Gamers v. Grinders
An armchair theory for performance. Plus five stories about learning.
Welcome to Footnotes, stories about life in motion and the ideas that shape our movement through the world. It’s a newsletter for curious, deep-thinking, movement-oriented folk. We run, swim, stroll. We move through the world and wonder.
I have long believed there are two types of athletes.
There are grinders. And there are gamers.
Grinders love to train. They love process, consistency, and small improvement. They log hours on the track, in the saddle, or on the pitch. Grinders are creatures of habit, leading focused lives and cherishing incremental gains toward big goals.
But grinders are also anxious. They overthink. They dwell on bad workouts and poor races. They often train too much, and when injured, they spiral. Grinders can sometimes forget that it’s the game-time performance that really counts. When the chips are down, grinders win when they lean on their hard work and deliver. But sometimes they really shit the bed.
Gamers rarely have that problem. They love a start line, love the opening whistle of a kick off. For gamers, competition is itself a performance-enhancing drug. Their will to win is mighty. Because they hate losing; the very notion is unbearable.
Gamers play with a keen sense of the dynamics within a race or game. And they have clutch—the psychological ability to perform under pressure at critical moments.
But gamers are prone to quitting. Not just a race or event, gamers will abandon an entire venture even when it’s just a rough patch. They’re inconsistent, prone to large swings in performance. And gamers can be hotheads, prickly to teammates and dickheads to rivals.
I have held this armchair theory of performance types since university when I first saw how different athletes approached training and competition. I was a grinder: a plucky midpacker who trained too much. But there were a lot of gamers on my NCAA cross-country team. And there was one in particular that I admired.
Jamie was in my freshman class and we couldn’t have been more different. Where I was bookish, cerebral, and snide, he was loud, muscular, and southernly charming. A child of the Tennessee hills, he’d played football in high school and carried himself with the swagger of someone who could take a hit. He drank hard, played hard, and cut the 400 in just over 50 seconds. He was pretty damn quick for a distance runner.
Jamie hated training. During our frosh cross-country season, he was in a constant state of near mutiny. He cut intervals and cool downs, and he complained loudly about early morning runs.
But that all fell away when he toed the line. Raise a starter pistol, and Jamie turned into something else entirely. His eyes would set. His jaw would harden. Mid-race he would tap into reserves that most of us did not have.
Given the longer distance of cross country races, Jamie had always finished behind me. But entering the championship season, he started closing the gap.
In our conference meet, I stood besides Jamie as we leaned into the line, waiting for starting gun. I was fit, but he was ready.
The gun went off and Jamie bolted ahead. In the starting scrum, as the pack compressed like stampeding cattle, his elbows were out, shoulder blocking his way to clear footing. A runner from another squad clipped his heel and, in a move I still admire two decades later, Jamie, running at 4:40-pace, turned, reared back his fist, and aimed it at the offending runner: “Do that again, my man, and I’ll put you in the ground.”
I chuckled—classic, hot-headed Jamie, too caught up in the game.
And then I stopped laughing. Because for the first time all season, I couldn’t keep up with him. Jamie just stepped away. He trounced me and my over-trained legs, finishing well ahead. I’d never beat him again.
Jamie wouldn’t be in NCAA for much longer. He transferred to Tennessee and put running aside. I’m not sure if he still runs. But he was happy when I saw him last, focused on other adventures.
Gamers and grinders are just archetypes, of course. And clumsy ones at that. They’re personality simplifications that break down with the teensiest bit of investigation. Most people are a little bit of both—everyone has some grind and some game when they need it.
But.
The truly great have lots of grind and game. The GOATS have both in spades. Fear these people. Fear them because they learned to learn. They realized that their inherent strengths were not sufficient and they needed to change and adapt.
These are the gamers that recognized they needed to work harder. These are grinders who learned that executing a race is just as important as the training buildup.
That’s the theme of several stories below: how to learn and how to adapt. And they include stories where learning is difficult and growth means sacrifice.
Onwards.
Are you a grinder or a gamer? Perhaps you have a different theory about performance? I’d love to know in the comments.
