liked video animation of that essay: https://youtu.be/amS0u15AL14 https://youtu.be/amS0u15AL14
dang 4y ago
Related: Relax for the Same Result (2015) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23639404 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23639404 - June 2020 (47 comments)
hot_gril 4y ago
The idea makes sense for work, but I don't buy that biking leisurely makes you move the same speed. What made the biggest difference for me was training, and the author maybe got faster from all the hard riding before testing the easy riding. I also used to ride that Santa Monica path all the time, and there are some tight turns with sand on the path. Maybe biking hard then wasting energy braking on those turns negatively impacted the time, but idk, there aren't enough of those turns to make a big difference.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  When biking having leftover reserves for the hill or the traffic lights saves a lot more time than using it up on the flat. The actual output between a moderate effort and going as hard as you can is a 20-30% in terms of wattage, but that only translates to 5%-10% speed increase because the power required to overcome wind resistance scales with the third power of velocity. If that comes at a cost of a 5% power decrease (where power is proportional to velocity and you spend a greater amount of time per unit distance) on the hill because you're exhausted then the gains can wind up being minimal.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- sdeframond 4y ago
  He most likely got exhausted very quickly and couldn't recover because he kept pushing. So he was actually riding pretty slow for the rest of the ride. Endurance athletes know well that one has to start slow, warm up and get to cruising speed in order to achieve good times. Sprinting does not work. Edit: actually, starting running was enlightening for me. I realized that, as for running, one has to work at 70% of their capacity most of the time and get ample recovery time to really improve. Then one can be effortlessly good and nice to work with. Scrum talks a lot about "sprint" but, somehow, recovery time was lost in the analogy. Sprinters actually rest far longer than they run.
  - hot_gril 4y ago
    If he meant that he sprint-biked from the start, that will surely give a worse time. Nobody can keep that up for 21mi.
robocat 4y ago
“A pelican flew right over me in Marina del Rey. When I looked up to say ‘wow!’ he shit in my mouth. I can still remember that taste of digested shellfish. I had to laugh at the novelty of it.”
- jamesgeck0 4y ago
  It feels like washing bird poop out of his mouth could have accounted for the extra two minutes all on its own.
- exodust 4y ago
  If only he'd ridden at maximum effort like usual, he would have avoided the bird incident. Honestly the bird shitting in his mouth steals the show. What an unfortunate and disgusting thing to happen! Even though his point about enjoying exercise is valid, the 2 minutes of pushing hard would translate into more burnt calories and muscle growth than what a casual ride would deliver.
  - baby 4y ago
    Yeah that’s what bothers me as well. Muscle growth is discounted here. The distance and the time are meaningless. Of course pleasure riding along is a good metric but it was also always discounted until that one last ride.
hghar 4y ago
From the Tim Ferris podcast the episode with Hugh Jackman, they are talking about the 85% rule which is about how relaxation is linked to high performance, for example elite athletes don’t tensión going full 100% but just 85% and you’ll go faster than if you think I’ll go full in because you are relaxed you can perform better you use your resources more wisely, nice article.
- takotab 4y ago
  The principle behind it is called polarized training. Multiple studies have been done at this point. There are still tiny disagreements but the general idea well tested. I’m using it as well for schema’s as well and works like charm, people go faster and training is more enjoyable
  - therealdrag0 4y ago
    What do you mean “for schemas”?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
avgcorrection 4y ago
That’s nonsense. You have wheels. It’s easy to go 100% and not get much in return for that extra effort.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
adhesive_wombat 4y ago
Obvious non-transport analogies aside, this was absolutely my experience when commuting across London by bike. Rushing just stressed you out and didn't really get you anywhere. The same goes for driving. On a highway, you can go as fast as you can (70 in the clear; whatever the vehicle in front is doing when not, so probably averaging low 60s on a moderately busy motorway). This requires a lot of concentration as you need to constantly plot a way forward through the traffic. Or you can sit behind an HGV in lane one and just do 55 all the way. Listen to music or an audiobook maybe. Total journey cost is a few minutes, but you arrive able to function rather then needing a coffee and a calm down to recover from the drive. The benefit is even less in the city as you can aggressively tailgate all you want, but at best you'll get through only a small handful of lights one cycle earlier over the entire journey.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- BonoboIO 4y ago
  Stressful driving is the worst … I try to avoid. It costs so much energy, is dangerous and risky. On long distance drives with my car I enjoy driving fast. In Austria the speedlimit is 130kmh, driving 145kmh kill the monotony … casual overtaking, nothing worse to drive 3 or 4 hours with the same pace. In Germany 80% if the highways are unlimited, 160kmh is really nice traveling speed.
  - Tarsul 4y ago
    Found 80% too high, so I looked it up and it's around 60% (would be 70% if there weren't temporary limits), which is still a lot.
- stemlord 4y ago
  Its hard to not rush on my commute where arriving at the station 10 seconds too late could result in waiting 10 more minutes for the next train, which could be the difference between being considered late to the office or not
gotdan5647 4y ago

194 points by absolute100 4y ago

"When I notice that I’m all stressed out about something or driving myself to exhaustion, I remember that bike ride and try dialing back my effort by 50 percent. It’s been amazing how often everything gets done just as well and just as fast, with what feels like half the effort." -- Listen to Derek Sivers.

