How bad do you want to see changes? Let me ask you a question: if you had to choose from the following, which would you choose?
1-Do the right things?
2-Work really hard?
This is to raise the more important question of “How important is hard work relative to everything else?”
So many athletes I come in contact with each day are all pushing and striving for the same thing, to become a better athlete. So what is this missing ingredient?
Hard, consistent work. Here’s how it breaks down:
-If you’re doing things completely wrong, no amount of hard work will save you. It might even make things worse.
-As long as you’re doing things reasonably well, that is enough, as long as you’re working hard.
-If methods are 100 percent dialed in but you’re not putting in the work, it simply won’t pan out.
Hard work is ALWAYS an option for everyone, you just need to be willing to do it! We tell ourselves the more complex and profound our programming is, the more complex and profound our results will be. But this is rarely the case, particularly where strength is concerned.
Some days you’re going to ache all over, and other days, weird muscles are going to be sore. If you’re like most people, you probably won’t ever hit a point where training hard doesn’t leave you feeling a little beat up. You will, however, hit a point where being beat up just isn’t that big of a deal. Part of evolving as an athlete is realizing being strong is not for the faint of heart.
You can build your work capacity fairly quickly, given proper dosing and a reasonable timeline, but you need to use a practical progression. I realize doing a certain workout and steadily progression on your training load to increase adaptation without crossing the threshold into un-recoverable territory isn’t exciting. Complexity for the sake of complexity doesn’t add anything of value. Your programming only needs to be as complex as the task demands.
Fitness is a journey.” It’s probably one of the biggest clichés in the industry. And like many clichés, it happens to be true. Over time, consistency and effort applied in a wise and realistic manner will outweigh pretty much everything else. You cannot cheat this basic truth of training with secret programs or shortcut protocols.
Train HARD and Train SMART !