By Coach Adolfo Salgueiro
If you are a professional athlete or are trying to qualify for the Olympics, feel free to skip this post. If you are still with me, maybe running is your passion, your escape, your health/therapy plan, and/or your social club. And even if some of us would love running to be a more prominent part of our lives, the activity that pays our bills and allows us to afford it must (and should) take priority.
This is why we tend to overlook certain aspects of our daily life that, by now, should have become ingrained habits. Such failures keep some of us in a stale or unproductive state, which eventually may develop into frustration.
Behavior becomes a habit through repetition. When we perform the same action repeatedly in response to a specific cue, our brain gradually automates the behavior, requiring less conscious effort each time. According to a 2010 study published by University College London, the average time for a behavior to become a habit is 66 days.
So, it will take some work, but once it is ingrained, you are on your way to becoming a better runner.
Here are 5 conducts that should become habits for every runner:
► Preparation Before Every Workout – Just like in every aspect of life, preparedness is the key to success. Just as having water and a dry shirt after your run is essential, knowing what you want to accomplish before every workout is a key to success. The time to learn what you are doing today, or to realize you have not eaten in the last 12 hours, is not when your watch searches for a satellite. Every workout has a purpose, and understanding what that is will give you a better chance of realizing that gain. Preparation encompasses the mental and physical aspects of your running.
► Focus on Improvement, not Just Results – In the instant gratification age of Strava and Instagram, many runners tend to focus on what they did today, forgetting that running is a long game. Try this experiment: Don’t post a run. Or two. And count how many of your online friends text you asking if you are OK. Then realize how trivial this is within the context of your daily life and refocus your energy on achieving your real goals. Revolutionary thought. I know!
► Embrace Failure as Part of Growth – Failure is an opportunity to learn, adjust, and improve. Every athlete who has ever achieved anything meaningful has experienced setbacks along the way. Missed goals, bad races, disappointing workouts, and unexpected obstacles are not signs of a lack of talent or potential. They are part of the process. When things do not go your way, resist the urge to make excuses or focus solely on the result. Instead, take an honest look at what happened, identify the lessons, and apply them moving forward. The most successful athletes are not the ones who avoid failure. They are the ones who fail and use it as fuel for future success. Click here to read my blog post on this topic.
► Reframing Your Self-Talk – The conversation you have with yourself matters. While negative thoughts are inevitable even for elite athletes, the key is not to let them take control. Instead of dwelling on “I can’t do this” or “I’m falling apart,” strong athletes consciously reframe those thoughts into more productive ones, such as “I’ve handled this before” or “Just get to the next mile.” Positive self-talk is not about pretending everything is fine. It is about choosing thoughts that help rather than hinder performance. Over time, this habit builds confidence, resilience, and the ability to stay focused when training or racing gets difficult. Click here to read my blog post on this topic.
► Mastering the Breathing – When you start your run, your oxygen intake can multiply from 15 to 20 times. This is why you feel winded as you get started, and the reason why warming up properly during this transition is critical for the rest of your run. From there on, settling into a controlled breathing pattern is critical. I personally recommend the 3-2 rhythm, which distributes the most vulnerable part of the breathing cycle evenly. Click here to read about breathing patterns.
For some, these five habits may feel like stating the obvious. And they are. But I see so many seasoned runners failing due to a lack of basic habits. Not because they are lazy or because they don’t care, but because life gets in the way and they don’t know how to handle it. Once you are purposeful in your behavior, habits will take root and set you on the path to success.
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