JOHN HENRYISM

   “John Henryism” is an all-too human trait identified by Sherman James of Duke University. Particularly common in athletes, this impulse is named after the hammer-wielding folk hero who dropped dead trying to best a steam drill in a tunneling contest. John Henry types believe that all problems can be solved by working harder.

     The John Henry gene seems particularly prevalent among endurance athletes. Amateur marathoners read about the twenty-mile-a-day training of elite professionals and assume that running more miles is the answer to setting new personal records.

     But as I pointed out in my posts on exercise economics and the research of Dr. Ralph Paffenbarger, at a certain level more exercise can be not only less efficient, but even counterproductive. This concept holds true for both highly gifted athletes and for normal humans, too.

     In the 1956 Olympics, Czechoslovakian runner Emil Zatopek accomplished a feat that has never been duplicated. He won all three distance races: the 5K, the 10K and the marathon. His training involved running about 25 miles a day at varying speeds. His success fueled the trend toward huge workloads that remains influential today.

     British runner Alf Shrubb was setting records twenty years before Zatopek was born. Training an average of six miles a day (25% as much as Zatopek) he was able to run 93% as fast at the 5K and 10K distances despite inferior footwear and lumpy running tracks. Clearly his training was far more efficient.

     About ten years ago, my friend Brett ran the Boston Marathon in 4:26. He wanted to run faster, but very demanding business and family responsibilities made running more miles impossible.  We designed a three-day-a-week training program that emphasized quality instead of quantity. Without significantly increasing his weekly mileage, Brett gradually improved his times over the years and ran a perfectly-executed 3:29 in 2013. 

      Psychologist Abraham Maslow also had some valuable advice about hammers. “If the only tool you have is a hammer,” he said, “you will tend to see all problems as nails.”  The hammer of ever-increasing workloads is a blunt instrument. A properly designed program focusing on efficiency can be a surgically-precise tool. Always seek to work smarter, not harder.