Building stamina

I’d be so worn out if I had to spend all day swimming. (Image by Capri23auto)

Working with middle schoolers has taught me a lot about the process of learning and growth.

I’ve observed that some students struggle more than others to get their work done independently. The desire, knowledge, and skill necessary to complete an assignment may be present, but the student is missing a key ingredient: stamina.

Without stamina, the work is a grueling uphill climb. Everything is harder than it needs to be. There’s no ease, no coasting, no respite from the intensity. Accordingly, the student burns out quickly and is unmotivated to return to the work after a rest.

This lack of stamina may have underlying factors. A common one is difficulty reading. When it takes a great effort to decode the words, it’s exhausting to then do the work that those words are asking you to do. The student cuts corners on reading directions since that, in itself, is a heavy burden. Unfortunately, the student then has no idea what he supposed to do, leaving him confused and frustrated.

Another factor that contributes to a student’s lack of stamina is a poor self-concept. When you have a voice in your head saying, “You’re terrible at this! Why are you even trying? You are stupid,” the work becomes a slog. There’s only so much of that noise a person can take before they shut down and abandon the task at hand.

A student may also have trouble when there is no foundation to back up what they’re learning. I can quickly grasp that 3 x 6 = 18 if I already know that 3 x 5 = 15 and can easily count by threes. If I don’t have this conceptual understanding and the other math facts haven’t made it to my long-term memory, I’ll only last about 30 seconds when practicing my times tables.

Of course, inexperience also contributes to a lack of stamina. If I play guitar without calluses, my fingers will hurt. If I try to run a mile, my inefficient lungs and muscles will slow me to a walk before I’m done. I just don’t have the capacity.

When I observe my own process, I can see that this lack of stamina is not the result of laziness, and trying harder doesn’t fix it. I can dedicate 40 minutes working through carefully designed French lessons for beginners, but I’m worn out after only a minute of reading an intermediate French text. It’s just too hard. I’m not motivated to go back to it the next day, either. If my only option in learning French was the more challenging material, I simply wouldn’t learn French.

The way around this problem is to meet the learner where she is. We need to simplify, lower the stakes, lower the bar.

There is an inverse relationship between the level of difficulty of a task and the length of time a learner can spend on it. We can help the learner to build stamina by offering an easier program that can be sustained for a longer period of time. In this way, the learner is developing the physical and mental capacity to take on more. All the while, her knowledge and skill is increasing, which further increases her potential.

For example, if you are learning to play the piano, you can spend time every day playing (and eventually memorizing) easy songs that you already know how to play. This natural and enjoyable activity is neglected by most teachers in favor of a constant push forward into more challenging material. As a consequence, students spend years studying piano and don’t have any repertoire to show for it. They also experience a stamina problem as they work through difficult pieces that are on the leading edge of their ability.

By contrast, you can choose to learn pieces that you can already play 80% of on the first try. Such a piece can be polished in a single session. If you approach repertoire-building this way — playing your already-mastered pieces and adding nearly-mastered pieces — you can happily and confidently build toward hours of playing every day, while the frustrated student taps out after 15 minutes of intense striving and has to be coaxed back to the piano the following day.

Yes, there’s a place for bigger challenges, but it works best when these are embraced willingly and eagerly by a learner who already feels accomplished and can sustain focus over a long period of time. They don’t have to be the main event, either — a few minutes of fierce effort goes a long way toward strengthening muscles, both literal and figurative.

The trick is always to figure out how to break things down. How do we offer smaller increments of challenge while still making progress? How do we know when our fatigue is real and not just our minds playing tricks on us? It’s helpful to work with a teacher or a coach to help us; if we are on our own, we can err on the side of going easier on ourselves, knowing that we are always growing in the long term.

The good news is that as our knowledge and skill increases, so does our stamina. However, we can intentionally build stamina in order to facilitate the growth of our knowledge and skill, creating a virtuous cycle that reduces frustration, increases motivation, and makes learning more fun.