Training for your future self

It’s Winter Olympics season, which means I am emotional about strangers from every country doing impossible things on slippery surfaces. As always.

And inevitably, we hear the phrase over and over again:
“I wasn’t the most talented, but I worked harder.”

It’s true. Talent isn’t everything.
And it’s also incomplete.

Because if “work harder” were the whole answer, most dog handlers I know would already be world champions. We are not a lazy group. We train in bad weather. We show up tired. We spend money, time, and emotional energy doing this thing we love. So when people hear work harder, it often lands as either exhausting… or demoralizing.

What elite athletes actually mean by “worked harder” isn’t more.
It’s different.

They aren’t rewarded for effort. They’re rewarded for execution under pressure. And that changes how they train.

They work with intention, not just volume.

Every rep has a purpose. Training isn’t about reinforcing what already works — it’s about finding what breaks when the pressure is on. That’s uncomfortable. It requires attention, not just time.

They fall in love with the work, not just the outcome.

Olympians don’t rely on motivation. Motivation is unreliable. Instead, the daily process becomes the anchor. The work itself matters — even when progress is slow, invisible, or frustrating. Especially then.

And here’s the part that matters most for handlers:
They train as who they are becoming — not who they currently feel like.

That’s the identity shift most people skip.

Many handlers train from a place of hoping:
“I hope we can Q.”
“I hope we hold it together.”
“I hope this shows up in the ring.”

But elite athletes train from expectation. Not arrogance — expectation. Their training matches the level they intend to perform at, even before the results arrive.

Identity shows up everywhere:
* in how seriously details are treated
* in whether mistakes are avoided or investigated
* in how pressure moments are rehearsed instead of feared

You don’t become that handler after the results.
You train as that handler first.

This is why “working harder” often leads to burnout. More reps without direction just reinforce the version of you that already exists. But training as the handler you want to be builds consistency, steadiness, and confidence that survives bad days.

Olympians aren’t motivated every day.
They are committed to who they’re becoming.

So instead of asking, “How can I work harder?”

Try asking:
* If I were already the handler I want to be, how would I train this week?
* What would I take more seriously?
* What would I stop rushing through?

This isn’t about doing more.

It’s about doing what you already do — on purpose.

When an athlete says, “I worked harder,” what they really mean is this:
I committed to the work that matched who I wanted to become.

That’s a very different instruction.

And a much more useful one.