You can’t separate the process from the outcome.
Something I’ve had in my head for quite a while.
I see lots of high level athletes complaining online and warning about things like “overtraining” and “adrenal fatigue.”
How do they know that the reason for their success was not precisely because of inducing that kind of stress on their bodies?
I know I have been there myself. I’ve been awake at 2 a.m., heart racing, tired, sore every single hour of every day, been in pain, zero motivation, cold hands and feet, injured for dumb reasons, trained through injuries I shouldn’t have, trained after being up for 24hours or more at a time. Yep. Been there, done that.
I never had or gave myself the option of quitting, so I just pushed on. Could I have accomplished more with less? I can never know that. No one can.
I can’t separate the fact that I don’t know that every thing I’ve ever accomplished physically isn’t exactly because of pushing hard, until I thought I couldn’t any do anymore, but somehow I did a little more. I can’t know that.
Everyone loves short and easy workouts, and the concept sells lots of ebooks online and makes for lots of popular blog posts, but, let me just point out that most all the extremely fit people I know have not made a regular practice of doing nothing but short and easy workouts, foam rolling and “recovery days” throughout their lives.
Interrogate some of the strongest, baddest people you know and I can almost guarantee you they will tell you about periods of their life when they trained hard 2+ hours per day, almost every day, multiple times per day.
They will probably tell you about training through injuries; training when they were sick; training when they were so tired they wanted to cry; going through times when they almost prayed for a debilitating injury to prevent them from training because they couldn’t stop otherwise; throwing up during workouts; dreading training; skipping rest days to get more training in, etc..
Is it the right thing to do? I can say that as a coach, I would stop someone if I thought they were at this point, but I don’t listen to my own advice.
To reach the next level past the bare beginner level, you have to go hard, heavy, and train until you just can’t do it any more. Not all the time, but sometimes. Sometimes for years.
You can never separate the process from the outcome. It just doesn’t work that way. You have to take it all or none.
-Jim
