Welcome to Snafu, a newsletter about resilience and behavior change.
Great athletes don’t just train for performance – they train for chaos.
Most of us wait until disaster has struck to figure out how we’ll react. As a result, we panic, freeze, and make bad decisions.
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How to train for chaos
Michael Phelp’s coach, Bob Bowman, understood that the greatest athletes don’t just train for performance – they train for chaos.
Once he recognized that Phelps had the potential to be an elite level swimmer, Bowman started building unpredictability into Phelps’ training.
When traveling for competitions, Bowman would misplace Phelps’ luggage or swimsuit. During practice, Bowman filled Phelps’ goggles with water so he would have to swim without being able to see. Phelps was forced to learn to count his strokes per lap so that even if he couldn’t see, he would know when to turn.
This particular training challenge paid off in the 2008 Beijing Olympic, when Phelps’ goggles actually did fill with water. He still won gold!
Habit: Red teaming
Red Teaming is the practice of deliberately stress-testing your plans, assumptions, and expectations by asking yourself:
“What if everything goes wrong?”
Instead of hoping things go smoothly, know your contingency plans so when the unexpected happens, you know how to react.
Most of us wait until disaster has struck to figure out how we’ll react. As a result, we panic, freeze, and make bad decisions.
Red teaming is the opposite – it’s mental preparation for failure, so when things go wrong, you already know how to respond.
Before an important event – whether it’s a presentation, a workout, or even a difficult conversation – spend two minutes imagining everything that could go wrong.