Practice – Don’t Just Try to Be Better at Exercising
But what’s the purpose of it all? Most of us know a person who’s always jumping around doing high intensity workouts and never getting anywhere. He’s not stronger or any leaner than he was a year ago. And it doesn’t even look like he’s having that much fun. But that’s the only way he knows how to do things, exercise as hard as possible each time. As long as he feels tired after 45 minutes that’s all that matters. Instead of seeing health and fitness as a long term plan, he thinks that it’s all about going hard each and every single time. That, of course, leads to a burnout and a possible injury.
Choose your goal first
Short on goals? Here’s a good one: get stronger. There is no better reason for training than to get stronger. It will help you in every other aspect of life. Strength will make you more confident in your own skin and it will carry over to every other task in life. Whether sport related or not, doesn’t matter. You can treat life as your sport and kick ass in it! Oh, I should mention that when paired with sensible eating habits, training for strength can also make you look better. Yet to meet anyone who doesn’t like that.
This doesn’t mean that you need to be screaming your head off and eating chalk every time you train. Rather nudge yourself forward over a course of years. Think long-term.
It’s irrelevant. Unless you are competing with someone, you shouldn’t compare yourself with others. Have your goal and work towards it, leave the ego out. Just show up with a purpose and focus on getting better. As long as you do the best you can, that’s all I can ask for.
(Not) Surprisingly Kenny Powers got it right when he said he plays real sports, instead of trying to be good at exercising.