From Obsessed to Checked Out: What I Learned Training Both Ways

I have been the person who believes that missing one day of training will ruin my progress.

I've also had periods where I stopped believing in progress. It sounds extreme but it's true. My actions would suggest that I no longer believed that the HARD WORK I put in would pay off.

The goals I had have consumed me entirely at certain points in my life. Everything I did, said, or thought about was in service of the goal. I would believe missing a single meal or macro or training session or training piece would result in worse, or no progress. I believed putting my phone down twenty-seven minutes before bed instead of thirty would ruin my sleep.

When Fear Keeps You on Track

In some ways this thinking was useful. Fear is a great motivator. The fear of losing progress kept me very consistent with my training and nutrition. I'd plan my week around both, always making sure I could stay on track. If I was going on a trip, I would plan my food and do extra training before leaving. The fear kept me on top of it. I had the things I'd set out to get.

But the thing about being afraid is that it's costly. Fear, held for long enough, will wear you down. It will empty you of your capacity to feel other emotions. With enough fear you can only hope to feel relief. That's what I felt, relief. I'd look at my scores or in the mirror only to feel relieved that I didn't fail and I wasn't fat. Not joy. Not gratitude. Not appreciation. Relief.

Now, I loved training and competing all the while. I wasn't a black hole of fear and apathy. Overall my perspective was pretty balanced day to day. The consequences of thinking this way mostly presented themselves in my inability to enjoy my results.

The Other Extreme

After years of this, I went the opposite direction. I wouldn't even start.

Three good training days a week wasn't worth it because it wouldn't move the needle anyways. I'd look at an open hour in my day and decide it wasn't enough time to matter. The same person who did extra sessions before leaving on a trip now let whole weeks go by, because the week wasn't going to be a perfect week. My gym bag stayed packed.

This was partly because what I had the time and space for seemed paltry compared to what I used to do. But mostly because I'd slipped into believing that what I had was all I would have and no work was going to change that.

Two Different Behaviours, One Belief

Both are magical thinking.

And they're actually the same things. Both tell us the same story:

"Imperfect effort counts for nothing."

Fear says, anything less than perfect and I lose everything I've built. So it ignores the reality that consistency is far messier than it seems. Missing a day or days won't affect you over a long time horizon. Two days to 365 days isn't very many days.

Nihilism says, anything less than perfect and I gain nothing. Why try if my efforts are going to be less than ideal? I won't change anyways.

The behaviors are different but the beliefs are the same.  And in both cases, wrong.

Why No One Can Hand You This Lesson

This is an unteachable lesson. You could have handed me this essay at either point in my life and it wouldn't have landed. When I was afraid, I'd have read it as permission to slip. When I'd stopped believing, I'd have read it as motivational spew. Some lessons don't take until you've lived both ends of them. We must go through the fear phase and through the nihilistic phase to find ourselves balanced in perspective. 

I'd guess many of you reading this have experienced one or both of these ways of thinking. And to you I'd say, remember that work is work and any work is better than no work but also you can take a day off of work and it will still be there tomorrow.