The Love Of Training

Here is one of the most important things that any athlete MUST focus on regarding their training and their life:

You gotta love what you do.

If you don’t, you won’t be successful. Think going to the gym is a drag? Can’t drag yourself out of bed at 6am every morning for a workout? Then it’s likely that you will FAIL at your sport.

Getting the right mindset is so important that you really need to dedicate some time each week to getting TOUGH. I’m not saying that you should endlessly punish yourself in training with prowler sprints and tabata front squats (though it would help haha!). BUT I am saying that taking just one step each day towards getting tough will help you LOVE training.

Sounds stupid right?

Here’s the thing, when you purposefully limit yourself you will get both a greater APPRECIATION of that things importance AND consequently you will LOVE it more because you can see how much it HELPS you.

Yep, I know I sound like a hippy today so here are some real world examples to bring you back to earth and make me sound normal again:

• Get an early night

Get up one hour earlier each morning and do something productive. Workout, prepare the days meals, do the laundry etc. When you go to bed that night you will feel extra tired and love getting into bed AND you’ll feel happy that you’ve had a productive day.

I know sleep is important for recovery but this is a pretty cool and liberating experiment! Still aim for at least 8 hours, yes this means going to bed earlier to get up earlier. Tough love.

• One day per week - Limit your food intake

Eating less can make you healthier as the digestive system will have more time to relax and recover. Intermittent fasting is the ultimate in getting TOUGH.

Once a week try not eating for 16 hours (last meal at 8pm and next meal at 12pm the next day) and cram all your meals into a short 8 hour window. Benefits include reduced insulin sensitivity, better hormone release, increased rate of oxidation of body fat and a whole load more!

Again, you’ll free yourself from the belief that you need to eat every 3 hours and you’ll LOVE eating after a fast. Free thinking + toughness = better athlete

• Get strict with your training

Set yourself a goal and a deadline and give yourself two options:

1) If I succeed I will reward myself by (insert whatever you like here)

2) But if I fail I will punish myself by (insert something you hate doing here)

So you could aim to add 5kg to your bench press max in 2 months, if you succeed it could be a nice trip to your favourite restaurant, BUT if you fail to get stronger then you have to do squats for 10 heavy sets of 10 reps in your next workout.

By working smart and adding an incentive not to fail you will add to your HUNGER for training and get TOUGH. By rewarding yourself for each BIG success you will reinforce the LOVE of training.

Successfully reaching a goal + reward = Love of training

I am going into real depth here and you may not understand where I’m coming from until you TAKE ACTION.

If there’s one thing I want you to do today it is to really evaluate yourself, in training and in life and see where you could make things tougher in order to get stronger and develop a real hunger and love for your training.

Any questions or comments please drop them below and I’ll respond straight back!

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