Aeolun 4y ago

This isn’t super surprising. Going 5km/h faster when you’re already going 20km/h takes just as much effort as going those 20km/h in the first place. If you keep pushing yourself to 25km/h at the start, you’ll end your ride exhausted and going 15km/h.

ajuc 4y ago
Also depends on topography and road quality and where you choose to push hard vs relax. Same effort on a bad part of the road will gain you less time and waste more energy than if you relaxed on that part and pushed hard on the good parts. I've noticed recently that I'm more exhausted (to the point of "hitting the wall" and doing under 10 km/h for the last 5 km) when I'm going 30 km to my parents than after 110 km ride from Lublin to Kazimierz Dolny and back. The main difference is that the first half of the road to my parents is on a shitty brick-paved bike path and it's consistently slightly uphill for like 20 km. The other road is mostly asphalt country roads and small hills and downs every 100 meters so you can rest every few minutes.

dcampagnola 4y ago

The same feeling I had with the car: to go to my girlfriend's house, I have to drive for 40 minutes. I've always driven that 40 minutes at full 130 km/h speed, stressing about traffic and jumping from lane to lane. Once I decided to drive differently in the slowest lane, enjoying the ride with a nice podcast, not worrying about the traffic and with an average speed of 110km/h. The result was that I really enjoyed the ride and it took me ~43 minutes.

WesolyKubeczek 4y ago
Exactly. I had a lot of driver pass me quite aggressively (while I was going at speed limit or maybe 1-2 kph less) only to stop at red lights in 300 meters or park near a grocery store in 400 meters. I cannot understand their thinking, if this kind of road rage can have any thinking behind it at all. Those milliseconds saved likely mean a lot to them. The winter is coming, and at least here in Europe all signs are that energy — be it gasoline or diesel or electricity — are going to be quite expensive. For any kind of vehicle out there, the only practical way to save fuel is to drive smoothly, in a relaxed way, without sudden acceleration/deceleration, and not at all at highway speeds. As far as I know, no type of commercially sold vehicle has its optimum speed for maximising range close to highway speeds. Maybe it’s not true about some sport vehicles produced in dozen units total. Could as well just relax and save money, too.
- bittercynic 4y ago
  I used to be one of the aggressive weavers, and I think I was engaging in a very stupid attempt at activism - "I'll teach these slow sleepy drivers to wake up so we can all get to our destinations more efficiently." Of course, that is completely futile and I was just being a jerk. Life is much better if you regard the other drivers as your fellow humans, and remember that we're all in this together. Being default-courteous has helped me be much more relaxed and happy.
  - orzig 4y ago
    Thanks, it is too rare that we hear perspectives like this

jp57 4y ago

Some sports skills, like driving a golf ball or serving in tennis, require relaxation. You hit the ball much harder if you are relaxed than if you try to "muscle it". In tennis, at least, the principle really applies to the whole game. As my coach said, "you won't play well if you're thinking about winning." It reminds me of the Taoist poem by Chuang Tzu that Thomas Merton translated as "The Need to Win": If an archer is shooting for nothing He has all his skill. If he shoots for a brass buckle He is already nervous. If he shoots for a prize of gold He goes blind Or sees two targets— He is out of his mind! His skill has not changed But the prize divides him. He cares. He thinks more of winning Than of shooting— And the need to win Drains him of power. [EDIT: Trying to figure out how to get single-spaced line breaks here. Not much poetry on HN, I guess. :-)]

infinityio 4y ago
I think code blocks might allow for it, at least in clients that apply formatting?

toolslive 4y ago

E = 0.5mv^2 To go a little bit faster you need way more energy or vice-versa: going a bit slower saves you a lot of energy.

Schroedingersat 4y ago
KE isn't really relevant except in repeated braking. It's air resistance scaling as F=kv^2 or P=kv^3 that does it. Doubling the effort drops time by just over 20% in the aero dominated regime. Perceived doubling of effort is more likely 30-50% more power which is 8-13% less time. You're often faster saving those muscles for taking off from the lights or climbing the hill in a commute type situation than adding 2-7kph to the straight.

mejutoco 4y ago

There is a saying in Spanish that perfectly encapsulates the idea of this article: "vísteme despacio que tengo prisa" (dress me slowly, — because — I am in a hurry).

tompazourek 4y ago

People who practice playing musical instruments eventually learn something similar. You shouldn't really push hard, you need to be relaxed and then the speed will come. Plus it's also lot more enjoyable.

obilgic 4y ago

It might be that all the prior 43-min practices made the 45 min ride feel relaxed...

kirse 4y ago
Yea, 43 -> 45 minutes is a 5% decrease in performance, which sounds small but actually is pretty significant for any trained athlete. That's 15 seconds if you're running a 5:00 mile. In cycling particularly you have all sorts of day-of considerations like hydration incl. electrolyte balances, RBC counts, sleep debt, glycogen levels etc. Even just having some carb-heavy meals a few days in a row would potentially affect his RPE. But none of that takes away from his deloading principle.

luigi23 4y ago

love it, also liked video animation of that essay: https://youtu.be/amS0u15AL14 https://youtu.be/amS0u15AL14

dang 4y ago

Related: Relax for the Same Result (2015) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23639404 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23639404 - June 2020 (47 comments)

hot_gril 4y ago

The idea makes sense for work, but I don't buy that biking leisurely makes you move the same speed. What made the biggest difference for me was training, and the author maybe got faster from all the hard riding before testing the easy riding. I also used to ride that Santa Monica path all the time, and there are some tight turns with sand on the path. Maybe biking hard then wasting energy braking on those turns negatively impacted the time, but idk, there aren't enough of those turns to make a big difference.

