Alex Hutchinson’s new book, The Explorer’s Gene: Why We Week Big Challenges, New Flavors, And Blank Spots on the Map, is an ode to challenge and exploration
- A journey into the unknown where suffering is inevitable and failure looms
- A joyful act of discovery with a playful spirit and open mind
True exploring, as Hutchinson notes, is hard and that’s a big part of what enjoy about it.
Reading the book through an athlete lens, it’s a call to embrace our innate exploratory instincts for enhanced personal growth and athletic performance. Every race, every workout is a ‘Hero’s Journey’ of sorts – and a strong impetus for what keeps up coming back: the effort paradox. The harder we toil near the edge of our ability, the more meaning, purpose, and satisfaction we feel.
This drive to explore is hard-wired. Hutchinson recounts voyages of the Polynesians navigating the Pacific without modern instruments: humans have an intrinsic urge to venture into the unknown. A desire to push boundaries and seek new challenges, in an athletic sense, is a fundamental to human nature. And if it doesn’t come naturally to you? It can be developed through deliberate practice. We learn to embrace discomfort by exposing ourselves to harder workouts, experimenting with new strategies or trying a different race format.
Every meaningful exploration presents challenge – whether its pain, risk or uncertainty. How you interpret challenge affects your brain’s response. Predictive processing theory suggests the brain continuously generates expectations about the world and updates them based on experience. Interpret hard efforts as exploration vs threat improves resilience, adaptability in the face of adversity, and performance under pressure. Viewing challenge is an opportunity to rise up and showcase your strengths.
Exploration is uncertainty and uncertainty comes with risk. Yet uncertainty coexists with potential. Exploring new methods, new routines, pushing up against self-imposed limits is key progress and learning. Opportunities abound in every day, we don’t have to reserve these risks for race day. Daily, make time and space for diversions, digressions – these mini explorations flex our muscle for pushing into small unknowns, in time making big leaps more comfortable. Viewing exploration then as play – liberated from constraints, with the only goal of learning, you learn discover more about your abilities and the world.
It’s in us and for us: what will you do to explore today?
(photo: Multisport Mastery athlete Mackenzie Yates; I’ve worked with Mack since 2013 and in that time she’s explored every distance of triathlon, trail running, enduro, cyclocross, criteriums, and now has her sights set on XC marathon mountain biking)
