don't be a quitter

I grasped the frigid handle of the front door and swung it open. The first thing that caught my eye was a group of athletes upside down against the wall. They would kick up sporadically then flop down after a sweat inducing 30 seconds of attempting to breath upside down. My gymnastics years flashed back to me, I recalled myself doing 2-3 minute handstand holds and spending countless hours practicing the perfect handstand in my basement. My goal was always to get a strict press to handstand, but that goal was immediately abandoned after I messed up my wrist. 

Back to the handstands, these athletes were finishing their warm up and I had arrived just barely in time for the workout. They finished their handstands and we all grudgingly pulled out an one hundred pound assault bike from where they were lined up like an army against the wooden boxes that have wreaked havoc on many people’s shins. After the assault bikes were all lined up in the middle of the room the clock started counting down.

Our coach shouted, “3, 2, 1, GO!” so we started pedaling fiercely as if in a race against time. We had 14 minutes and 59 seconds left on that bike. As if these 15 torturous minutes weren’t enough, I made the stupid mistake of letting myself slip one negative thought through my mind. At first it was one, “You could of done those handstands if you hadn’t hurt your wrist,” but then it kept getting worse; “You are so stupid, you missed out on an entire year of opportunities because of one mistake. You ruined everything, and I bet if you had both wrists healthy you could make this bike go a lot faster.” Soon enough I had tears welling in my eyes and I let my feet off the pedals. Someone encouraged me to get moving, so I took a deep breath and tried to get a handle on my thoughts. Positive: “You can still bike, you can run and squat, all things happen for a reason, this is making you a stronger athlete mentally.”

The entire workout was like a teeter totter, my mind running back and forth between optimism and narcissism. When it was finally over I was proud to call out my results and I realized that I didn’t do that bad compared to two handed people. I’m not saying comparison is good by any means, but in all honesty it reassured me that I am at an okay place in my training and that I’m not losing athleticism even though I can’t work out at 100% physically.

I felt like giving up, I really did. I was already planning what I was going to do with all my free time that would no longer be spent at the gym, but then a quote by Lance Armstrong reminded me, “Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or even a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.” I’d rather have a handicapped arm for a year than to live in the presence of failure for the rest of my life.

Every so often days like these occur and that’s when I really have to tune in and focus on being positive. There are always going to be days when we feel like quitting, and things just aren’t going right. Those are the days that we have to take a step back and get real with ourselves. Is it really as bad as it seems? If so what can we do to fix it? Sometimes the answer is to just keep showing up. Eventually the downer days will lead up to a day or a week where we feel stronger than ever, where each rep is effortless.

I’m really looking forward to that week and I hope it happens soon, but in the meantime I guess this means I need to suck it up and keep moving forward. :)

Photo Creds:

https://www.facebook.com/649492038474180/photos/pb.649492038474180.-2207520000.1416023427./706479106108806/?type=3&theater

http://www.pinterest.com/tashanixoxo/weightlifting/

Breaking Down

Training gets hard. Should you listen to your body? No. What I mean by that is not to ignore pain, but just don’t let the pain stop you. I say don’t listen to your body in the way that when you feel terrible and everything is hard and you want to take a couple weeks off, you shouldn’t. There is always something in the gym to work on and if you really want to be the best you need to realize that every minute you aren’t in the gym one of your opponents is.

The body breaks down during hard training and that is when a lot of people quit.There is a point where everything just sucks and it hurts to walk and you’re most likely not making any progress for a really long time, then you see these people that you compete with hitting PRs on Instagram and you just really feel like crap. It’s hard because you know that you have to listen to your coach and believe in his programming even when nothing feels good anymore. Those massages that were once relaxing now feel like you’re being poked with needles and you can’t even tell the temperature difference in those contrast showers you take. People at school and work start to question why you always walk around like you’re constipated.

   But that is the part where you really become a better athlete both mentally and physically. You are breaking your muscles and your nervous system down to build them up stronger later on. Sometimes when you put so much stress on your body you can do some pretty amazing things, because your body goes into a certain response mode where in order to do anything strenuous it has to recruit literally all of your muscle fibers because that is just how broken down you are. As Jillian Michaels puts it "Your legs aren't giving out, your head is giving up!" You must continue to push through the tough training and you must believe that you can or you will fail. Don't you dare tell yourself that you can't do it.

Then after that terrible break down period if you were eating enough and sleeping enough you should come back and make some really great progress. After you start to taper for a competition or max out week you should feel 10x stronger and worth a million bucks. The weights should shoot up and you should be able to walk up the stairs without cringing in pain. This is the fun part of training. It doesn’t come without cost though, you must work for it. Breakdown periods can last for weeks or even months, and it may take more than a week for your body to fully recover from them so you can start to hit big weights again. Thats just all part of the game of weightlifting. Whatever you do when training starts to suck, don’t quit.