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Science of Sport: Winners Know When To Quit

By Owen Anderson, Ph. D. (Copyright © 2004-2006)

But It May Run Counter to the American Archetype

A Northern-Michigan school district recently cancelled the remainder of its football season - after some adults in the community expressed concerns that team members might get seriously hurt.

The team - from Oscoda Area High School - had dropped its first four games of the season and had yet to score a touchdown, let alone a field goal or safety. Oscoda coach Kyle Tobin said that the team was overmatched physically, had too few players, and faced a rugged schedule in the highly competitive North-East Michigan Conference. So far this season, Oscoda had lost by scores of 46-0, 30-0, 44-0, and 44-0 to Flint Hamady, Whittemore-Prescott, West Branch Ogenaw Heights, and the always-tough Tawas ball club, respectively.

Predictably, the reaction from parents, players, and coaches from around the state of Michigan was disapproving. "The message you're telling the kids is that when it gets tough, you're giving up," stated coach Randy Taylor, whose Eaton-Rapids Greyhounds had gone 0-9 last season. "You're giving up on the kids."

Although it is not clear how protecting young people from harm necessarily constitutes giving up on them, popular opinion seemed to sway in Taylor's direction. For example, Joseph Shooltz, a junior-varsity running back for the Bath High Bees, noted that facing tough competition had more to do with faith than with body type ("Canceled Football Season Sparks Debate," Lansing State Journal, pp. 1 & 7A, September 28, 2006).

If Adrian College ever squares off against Ohio State, the Bulldogs' linemen might disagree with Joseph's assessment (although, in truth, a little faith might come in handy during such an encounter). Shooltz opined that the decision to quit was "making the team feel bad about themselves" and contended that "if they had enough heart and desire, they could face the other players."

Why was the reaction to the Oscoda white flag so negative? Why was there so little support for the idea that the small, thin, Oscoda team members might have snapped like twigs against an adversary as big and rough as Pinconning (their next, scheduled opponent)? What had happened to the basic, reasonable contention that in certain cases it might be advantageous to keep young people from harm, instead of allowing them to continue a dangerous activity?

Knowledge of the very real dangers of high-school football were somehow ignored in the negative reaction against the Oscoda bail-out. As an article in the well-respected scientific journal, The Physician and Sportsmedicine, pointed out, during a recent, 15-year period there were 61 deaths among high-school football players in the United States that were directly caused by participation in the sport (either during games or practices). In that same time frame, there were 147 cases in which high-school football players suffered severe, permanent spinal-cord injuries (about 10 such instances per year). These significant rates of serious injury (the highest among all high-school sports) call into question the idea that removing overmatched football athletes from the playing field is automatically a form of giving up on the players.

Why is it so difficult for us to praise parents and a coach who are trying to protect their kids? Carl Gustav Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist/psychologist who founded the field of analytical psychology, suggested that we have a kind of collective unconscious that resides underneath our conscious egos. In a thought-provoking essay entitled "Wotan" which appeared in Civilization in Transit, Collected Works (Volume 10, pp. 179-193), Jung suggested that at certain times an idea (which he called an "archetype") could sweep into the collective unconsciousness of many people simultaneously, inspiring them to behave in specific, uniform ways.

In American culture, one such archetype appears to be a conception of the young male as a kind of warrior. The archetypical American lad is supposed to be unfazed by dangerous situations. He has "heart" (an ability to control emotional fear) and "desire" (a willingness to plunge into scenarios which carry with them a high risk of injury). Once he begins an activity, he fights to the finish, even if the undertaking appears to be fruitless, even if he lacks the "armor" necessary for self-preservation. He is never a quitter. If he does quit, for whatever reason, he is considered a failure.

The now-emotionally charged verb "quit" produces a deep, hostile reaction in the collective unconscious of the warrior clan and carries with it the stink of cowardice, but it actually comes from the Old-French word "quite," which meant "to be free of," "to be released," or "to be calm." These are better, judgment-free definitions for "quit", to which we might return with little loss of cultural integrity and a healthier maintenance of individual self-esteem. For surely there are times when quitting can be a good thing, when it simply involves moving away from something which is undesirable, rather than projecting pusillanimity. Quitting things which are damaging physically and/or psychologically should not be viewed as a form of giving up; rather it is a way of re-establishing inner peace, of releasing oneself from unnecessary danger.

In running, there are many situations in which quitting is a virtue. For example, it is very good to abandon a plan to carry out a 20-mile run on a weekend when one is feeling extremely worn-down. It's a positive thing to avoid a high-quality effort when a knee is throbbing or pinpoints of pain are emanating from a plantar fascia. It's terrific to quit a workout on a day when it is simply impossible to run well. It's excellent to quit giving yourself a hard time about occasional episodes of quitting. And it is fine to give up on running completely for awhile in order to allow an injury to heal fully, substituting cycling or some other high-quality activity for the run training during the recuperation period.

The process of increasing your running fitness takes place over an extended stretch of time; it does not happen overnight. During this drawn-out time frame, occasional abandonments of training do not harm the overall process of getting better; moving fitness upward is an inchmeal process, and non-training "blips" here and there do not thwart the general upward movement. On the other hand, the failure to quit sessions in cases of fatigue and/or physical discomfort can dramatically increase the risks of overtraining and injury, which can very easily lead to a major downturn in running capacity.

Quitting when it is smart to do so may feel extremely uncomfortable, since it runs counter to a deeply ingrained American archetype, but it is nothing more than restoring calm to a troubled body; it is a way to release yourself from unnecessary trouble. Quitting should be guilt-free; it is a process which winners use to keep themselves healthy - and thus on the right road to higher fitness.

My new book, Aurora, deals with knowing when to quit - with releasing yourself from training habits and patterns of thinking which are bad for your running. It can transform your running - today. Aurora provides a rich mix of inspiration and practical training advice, the kind of information which can truly help you reach your goals. Go ahead - take a chance worth taking: Obtain a copy of Aurora now - and free yourself from the self-defeating images and unproductive workouts which have slowed your running in the past.

Please visit our web site at www.runningresearchnews.com to get the latest information about training, sports nutrition, and injury prevention.

Copyright © 2006 Running Research News, All rights reserved. Posted with permission.

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