Why coasting is a bad idea

The Health Growth Letters is a weekly publication of tips, frameworks, and lessons to help you build a more balanced life based on faith, health, and wellness. If you’ve been forwarded this email, you can subscribe here.

What’s on the agenda:

• A Verse

• A Lesson

• A Puzzle

A verse:

In 1 Kings, Elijah sees the worshippers of Baal and challenges them to a contest.

He says, “Whoever’s God lights the fire will prove that their god is the real God”.

In this passage, the Baal worshippers call out to their god, dance, sing, and chant. They even cut themselves to earn the favor of their god. They do this for hours, but their god, Baal, never responds. Eventually, Elijah says it’s my turn and asks God to light his wet wood on fire.

God responds and sends down water from heaven and sets it ablaze instantly.

The people realize who the true God is and begin worshipping Him.

Takeaway:

I think about how often we try to do the same thing as these Baal worshippers. We pursue our desires, we work hard to achieve them, often with no success, asking “gods” to help us.

But what if we waited on God and asked Him to make much of our actions? What if we asked Him to please our actions, not for our own sake, but for His?

I wonder how much self-mutilation and effort would be reduced, ask God to bless us for His glory.

All we need to do is hand over the keys and ask.

A lesson:

I made it back from my trip. We survived our two-day bike ride and rode 130 miles while climbing 5500 feet across the Natchez Trace Parkway.

It was quite the adventure!

One of the most challenging aspects of this ride was the hills. There aren’t too many hills to be practicing on in SoFlo, and Zwift doesn’t quite cut it.

But I learned something interesting along the way….

The climb always sucks, but if your biggest losses come from the downhills.

Why it’s important to keep pedaling, even when things are easy

When you reach the top of a hill after pedaling really hard, all you want to do is stop, especially when you see a downhill ahead.

It’s easy to say, I’ve worked hard, I’m tired, I’ve made it. Let me coast to the bottom of this hill, and I’ll start working again when I’m at the bottom. But it’s not quite that simple.

There are three things I realized on my ride:

1. It’s steadier to ride down a hill while pedaling

2. You gain ground faster with minimal effort

3. You realize you need to start working again earlier than you think

The Steadier Ride:

It’s easy to want to take a break after a long, hard effort on the bike and in life.

We go through seasons of work, and we want to go on vacation. We have strict diets, lose weight, and spend a week eating whatever we want. We say thing’s like “we’ve earned it”

But what I learned on the bike this week is that the reward is faster progress with less effort, not the opportunity to coast.

Bikes aren’t made to coast.

They’re made to be pedaled.

What I learned on this ride is that simply by continuing to pedal - even with reduced effort - I was able to feel steadier on the bike going down those hills.

Applicable Takeaway:

Continuing to work, even if greatly reduced, after a hard effort or season of life, makes the descent more comfortable and fun.

Taking advantage of momentum

Another benefit of pedaling down the hill is that you capitalize on momentum.

After you reach the top of the hill, you’re tired and ready to take a break, but by simply not stopping 100%, and continuing to spin your legs, you’re able to really maximize the result of your effort but capitalizing on the momentum you’ve gained.

The idea of “coasting” sounds nice, but on the hills I “coasted” down, my buddy who pedalled ended up far ahead of me at the bottom, and he didn’t even have to work harder to do it.

Applicable Takeaway:

Keeping the basics going, not stopping completely, and continuing to work in periods of success are the easiest ways to get ahead of everyone else.

Everyone works on the climbs, very few are willing to work on the descents.

The need to work starts earlier than you think

It’s a sad truth, but every downhill turns into a flat or another hill. Eventually, momentum stops pushing you forward, and you need to work again.

What I learned on this ride is that it usually happens substantially before you think it does.

When I would pedal down a hill, I’d feel the resistance start to increase, and the momentum fade. It let me know it was time to put more effort it, and by knowing that, I was able to get more distance out of my efforts by slowly ramping up speed.

When I coasted down the hill, I’d guess when it was time to start pedalling again, and often it was too late, and I was hit with “hard” efforts right off the bat.

Applicable Takeaway:

If you keep pedalling, you know when your momentum runs out and you have the opportunity to scale back effort. Coasting results in a zero-to-hard effort transition, which can be really difficult.

A Puzzle:

A weekly rebus, or “word puzzle”. My dad used to send these to me every week, and I always enjoyed them. I thought I’d start sharing one with you each week.

A rebus is a puzzle that uses pictures, symbols, and/or letters to represent words or parts of words. The challenge of the puzzle is to decipher the hidden meaning behind the symbols and solve the puzzle.

Here’s this week’s puzzle:

The answer will be given in next week’s letter.