Fast and Furious Fitness

All,

A very happy New Year to you, no matter where you might be!

It’s officially the 1st of January here where I’m at, so we’re definitely “into” the New Year now. After the celebrations last night (for those of you that did celebrate and party hard), it’s now time to wake up, get moving, and get “back to business”, as they say. And thats the way I like it.

Anyway, what I’m going to talk about today is perserverance in all areas of your life, be it training-wise, or even other regards (work, relationships etc). Perseverance is probably one of the most, if not THE most important factors that will determine your success in whatever you do. I don’t think I need to explain the why’s here, but I’ll try and explain what exactly I mean by perseverance anyway.

In my book, perserverance can be broken down into three main categories (which are inter-related, of course): -

1. Keep trying/striving, no matter what the odds are; in other words, NEVER GIVE UP. Doesn’t really sound too complicated, but to put this in perspective, let me give you an example from Mother Nature itself. I was watching a show on Discovery the other day “Surviving the Drought” (by the way, thats one of my favorite channels). This show is set in the African jungle, and as the title says, it’s about how the animals survive the long, hot summers until the rain arrives. Anyway, part of the show was about a pride of lionesses along with their cubs, trying to survive the long summer. One day, the lionesses decide to try and hunt buffaloes (which they generally avoid, due to their huge size), but things go wrong, and the herd stampedes, and manages to get away. Which is fine, and that happens quite a lot in the animal kingdom, but the problem was that one of the lion cubs got caught up in the stampede, and managed to get his hind legs broken. Ouch! No doctors here to fix that problem, so he’s pretty much gotta live with it, and move on with life the best he can.

So, they then show the pride moving on, looking for more game etc, and they also show the little lion cub trying to move along with his front paws only, dragging pretty much his entire body along with him. Naturally we know his days are numbered, but try telling that to him. He moved through the best part of the show along with the pride, despite the disability. Despite the fact that the other cubs were getting stronger and bigger daily, and he was getting worse day by day. You could see the effort he made to just MOVE, but the little cub just DIDN’T GIVE UP. He kept trying, until he just couldn’t move any longer, and his mother had to eventually leave him to die. Kind of poignant, but this embodies the sprirt of perserverance perfectly, and explains it better than I ever could. Enough said on that one.

2. Discipline, and application of the right amount of effort. This part is self-explanatory. Don’t miss workouts unless you HAVE to (no “I’m feeling tired” etc when you know you should be training), and when you train, make the time count. Don’t just go through the motions, but work every exercise, every set, every rep like it’s your last. There is a huge difference between training HARD, and simply going through the motions. The latter is guaranteed to produce little, or no lasting results, but stick to the first path, and you’ll do great.

3. Last, but by no means least, patience. Patience is the mother of all virtues (we’ve all heard that one), and it is so for a good reason. Things happen at a certain speed (provided the first two principles are adhered to), but trying to speed up the process doesn’t really work in the long run. Be patient, stick to your routine, and don’t get frustrated. Can’t do 500, or even 100 squats in a row?? No problem, start off with 50 a day, and stick to that for a month - and THEN see where you are after that month. Want to jump rope for 3 minutes straight, but can’t even get 10 reps down correctly? Work on getting 10, then 20, then 30. . . in a month or so, you’ll be surprising yourself with what you can do.

So, that, my friends is my understanding of perserverance, and also the “moral” of the post for today. Follow the above three pricinples, and you’ll be amazed at what you manage to achieve this year.

All for now. As always, get FIT - FAST!

Rahul

This entry was posted on Friday, January 1st, 2010 at 5:59 am and is filed under Basic Exercises. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.