The Most Crucial Tactic: Diversifying Your Sports to Move Every Single Day

One of the most important tactics that has allowed me to be active outside for almost one thousand days straight is diversity. Specifically, I've found that if I maintain a healthy balance in the sports that I participate in, I can stay active and on the move for literally years on end.

Unfortunately, like most things, I had to learn this the hard way.

Life Lessons, Learned the Hard Way

My first exposure to a multi-day movement goal was the 30 Days of Biking challenge, Way back in 2010. The goal was simple: ride your bike every single day for 30 days straight in the month of April.

Mountain biking is my sport of choice, and generally speaking, I can quite comfortably mountain bike 5 days a week, week in and week out, with few issues. But if I try moving from 5 days per week to 7, and extending that for weeks on end, my body begins to break down.

During my first 30 Days of Biking Challenge, I earned myself my first set of saddle sores, but after a week or two off to rest in May, I was back at it with no problem.

Unfortunately, my second time through the 30 Days of Biking, about 4 years later, didn't end nearly as well. I made it, sure... but the combination of the wrong saddle size, a poor bike fit, and accelerating my riding volume too quickly caused some substantial nerve damage that kicked off a multi-year odyssey of trying to heal and overcome pain.

My conclusion from all of this is that while riding my bike every day might sound like a good idea, in actual practice, it's a recipe for injury and pain. I know other people can handle it without issue, but me personally? Not so much.

The extreme end of this type of physical breakdown is known as "overtraining." While the phenomenon of overtraining and overtraining syndrome (OTS) was quite murky in decades past, in recent years it has become a hot area of study in sports medicine and psychology.

The general conclusion? Overtraining syndrome is very real, and it can not only derail your fitness but derail your entire life, if you're not careful.

See Also: “Strava's Year in Sport Data Supports ‘The Most Crucial Tactic’”

Run Streaking—Not for Me

Part of my inspiration for the Outside 365 challenge was reading about run streakers: people who run at least one mile minimum every single day. According to a bevy of articles, the longest run streak ever recorded lasted 52 years and 39 days—a lifetime achievement of epic proportions. While we might have been born to run, even still, running every day is a fucking difficult challenge fraught with injury and pain. The body adapts to the stress, but based on my own experiences with 30-day riding streaks, I've found that breakdown is a very likely outcome.

Personally, I'm a wannabe trail runner. While I've done plenty of running in years past, over the past 3 or 4 years, every single run I've tried has ended very, very poorly. I applaud those that can run for 52 years without fail, but I am not one of those fortunate souls. So I have had to look elsewhere.

Simply Walking

I've written about the simple magic of walking and how it can change your life, and if any single activity could be sustainable day in and day out, year in and year out, for the rest of your life, it's probably walking. Well, that is unless you have an injury, a surgery, or maybe you're physically incapable of walking. What then?

A Quiver Full of Arrows

While I often have to learn lessons the hard way, I'd like to think that I do, eventually, learn and don't just keep repeating my mistakes. And so it has gone with physical fitness. Through trial and error, repeated failures, and ongoing experimentation, I've found that diversifying the portfolio of sports that I participate in not only makes me holistically stronger, but it enables me to accomplish the goal that eluded me for so long: being outside and active every day, for 365 days straight.

And now, I'm quickly closing in on a thousand

I've stopped focusing on one sport to the exclusion of all others, and have instead found an entire range of sports that I enjoy and participate in. It's like having a quiver of arrows on your back, and each arrowhead is best-used for a different purpose. You might have a barbed arrowhead, a straight arrowhead, a steel arrowhead, or a titanium arrowhead. Some of the arrows have different fletchings to create different flight characteristics. Every single one of these arrows helps me achieve my goal of being outside and active every day, but they allow me to attack the goal with the arrow that's best suited for the job.

My Personal Quiver

*Tucson, Arizona. Photo: Marcel Slootheer*

Injuries and challenges aside, mountain biking remains the most reached-for arrow in my quiver. I can quite easily ride 3-5 days per week with no adverse effects, and at least for me, it's damn tough to beat the euphoria of riding a bike on singletrack.

To offset the rigors of pounding down steep, rocky trails, I mix up my cycling with dirt road and paved bike path riding on my drop bar gravel bike. While still utilizing all the same cycling muscles, the battering and beat down is substantially less.

In the winter, I sometimes add in some fat biking on snow, but in recent years the fat bike has seen very little action.

A couple of years ago, I retired an arrow from my quiver: my first love, downhill skiing. While downhill skiing still holds the trophy as the longest relationship of my life, skiing and I had to say goodbye after some 22 years. It just wasn’t working out between us... she was kinda abusive, to be honest. After two knee surgeries, I traded her in for a new lover in the white room: snowboarding. Sliding sideways during the winter has given me a welcome respite from the stresses of constantly riding bikes.

During one of my injury-related breaks from riding, I decided I needed a new outlet for my energies in the summertime that wasn't quite as intense and physically demanding as my main go-to sports of mountain biking and peak climbing. After renting a board for just one day, I decided to pick up a new sport: stand-up paddleboarding. I've now owned a SUP board for several years and have paddled in a handful of different countries around the world. It usually travels with me as I wander around the nation, serving as a welcome respite from the constant strain of mountain biking. SUPping hits almost entirely different muscle groups, allowing me to get out into nature and paddle a mile or more around a crystal-clear alpine lake, using my upper body and core to propel me instead of my overtaxed quads.

*Eureka, California. Photo: Christine Henry*

Finally, rounding out my main quiver (and making an appearance several times a week) is walking/hiking. There's nothing simpler than heading out your door for a one-mile walk, and yet, that simple act, repeated day after day, can change your life.

In keeping with my propensity for diversity, I love to dabble in other sports whenever I have the chance, but the ones noted above form my main quiver. When I have the opportunity, I'll jump at the chance to go rock climbing, scrambling, surfing, paragliding, canoeing, kayaking, rafting, snowshoeing, backpacking, peak climbing, and so many more. While no sport can truly compete with my love for mountain biking, embracing variety and keeping my quiver full of arrows allows me to keep my body in motion every single day.

Parting Thoughts

The list of sports above isn't necessarily a prescription for what you should do in your own life, it's simply a description of what my quiver looks like currently. My quiver will very likely change over time, too.

Regardless of what my own quiver looks like, the concept of diversity holds for almost every athlete out there. While a certain subset of athletes may be able to run or ride every single day, for the rest of us, diversifying our sports with a quiver full of arrows is the most crucial tactic for being outside and active every single day without fail.

What arrows are you going to add to your quiver?

Even More Crucial Tactics

Check out the other installments in the Crucial Tactics series here: