Don't check your shoelaces

Last week I watched a seasoned marathon runner stumble through what should have been an easy 5K. Every few strides, he’d glance down at his feet, adjust his posture, lose his rhythm. By mile two he was grimacing, struggling to maintain a pace that normally would have felt effortless.

I recognised the symptoms immediately. He’d fallen into what I think of as the shoelace trap, that peculiar form of self-sabotage where runners monitor themselves into mediocrity. I’ve been there myself. During my first half-marathon, I spent so much mental energy obsessing over foot strike and breathing patterns that I completely missed the experience I’d trained months to have.

The thing about running is that it gets worse the more you think about it. This isn’t motivational fluff. It’s a genuine neurological phenomenon that affects everyone from weekend joggers to Olympic athletes. The moment you start consciously controlling what should be unconscious, everything falls apart.

How I learned to stop monitoring and start trusting

My moment of clarity came during a half marathon in Bath, my hometown. I was running well through the first six miles when another runner started critiquing his own form out loud. “Heel strike, heel strike,” he muttered. “Cadence too slow. Shoulders too tense.”

His self-commentary infected me like a virus. Within a mile, I was checking my own form. Was I overstriding? Were my arms swinging efficiently? The more I monitored, the more awkward everything felt. My natural rhythm vanished. My breathing became laboured. My pace dropped significantly.

Sports psychologists call this “paralysis by analysis”. When we shift from unconscious competence to conscious control mid-performance, we disrupt motor patterns we’ve spent years perfecting. Think about riding a bike. Once you’ve mastered it, you don’t consciously think about balance or steering. The moment you do, you wobble.

Running works the same way, but the effects are more subtle and therefore more dangerous. Unlike wobbling on a bike, which gives immediate feedback, form breakdown during running actually feels productive. You feel like you’re “working harder” or “being more precise”, even as you sabotage your performance.

I learned this definitively during my second marathon. At mile eighteen, fatigue set in and I instinctively began micro-managing my form. I shortened my stride, adjusted my arm swing, took quicker, shallower breaths. Within two miles, I was in survival mode, shuffling instead of running.

It wasn’t until mile twenty-two, when I was too exhausted to think about form, that I accidentally found my flow again. My body took over, my natural rhythm returned, and I actually negative split the last four miles. The difference wasn’t fitness or strategy. It was trust.

What neuroscience tells us about trusting our bodies

Having spent years working on distributed systems in tech, I understand how complex processes work best when individual components don’t constantly interfere with each other. Your brain’s motor control operates on similar principles.

When you run, three main neural networks coordinate your movement. The motor cortex initiates movement, the cerebellum fine-tunes coordination and balance, and the basal ganglia automate learned patterns. During efficient running, these systems process thousands of micro-adjustments per minute without requiring conscious oversight.

Your prefrontal cortex, the conscious, analytical part of your brain, acts more like a supervisor than a micromanager. It handles strategy: maintaining pace, choosing routes, monitoring energy. When it tries to control tasks that other brain regions handle more efficiently, performance degrades.

Dr Arne Dietrich’s research on flow states shows that peak athletic performance actually involves decreased activity in the prefrontal cortex. Elite athletes consistently report their best performances feel “effortless” or “automatic”. They’re not trying less. They’re trusting their trained motor patterns instead of overriding them.

This maps perfectly to my experience in software development. You can write assembly code and control every processor instruction, but for complex applications, you’re usually better off using Python and trusting the compiler to optimise the low-level details. Your conscious mind during running should focus on high-level strategy while your trained motor patterns handle implementation.

But this only works if you’ve done the training. You can’t trust form you haven’t developed. Understanding when to practice and when to perform is crucial.

The practice paradox that confuses most runners

Here’s what trips people up: if thinking about form hurts race performance, when should you work on improving it?

The answer lies in separating practice from performance. During specific training sessions, conscious form work is essential. During races and hard efforts, it’s usually counterproductive.

I learned this distinction through music production. When I was making electronic music, I spent countless hours in practice mode, tweaking EQ settings, adjusting compression ratios, experimenting with synthesiser parameters. But during live performances, I had to trust my preparation and focus on reading the crowd, managing energy, creating an experience.

Running follows the same pattern. I use easy runs and warm-ups for form focus. When your body is relaxed and you’re not pushing pace, you have mental bandwidth to experiment with technique. The first mile of easy runs is perfect for checking posture, foot strike, and arm swing.

Drills and stride work are specifically designed for conscious technique work. High knees, butt kicks, and 100-metre strides with recovery give you opportunities to practice efficient movement patterns without the pressure of maintaining pace.

Recovery runs, those slow easy efforts, are perfect for internalising form improvements. You can focus on consistency and smoothness without worrying about speed.

During races and hard workouts, switch to performance mode. Trust your training and focus externally on pace, competition, and strategy. Form consciousness should be limited to brief check-ins if something feels obviously wrong.

Form improvements need practice at low intensity until they become automatic. Trying to implement form changes during high-intensity efforts is like refactoring code during a production deployment. Theoretically possible, but usually disastrous.

