Don't Copy The Winner
Training lessons from survivorship bias, regression to the mean, and trusting yourself
When I was a high school runner, one of my favorite rituals came every Wednesday afternoon. I’d come back from practice, open my laptop, and eagerly check FloTrack’s Workout Wednesday. I’d watch college stars hammering intervals and pros floating through tempo runs looking effortless. I was captivated and inspired. I immediately began thinking: how can I do that? It was only a matter of time before I was asking my coach if I could try a scaled-down version of the session I’d witnessed.
Now, the floodgates are wide open. Running workout videos are being uploaded to YouTube daily from every corner of the sport—high school phenoms, collegiate studs, and world-class professionals. On one hand, this is great as our sport continues to grow.
However, it should also come with a warning label: ‘Don’t copy what you don’t fully understand.’
The Highlight Reel Effect
Watching elite workout videos can warp your perception of what effective training looks like. These videos don’t show the daily grind—they show the fireworks. The toughest sessions, the most impressive splits. But that’s a sliver of the whole picture.
As a pro coach, I can tell you firsthand: most training isn’t flashy. It’s monotonous, methodical, and often unremarkable. These quiet moments and consistent efforts build the foundation. The videos only show you runners reaching the summit; they don’t show the climb of how they got there. You don’t shine under the bright lights; the bright lights only reveal the work you did in the dark.
Below, I want to describe a few common mistakes runners make when extrapolating lessons from the top.
Survivorship Bias: We Only Remember Winners, Not the Many Who Failed Using the Same Approach
There’s a famous story from World War II. The US military studied bullet holes on planes returning from missions. The planes were often damaged from enemy fire in the wings, fuselage, and tail. The engineers immediately started to reinforce these areas of the planes with additional armor, figuring that’s where planes were most frequently hit and thus the most vulnerable.
But a statistician named Abraham Wald had a better idea. “You’re only looking at the planes that made it back,” he said. The missing data (the planes that didn’t return) were likely hit in the cockpit or the engines. That’s where the real vulnerability was.
This insight is known as the survivorship bias. We study the winners and think that their path to the top must be the right one. But we never see the countless others who followed the same path and failed. We elevate habits because they belong to the successful, not necessarily because they’re causal.
That’s rampant in running.
We see professionals promote extreme diets or aggressive training strategies, and take notes. However, we often overlook the possibility that they may have succeeded despite these factors, rather than because of them. Maybe they’re the one plane that made it back.
To reach more firm conclusions about what inputs lead to successful outputs, you can’t just pull from samples of winners; you need to make sure that these inputs are categorically distinct from those who failed.
Hype Has a Half-Life
As I’ve written before, performance rests on the bedrock of consistency. It means doing more of what you know works. Yet we’re continuously misled by the latest and greatest training technique.
We’re seduced by the idea that the best workout or supplement is the one we haven’t tried yet—something novel, unproven, and brimming with potential. These ideas captivate our imagination, but rarely deliver on their promise in practice.
Training theory hasn’t fundamentally changed in decades. The core principles—stress, recovery, adaptation—are stable. But the packaging keeps evolving. Today, the Norwegian Method is in vogue. A few years ago, it was polarized training. Before that, Arthur Lydiard’s massive aerobic base and hill circuits reigned supreme.
These shifts follow a familiar cycle: a method surges into popularity, commands attention, and eventually gets absorbed, critiqued, or softened. Hype has a half-life. What once felt revolutionary gets normalized. It’s not that these methods are without value, but no single method stays on the mountaintop forever. Fads fade, just like water seeks its own level.
Why Extremes Rarely Last
This is where a powerful statistical concept, known as regression to the mean, comes into play. When something is an extreme outlier (especially in terms of performance), it tends to drift back toward its average over time.
There was a fascinating study years ago that detailed the Sports Illustrated “cover curse.” For years, people believed that athletes featured on the cover were doomed to slump. One study showed 37% experienced a significant drop in performance after appearing. Many people pointed to conspiracies and superstitions as explanations.
But the real insight isn’t why the slump happens—it’s when the athlete appears. It’s usually at the peak of their powers. And from that peak, being pulled back to their average is the most likely outcome. Not because they were cursed, but because that’s how extremes work: they regress back to average.
In training, we often fall for the same trap. We latch onto what’s working best right now, assume it’s a permanent breakthrough, and rush to copy it. This means our overall training lacks cohesiveness and logical progression. You may still improve, but the improvement becomes diluted by every new thing you try.
Instead of chasing trends, bet on high-probability strategies that are proven over time. The fundamentals may not be flashy, but they work. Michael Joyner, a leading human performance expert, once distilled decades of knowledge into a 3-line mantra:
Run a lot of miles.
Some of them very fast.
Rest once in a while.
Elite Results Are Enabled By Elite Routines
Context is everything in training, and it’s often the missing variable when above-average runners try to replicate elite routines. You can’t copy and paste someone else’s training plan without copying and pasting their life.
Professional runners live in a performance incubator. Their days revolve around training, fueling, and recovering. They have massage therapists on speed dial, altitude tents in their bedrooms, and entire support teams dedicated to keeping their bodies in peak condition. They’re not commuting an hour each way, wrangling emails, or managing family logistics between sessions.
I don’t want the takeaway message to be that you shouldn’t aspire for greatness and hard work. That’s not what I mean. Instead, I think that improvement happens in logical progressions. It happens by doing work that’s appropriate for your body, your life context, and your training history.
Training is not just about what you can do. It’s about what makes sense for who you are, right now.
You Are the Experiment
At the end of the day, you are an n=1. A single case study. Your body, your life, your history. No one else has your exact variables. That’s why copy-paste training rarely works. You can be inspired by elites, but you can’t transplant their workouts into your life and expect the same result.
The same caution applies to trendy methods. Just because an idea is new or gaining traction online doesn’t mean it’s right for you. Too often, we chase novelty instead of clarity. Instead of asking, “What’s the best workout?”, ask, “Why am I doing this?”
I believe that too much attention is placed on what elite coaches or athletes do. Not enough is given to why or how they do it. Planning isn’t just about sets, reps, and paces. It’s about intent, context, and progression over time. The “what” might look impressive, but the “why” holds the wisdom.
The real secret isn’t hidden in someone else’s training log. It’s in how well you understand your own.
So take inspiration (not step-by-step instructions) from the highlight reels. Know your why. Bet on principles, not hype. And remember: you’re the experiment. Trust yourself, and make it a good one.
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