Patience is the answer

Training is a lot like life.  In both, the roads towards progress and success are full of obstacles. Most of the time patience is the answer.

In life this could mean a surprise company move, being laid off, even the death of a pet or a loved one.

In training, there are often weeks filled with injuries and accidents that prevent you from optimal training.  There are often months spent at a plateau, perhaps even in conjunction with those life events that all conspire keep you away from the gym for longer than you’d like.

One thing that will keep you going is understanding and practicing patience.

The dictionary definition of patience is “The capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset.”

It is important to understand that health is a lifetime commitment and fitness is a lifelong work in progress.

In between mastering new movements or hitting new PRs there will be times when you get discouraged by a perceived lack of progress.  You will get knocked down and scraped up.  You will get caught at or called in to work, but the only way to guarantee you’ll stop making progress is if you stop working.

As long as you keep putting one foot in front of the other, you will be further along than if you quit and stop moving altogether.  Sometimes you get slowed down, or get thrown off track, or hit bad weather, but you keep going.  The only way to make sure you keep on the right track is to keep going.

Practicing patience means recognizing that you won’t be able to walk in to the gym each day and absolutely crush everything you do.

Practicing patience means accepting that sometimes things will come up, and when they do, you do the best you can until you can resume working the way the way you’d like to.

Practicing patience means seeing the bigger picture.  You will experience ups and downs, you just have to keep going.

Work hard, roll with the speed bumps, treat obstacles as opportunities, and learn from every experience

Patience has power, and learning to use it will help you keep moving forward.