What running teaches us about everything else

The shoelace principle extends far beyond running. I’ve noticed the same pattern in every area where I’ve developed expertise: software development, music production, business consulting, even saxophone performance.

When I’m coding, my best work happens in flow state. Fingers move automatically across the keyboard, complex problems break down into intuitive steps, solutions emerge from pattern recognition rather than forced analysis. But this only works because I’ve spent years deliberately practicing syntax, design patterns, and problem-solving approaches.

The same applies to music. After decades of playing saxophone and guitar, my best performances happen when I stop thinking about finger placement and breath control. Instead I focus on expression and connection with the audience. That trust is built on thousands of hours of scales, technique exercises, and conscious skill development.

In business consulting, I’ve learned that over-analysing every client interaction kills natural communication flow. My best meetings happen when I trust my preparation and focus on understanding their needs rather than monitoring my own performance.

You can recognise when you’re checking your shoelaces in any area. In presentations, you focus on hand gestures and PowerPoint transitions instead of your message. In coding, you second-guess variable names instead of solving the core problem. In creative work, you monitor your process instead of losing yourself in flow. In conversations, you analyse word choices instead of listening and responding naturally.

The solution remains consistent: trust your training and focus externally on outcomes rather than internally on process.

Building your own trust protocol

Based on my experience across multiple domains, here’s how to develop trust in your trained abilities.

Start with conscious competence development. Dedicate specific practice sessions to skill development. Focus on one technical aspect at a time. Get feedback from coaches, mentors, or objective measurement. Practice until new skills feel natural at low intensity.

Move to integration and automation. Practice new skills under gradually increasing pressure. Combine technical elements into flowing sequences. Reduce conscious monitoring as competence increases. Trust emerging automation during easier efforts.

In performance situations, practice external focus. Limit technical check-ins to brief moments between efforts. Develop pre-performance routines that activate automatic systems. Learn to recognise and interrupt checking behaviours.

For continuous improvement, analyse performance afterward, not during. Return to conscious practice to address identified weaknesses. Trust existing strengths during new challenges. Maintain separation between practice and performance mindsets.

The most important skill is recognising when you’ve shifted from performance to practice mode inappropriately. In running, it feels like suddenly becoming aware of your footsteps or breathing during what should be flowing effort. For other activities, it’s the moment process monitoring replaces outcome pursuit.

Developing this awareness in running has made me better at recognising the same pattern everywhere. The shoelace trap is universal, but so is the solution. Trust your training and keep your eyes on the horizon.

When trust becomes difficult

Of course, trusting your training gets harder when stakes are high. During my first marathon, I knew the theory about letting go, but race-day nerves triggered overthinking anyway. I spent the first ten miles analysing every sensation, convinced that without careful monitoring, something would go catastrophically wrong.

Understanding the difference between helpful awareness and destructive monitoring becomes crucial here. Helpful awareness notices overall energy levels, pace sustainability, and environmental factors. Destructive monitoring fixates on individual footsteps, breathing patterns, and minor form variations.

The key is developing what psychologists call meta-awareness, which is awareness of your awareness. When you notice yourself checking your form, that’s actually progress. It means you can choose to continue monitoring and accept reduced performance, or consciously return attention to external factors and trust your training.

I use a simple protocol when I catch myself checking my shoelaces during running or its equivalent in other activities. First, I notice: “I’m monitoring my foot strike.” Then I acknowledge: “This is normal but counterproductive right now.” I redirect by choosing one external focus point like the horizon or forward momentum. Finally, I trust by reminding myself that my body knows what to do.

This isn’t about never paying attention to technique. It’s about choosing appropriate attention for your current goal.

The real meaning of expertise

Perhaps the most profound insight from the running paradox is how it reframes expertise itself. We typically think of experts as people who know more, but often expertise means knowing what not to think about.

Expert musicians don’t think about finger placement during performance. They think about emotion and expression. Expert surgeons don’t consciously monitor hand movements during routine procedures. They focus on patient outcomes and decision-making. Expert programmers don’t analyse syntax during flow state. They think architecturally about solutions.

This doesn’t mean experts are unconscious or sloppy. They’ve trained their unconscious competence to such a high level that conscious monitoring would only interfere with performance.

The running paradox taught me that developing expertise requires a dual skill set. You need the ability to analyse and improve performance consciously during practice, and the ability to trust and perform unconsciously during execution. Most people develop one or the other. Peak performance requires both.

When I watch truly elite runners, what strikes me isn’t their form or fitness, though both are obviously excellent. It’s their apparent effortlessness. They look like they’re simply allowing their bodies to do what they’ve been trained to do. No fighting, no forcing, no checking. Just flowing forward with trained confidence.

The goal isn’t perfect form but perfect trust in your imperfect form. Not conscious control but unconscious competence. Not checking your shoelaces but keeping your eyes on the finish line.

Next time you catch yourself monitoring process instead of pursuing outcomes, whether running, working, or creating, remember that sometimes the fastest way forward is trusting the training you’ve already done. Your body knows more than your conscious mind gives it credit for.

So stop checking your shoelaces. They’re probably fine.