5 stories about learning
Adaptability as genius. Evolve or die. What makes Novak Djokovic great is not a singular style or strength, argues
. He doesn’t have a stylistic backhand, signature strength, or favorite surface. He’s just extremely adaptable. (Finite Jest)Quoteable: “He had the rare ability to change, to improve, to try new things, when on top, when winning. Usually, when you win you want to repeat everything you have done before to recreate the same result. Once you start losing, you start making adjustments. Novak didn’t wait with the adjustments until he started losing. That’s how he remained always a step ahead.”
When fitness becomes a ball and chain. We often think of fitness as a superpower. But what if training is holding us back? Sam Pyrah writes that running can look like freedom, but it’s often about control. Control that lets us dodge answering questions of meaning and purpose. (The Guardian)
Quotable: “The shame of my expanding, softening body almost lured me back in, but, once again, my body rebelled, voting, quite literally, with its feet. ‘Don’t want to slip back into being governed by running,’ I wrote in my diary. ‘Do you really want to be the same person you were a year ago, five years ago, instead of moving forward?’”
Dig deeper: Pyrah’s piece reminded me of a thoughtful conversation between Mario Fraioli and ultrarunner Alex Varner about reevaluating one’s relationship to sport and deciding when to move on. (Morning Shakeout)
Just like stuff. A short thread from Lauren Wilford on Twitter observes that much of happiness is just liking stuff. Enjoying things leads to discovering more stuff. Follow-up thread here.
Stumbling Can Be Lovely. On learning how to ride a bike at the age of 32.
, who’s published wonderful work for Tracksmith, pens a moving reflection about learning as an adult. (Longreads)Quotable: “Learning requires something of us. It requires our patience, yes. It requires, also, our humility. When you are older, falling means more than pain. It means failure, and shame. It means having, sometimes sadly, the self and contextual awareness to see yourself outside of yourself, so that when you fall, you don’t really fall once. When you fall, you perform the act of falling, and then you also—at the very same time—see yourself falling. You fall twice, three times even. You fall infinitely, extending the act of your fall into the eyes of whoever you think—or care—will notice. You fall forever multiplied by a billion.”
The Man Who Died for the Liberal Arts. In this election year, read David Shribman’s tribute to his uncle, Philip Alvan Shribman, who was killed at the battle of Guadalcanal. Shipped across the Pacific in 1942, Phil wrote a letter home that set out the value of the liberal arts as instilling a broad appreciation for the world’s beauty. It’s this curious appreciation, the root of liberal democracy, he felt was worth dying for. Highly recommend. (Atlantic)
Quotable: “‘What you’ll learn in college won’t be worth a God-damned,’ Phil told Dick. ‘But you’ll learn a way of life perhaps—a way to get on with people—an appreciation perhaps for just one thing: music, art, a book—all of this is bound to be unconscious learning—it’s part of a liberal education in the broad sense of the term.’”
Get involved
If you’re in the San Francisco Bay area, here are a few events coming up:
Woodmonster Trail Race. June 16. A fun ramble through Oakland’s gorgeous redwood groves. Like the Dipsea, the fastest runners start last in this first-across-the-line trail race.
Tracksmith Twilight 5K. June 19. As I wrote last year, I love the Twilight 5K series, and I’ll be back this summer—a little greyer, a little slower—to toe the tartan at Laney College. But the series has events around the world.
Breakfast Club run. Weekly. BC meets in person for an 8-mile run from Lake Temescal in Oakland. Pace averages around 7:30 per mile with coffee afterwards. Email Katie Klymko at katieklymko at gmail dot com to join our group run WhatsApp chat. Thursdays, 6:30AM.
Tweets of the week
Parting thought
“One always has to protect the valuable in this world before he can enjoy it.”
— Philip Alvan Shribman
Brilliant article. I am such a grinder and not a lot of game. This resonates a lot and something I need to work on - 'These are grinders who learned that executing a race is just as important as the training buildup.'
Really enjoyed this Sam, in particular how you tied it up at the end. (And thanks for re-sharing the podcast with Varner!)