Cortés burned 11 ships...
You're still keeping three
What does “burn the boats” mean in training?
“Burn the boats” comes from Hernán Cortés, who in 1519 ordered his own ships destroyed after landing in Mexico, removing retreat as an option for his men. Applied to training, it means eliminating the backup plan: the “just in case” program, the vague season you’re half-running, the extra race you signed up for so failure never lands fully on one goal. Once retreat disappears, effort stops splitting and channels into a single commitment.
Why am I talking about this?
I have to say, I’m fascinated by this story I came across from another Substack article and goes like this: In 1519, Hernán Cortés landed at Veracruz with about 500 men and a plan to conquer an empire he’d never seen.
Within days, he ordered his ships burned. Eleven of them, burned to the ground, smoke rising over the beach while his men watched the only way home turn to ashes.
There was no vote, no arguments…one morning they had ships, later that night they didn’t. Done!
Cortés understood something about the men under his command that most of us still get wrong about ourselves: as long as the ships sat in that harbor, some part of every soldier’s brain was going to keep one eye on the exit.
Again, I liked it so much and I kept thinking how to apply it to mindset, training, lifestyle so here’s how the pieces come together: The “keeping one eye on the exit” isn’t a metaphor. It’s a real cognitive process, and it’s expensive.
In 2011, E.J. Masicampo and Roy Baumeister studied unresolved goals. An open commitment, something you’ve started but haven’t closed the loop on, keeps generating intrusive thoughts and eating into working memory, even during unrelated tasks.
It doesn’t quiet down until you finish the thing or make a specific plan for it. Your brain treats an open option the way it treats an open tab. It keeps checking.
Put everything together and you get Cortés’s insight, four hundred years before anyone had a word for working memory. Every option you keep alive runs a small, constant background process.
Multiply that by everything you’re holding and trying to balance in life and you’re left with less brain than you think for the work in front of you.
Now let’s translate into training…
The boat looks like the backup program you never deleted, the one you’ll switch to “if this one doesn’t work out.” It looks like the “just in case” routine you keep half-running underneath your real one, so neither gets your full commitment.
It looks like signing up for four races in a season because picking just one feels like admitting you might fail at it. It looks like a vague plan to “get serious eventually” that never gets a date on the calendar.
None of this feels like sabotage initially…feels smart, responsible, even…right?? But the math doesn’t care how reasonable the plan sounds. Split effort produces split results, which let’s say fifty percent commitment gets you fifty percent of the outcome, and that’s exactly where most people stay stuck for years. Not failing, but also not winning…just going around in circles!
I tied and connected everything together with my decisions and preparations for my first Ironman back in 2025. I read the Cortés story and it landed right on top of something I’d been circling that year through Greg McKeown’s Essentialism (btw: highly recommend his work!).
Before going into that Ironman, I had a habit of keeping some things alive, which meant a vague plan to “see how the season goes.” Like…”We’ll see how it goes…”. So I cut it. In 2025 I said, no other Endurance events that year, no B races, no C races, no D races, nothing!
Every hour pointed at one start line. It felt wrong and risky at the beginning...then thinking about it now it felt like relief, because I wasn’t running the exit analysis anymore. I was just training.
Now the three ships…
I built the Endurance Readiness Profile because I kept watching this play out in three shapes:
Some people are still deciding if this is even their thing, and that’s fine, that’s the actual starting line.
Some have real experience and want more, but they’re trying to apply a serious program onto a life still full of half-measures they haven’t let go of.
Some have already burned most of their boats. They just haven’t touched the one that scares them most, usually the one tied to NEVER having time, or to trusting a plan that isn’t theirs.
The honest truth now…
I want to be honest about my role here, because I’m not interested in playing Cortés for people who didn’t ask for it. Some boats are real safety, not crazy betting; some are just insurance. For example: A spouse’s schedule, an injury history that makes caution information, not fear. I’m not in the business of talking anyone into recklessness. I’ve written a full series of posts about this, I’ve played the devil’s advocate more than once!
What I am in the business of is asking the question you might be avoiding: which of your boats are keeping you safe, and which are just keeping you comfortable?
Most of what people call “keeping my options open” is insurance against having to find out what they’re capable of.
Basically, in practice means stop running the backup program next to the real one. Pick one.
Stop jumping between two goals so neither can fully disappoint you.
Stop training three sports at once with no integration between them, calling it balance when it’s really scattering around.
This won’t land well with everyone, and it shouldn’t. If you like having a boat in the harbor, this piece was never for you, and that’s OK. But if you’re standing on the beach right now, watching your own smoke, ask yourself what you’re actually still holding onto. Then go burn it.
Not sure which boats you’re still holding?
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Training for a sprint tri, Olympic, or Ironman and ready to follow a program built specifically around your race, your body, and your schedule? Reply to this email. That is what I do — but only with people ready to own the execution.
Sources
1. Masicampo, E. J., & Baumeister, R. F. (2011). Consider it done! Plan making can eliminate the cognitive effects of unfulfilled goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(4), 667-683. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0024192