Technophobia is defined as an aversion to technology.  The concept has been around for a long time, but you can relax – this is not a call for slow twitchers everywhere to unite and fight against technological progress.  I would, however, like to propose that each of us might do well to adopt a more technophobic view of our sports of choice. With an ever-growing list of techno-gadgets designed to enhance our biking, trekking, swimming, running, [insert favorite sport here] pleasure and performance, it’s increasingly easy to lose sight of the potential negative impacts they can have.

Gadgets, displays and electronics are distracting.  They distort our focus just about everywhere in our daily lives.  We play with dashboard electronics in the car instead of focusing on driving the car safely. Many of us spend more time than we probably should on email and the internet at work instead of focusing on tasks of greater importance.  Even at home we bury our minds too often in television, video games, and computers rather than spend that time to focus on friends and family.  If our minds were built to focus on this stuff simultaneously there would be no problem.  But they’re just not built that way.  We’re pretty lousy at it actually. 

Here are three potential impacts this sort of thing can have on folks like us, along with three common sense solutions:

• Technology can be dangerous.

Joseph Hallinan, author and former Wall Street Journal writer, did an excellent job of detailing how and why the human brain is not designed for multitasking.  In his book Why We Make Mistakes, he used “task saturation” to illustrate.  Task saturation is a term coined by the Air Force to describe a phenomenon where a pilot mistakenly crashes an aircraft into the ground because they were so distracted by simultaneous tasks taking place inside the cockpit.  I was disturbed to learn how common this type of accident is, not only in military planes but commercial planes too – attributed to killing more airline passengers than any other type of accident since 1990!

Thankfully most of us aren’t out there flying an Airbus. But just as they are for pilots, audio/visual distractions can be downright dangerous for us too. They reduce situational awareness and raise our odds of an accident, particularly when riding a moving object or training in close proximity to one.  A solution?  Leave the headphones at home.

• Technology can ruin your relationship.

I’m not referring to the relationship you might have with another human being here, silly.  I’m talking about the relationship you have with your own body.  Just like your human relationships, there are reasons you and that body of yours fell in love with this sport in the first place.  I’d be willing to bet that the list of those reasons did not include high-tech gadgetry.  At the end of the day, training for your sport should remain an activity that belongs only to you and your body.

True passion for a particular sport carries with it a Zen-like bond that makes you feel like nothing else in the world matters when you’re in the middle of doing it.  You’re in tune with your body, you’re trading signals with each other, and the two of you are in complete control.  If each of us isn’t careful, gadgets can drive wedges into this relationship.  If technology is allowed to get too entangled with our signal trading process, it can shift our motivations and synergy externally.  A solution?  Don’t give gadgets or data an opportunity to spoil this good thing you’ve got going with your body.  Stay true to the heart of your favorite sport and challenge yourself to get a little Zen with at least some of your training.

• Technology can lead to bad habits.

We are, of course, capable of finding passable ways to juggle techno-gadgets with the demands of our favorite endurance sport.  Running while listening to an iPod, for example, doesn’t present that many challenges per se. Nor do those quick glances at the data streaming from that Garmin on our wrist.  But distractions like these come with costs, and the quality of our training can end up paying for them. There is no way a brain that’s allocating power to use an iPod is going to provide the same focus on proper running form that it can without the music.  And when we fiddle with or glance at such gadgets in the middle of a training session, it’s more than likely that we have altered our pace, cadence and posture unintentionally.  These are bad habits that impact form and technique.  A solution?  Each time you feel the urge during training to look at that data on your gadget, try to ask yourself why.  If it has direct bearing on your real-time training performance, go ahead. If that data can wait to be reviewed afterwards, keep your head in the game and use that data to your advantage later.

Look, we all know headphones aren’t inherently evil.  And things like heart rate monitors, GPS and other devices do provide us with some useful tools to enhance training strategies.  But a good neo-Luddist will always be questioning the degree to which technology could potentially evolve to control us rather than to serve us.  Each of us can draw at least some degree of constructive inspiration from the neo-Luddist approach.  Keep it in mind, for instance, as the techno-parade of bells and whistles continues to be marketed to you in stores, magazines and your inbox.  If nothing else, it can be a nice reminder every now and then about the real reasons we love our sports of choice so much.

-Todd

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