Don’t overtrain!
We wake up and slowly trudge towards the kitchen to suck down coffee, then eat a breakfast (maybe) of garbage foods, brush our teeth and sit in a car to get to get to a job where we sit all day, and if we don’t sit, we certainly don’t exert ourselves. Then we head to the gym, (by car), walk in and spend an hour making comments to each other about how tired we are and how tough our day was, while hoping to get through the workout, which is only a small portion of that hour. Then we head home (by car), eat dinner and sit back down until it’s time to lay down.
We do this for 2 or 3 days in a row then decide we need a day where we don’t exercise because we are afraid of over training and and being too tired and sore.
We have put physical exercise into a box that can only exist within the parameters of a gym and this structured class, and left everything outside of it to be sedentary, and even if you’re the one that hits the gym 5 days a week, you’re probably still considered pretty sedentary for the other 163 hours a week.
We are told that we have to focus on our recovery more, don’t push too hard or you may get hurt, at least you tried.
This article is coming from my heart, and I’m not going to sugar coat it by saying that “well, some people just aren’t cut out to workout all day, at least they are moving a little bit.”
Sure it sounds great to play devils advocate and give people a pass to accept doing far less than they are capable of, le them tell themselves these stories at make them believe that they are working to their full potential, this is called cognitive dissonance, convincing yourself of a story that isn’t true.
I’ve spent over a decade meeting and interacting with various people in and out of the fitness world, and i’ve realized a few important things.
The majority of people aren’t doing enough, and the ones that are, do it mostly without knowing it.
I’m here to tell you that you should keep your gym membership, go to that class, work hard, but don’t be constrained by it. Go every day. Do things outside of it, do pushups when you wake up, walk to the corner store, go for a run when you get home before dinner, make time, make moving and doing fitness type shit a regular staple of your day. Do 100 air squats on your lunch break, before you eat your meal.
We are all capable of so much more, and in doing more, we are practicing a skill of teaching our mind that we are capable. We can train it to not only not hear the little voice that tells us to be careful, we may overtrain, but the to not speak it all to ourselves.
We seriously only have one opportunity, and it’s the present. Telling yourself you’ll do things down the road is a garbage cop out, because the future isn’t real, it will ever show up, we live an endless procession of todays, so focus on that, and do more.
You will have more energy, feel l better, be stronger, tougher, better conditioned, your mental fortitude will be over the top. You will be capable, and have developed grit.
This article is meant to be a wake up call, to remind you that if you really want to live life, to get more out of it, that it needs to happen now. Not when you get to the gym, not when the weekend hits and you’ve spent an hour getting ready for this grand adventure run with new shoes and bluetooth headphones and brand new water bottle strapped to your waist, GPS watch dialed in, just go do it. Stop putting barriers between yourself and your capabilities.
All obstacles are self imposed, think your way out of that shit, and practice doing more, practice silencing the little voice that warms you to slow it down because you don’t NEED to do 100 burpees on a Sunday. If you are afraid to do 100 burpees on your “rest day,” then you need to do them more than you you need another day of sitting around on your ass.
Build a stronger resolve, toughen up, be more capable.
