Know your own strength

Photo source: Maxpixel

I broke a rowing machine yesterday at the gym. I don't know my own strength. Ironically, that's the very reason I attend the gym regularly. I want to know my own strength. I want to know what my limits are, and then try to exceed them. Apart from breaking the rowing machine, my fitness regime is going swimmingly (without the swimming, obvs). I have learnt a lot. I know about cross trainers, treadmills and weights. I thought a Dip Assist was someone telling me where to stick my Doritos*, until I discovered the weights area. And it was while I was working out at the gym this morning that this thought came to me: To know your own strengths, it's often wise to compete against yourself rather than anyone else.

The gym I attend is full of people of all shapes and sizes. Some are incredibly strong and fit, and I would feel very inadequate if I pit myself against any of them in a strength or endurance contest. No, it's better to pit myself - against myself. And so, I play a little game. The first item I use every morning is the treadmill. It's pretty high tech, with a digital readout of just about everything I need to know. It can measure my heart rate (pulse), how many calories I'm burning up, how many kilometres I have run, and how long I have been running (or walking). Every day, I try to improve one aspect of my workout.

It can look like this:

1. How much quicker can I run today?
2. How many more calories can I burn in 20 minutes today?
3. How much longer can I run today, before I need to stop
4. How many kilometres can I run today in 20 minutes?
5. How quickly does my heart rate reduce over one minute?
6. How far have I run today compared to yesterday?

and some very personal ones:

7. How much weight have I lost?
8. How long did it take for me to pick myself up off the floor after that workout?

All of these, and many more metrics can be compared to my achievements on previous visits to the gym, and that also applies to rowing, cycling, cross training and weight training. I'm asking myself the question - how am I improving? And the tools in front of me are giving me the feedback I need. You don't need high tech equipment either, as a Fitbit fitness tracker or other wearable personal metric tool would just as easily do the job.

But back to my initial premise. We need to know our strengths in all aspects of our lives. Because, in discovering our strengths, we can also identify our weaknesses, the deficits in our knowledge, skills or abilities that can be improved. Measurement of attainment against the self achievements is known in educational circles as ipsative assessment. It's a very fair and often very effective means of measurement, and can also be powerfully motivating.

The evidence is there for us to see. Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam (2003) write about assessment for learning, where the act of measurement flags up weaknesses and shows how they can be addressed. John Hattie (2012) argues that one of the two most important factors in good learning is useful feedback. There are many other studies that emphasise that personal feedback is vital to good learning. Learning and Development professionals would do well to take heed of these factors and embed them in training programmes. It will be a real strength.

References
Black, P. and Wiliam, D. (2003) Assessment for Learning: Putting it into practice. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Hattie, J. (2012) Visible Learning for Teachers. Abingdon: Routledge.

* Other brands are available.


Know your own strength by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.