Schroedingersat 4y ago
When biking having leftover reserves for the hill or the traffic lights saves a lot more time than using it up on the flat. The actual output between a moderate effort and going as hard as you can is a 20-30% in terms of wattage, but that only translates to 5%-10% speed increase because the power required to overcome wind resistance scales with the third power of velocity. If that comes at a cost of a 5% power decrease (where power is proportional to velocity and you spend a greater amount of time per unit distance) on the hill because you're exhausted then the gains can wind up being minimal.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
sdeframond 4y ago
He most likely got exhausted very quickly and couldn't recover because he kept pushing. So he was actually riding pretty slow for the rest of the ride. Endurance athletes know well that one has to start slow, warm up and get to cruising speed in order to achieve good times. Sprinting does not work. Edit: actually, starting running was enlightening for me. I realized that, as for running, one has to work at 70% of their capacity most of the time and get ample recovery time to really improve. Then one can be effortlessly good and nice to work with. Scrum talks a lot about "sprint" but, somehow, recovery time was lost in the analogy. Sprinters actually rest far longer than they run.
- hot_gril 4y ago
  If he meant that he sprint-biked from the start, that will surely give a worse time. Nobody can keep that up for 21mi.

robocat 4y ago

“A pelican flew right over me in Marina del Rey. When I looked up to say ‘wow!’ he shit in my mouth. I can still remember that taste of digested shellfish. I had to laugh at the novelty of it.”

jamesgeck0 4y ago
It feels like washing bird poop out of his mouth could have accounted for the extra two minutes all on its own.
exodust 4y ago
If only he'd ridden at maximum effort like usual, he would have avoided the bird incident. Honestly the bird shitting in his mouth steals the show. What an unfortunate and disgusting thing to happen! Even though his point about enjoying exercise is valid, the 2 minutes of pushing hard would translate into more burnt calories and muscle growth than what a casual ride would deliver.
- baby 4y ago
  Yeah that’s what bothers me as well. Muscle growth is discounted here. The distance and the time are meaningless. Of course pleasure riding along is a good metric but it was also always discounted until that one last ride.

hghar 4y ago

From the Tim Ferris podcast the episode with Hugh Jackman, they are talking about the 85% rule which is about how relaxation is linked to high performance, for example elite athletes don’t tensión going full 100% but just 85% and you’ll go faster than if you think I’ll go full in because you are relaxed you can perform better you use your resources more wisely, nice article.

takotab 4y ago
The principle behind it is called polarized training. Multiple studies have been done at this point. There are still tiny disagreements but the general idea well tested. I’m using it as well for schema’s as well and works like charm, people go faster and training is more enjoyable
- therealdrag0 4y ago
  What do you mean “for schemas”?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

avgcorrection 4y ago

That’s nonsense. You have wheels. It’s easy to go 100% and not get much in return for that extra effort.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

adhesive_wombat 4y ago

Obvious non-transport analogies aside, this was absolutely my experience when commuting across London by bike. Rushing just stressed you out and didn't really get you anywhere. The same goes for driving. On a highway, you can go as fast as you can (70 in the clear; whatever the vehicle in front is doing when not, so probably averaging low 60s on a moderately busy motorway). This requires a lot of concentration as you need to constantly plot a way forward through the traffic. Or you can sit behind an HGV in lane one and just do 55 all the way. Listen to music or an audiobook maybe. Total journey cost is a few minutes, but you arrive able to function rather then needing a coffee and a calm down to recover from the drive. The benefit is even less in the city as you can aggressively tailgate all you want, but at best you'll get through only a small handful of lights one cycle earlier over the entire journey.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
BonoboIO 4y ago
Stressful driving is the worst … I try to avoid. It costs so much energy, is dangerous and risky. On long distance drives with my car I enjoy driving fast. In Austria the speedlimit is 130kmh, driving 145kmh kill the monotony … casual overtaking, nothing worse to drive 3 or 4 hours with the same pace. In Germany 80% if the highways are unlimited, 160kmh is really nice traveling speed.
- Tarsul 4y ago
  Found 80% too high, so I looked it up and it's around 60% (would be 70% if there weren't temporary limits), which is still a lot.
stemlord 4y ago
Its hard to not rush on my commute where arriving at the station 10 seconds too late could result in waiting 10 more minutes for the next train, which could be the difference between being considered late to the office or not

gotdan5647 4y ago