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Source: Paul Lieto
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Title: How Lance Does It
Author: Brad Kearns
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(Buy @ Brad's site) (How Lance Does It @ Amazon)

How Lance Does It is Brad Kearns second book. His first book, Breakthrough Triathlon Training, I reviewed earlier this year. That book was very much about balance and taking a holistic approach to your training. Brad's new book expounds on those principles but discusses application not only to one's athletic pursuits, but as well their personal and business goals.

Being a long time friend of Lance's, having raced with Lance on the triathlon circuit early in their careers, Brad has a unique insider's perspective, as well as access to many of Lance's close friends and business associates. The book breaks down Lance's success on and off the bike into four basic success factors: Positive Attitude, Clarity of Purpose, Specialized Intelligence, and Pure Confidence. The book is full of examples of how Lance applies these principles to fight Cancer, create a foundation that raises millions of dollars each year, Win 7 Tour titles, motivate his cycling team and business partners to give their best to achieve their goals.

What separates an individual from being successful versus average is often their approach to the factors above. A positive attitude is critical, not only on race day, but in interpreting past and current events and using information in a positive manner. Clearly Lance is full of confidence on Tour, but he would not have been on tour if he didn't take a positive attitude when diagnosed with Cancer.

A clarity of purpose is simple in its definition but often difficult to truly apply to one's life. Having a clear purpose in life and staying committed to and focused on that purpose is what often separates the successful from those just stuck in mundane daily routines, or the rat race. Lance never lost focus on his goal of winning the tour, despite setbacks.

Specialized intelligence is often overlooked when putting together a plan to attain a specific athletic or professional goal. This factor, as Brad explains, is about knowledge — doing the research and finding the best people to advise you. Many know the depth to which the Discovery team recruited top individuals in cycling to bring out the best technology and training principles to achieve their tour wins, you'll also read about the in-depth research Lance did in finding the best doctors and medical help to beat cancer.

Pure confidence. If you don't truly believe you can excel, you won't. There are several good examples throughout the discussion on pure confidence. Brad talks about how pure motivation is directly tied to pure confidence. How it's more about being pure and committed to what you're doing and not being attached to the end results so much as the process.

This is a good book. You won't get any insider secrets into the personal life of Lance, or in-depth one on one interviews, but what you do get is a success guide. A guide cultivated from research into Lance's life and identifying the key approaches that Lance applied to achieve his success.

Paul Lieto (tribro) is a middle pack age group athlete who started triathlons about 8 years ago. He is the Founder and Editor of this site, Trifuel, and currently resides in Bend, Oregon with his younger brother Matt. Occasionally I try to post in my blog. You can contact me here.