The Mind and its Limits: Enjoyment over Hardship

Those reading this will know whether they fall into this category; that category is that of will and determination to succeed - at your own detriment. In sport we can quite often find ourselves in a position of KNOWING what we should do to attain a specific goal, but FEELING like doing something different.

Whenever an athlete that I coach, or myself for that matter - is going through this dichotomy, I look to advise and assist in a very careful manner. There’s a fine line that should be ridden between over exerting TOO much discipline, TOO much will to succeed and losing the will to train and compete, that for the majority of amateur athletes can leave us beleaguered, leave us unmotivated and unfulfilled by our sport.

As much as your favourite influencer or your favourite motivational page on instagram will have you believe - motivation is needed, as part of the mixing pot of ingredients that lead us towards a specific goal and a perfect execution, motivation is a strong dilution of that mix. Without it, the world and our desire for what we’re working towards can taste sour and unsatisfactory.

Think about it honestly, why do you do a lot of the things you do? Fair enough there is a necessity to a lot of what we do in the modern world, working to make money, paying bills to escape debt and stress, paying our mortgage or rent to put a roof over our heads. But your hobbies, your conversations, the plans you make, seeing the people you do; it’s all instigated by motivation, a desire to enjoy life.

Circling back to the sport - without that motivation, that desire, we leave ourselves strictly executing on nothing but transactional behaviour to achieve, which inevitably has an expiry date, believe me.

The answer?

Picture a graph, one that has peaks and troughs, maybe the curve even circles back on itself a few times, you go forwards, go backwards, up and down, but the OVERALL pattern is up. The overall pattern is better, higher success, higher achievement, more ability. Greater variation. It’s okay to try different things, work things in that aren’t as linear as they probably ‘should’ be on paper. You are always better in the sport, enjoying variation and not sacrificing other vices, and therefore staying in the sport, than you are acting like a robot with no emotion for 12 months then packing it all in and never speaking of it again because of how uninspired you have become.

It sounds dramatic, but a lot of you reading this will be high achievers, naturally tough on yourselves, it’s easy to work yourselves into oblivion. The best athletes I know are the ones who have been in sport long enough to see what’s on the other side of staying power. That staying power is made far easier by doing the things you love to do (with a nice sprinkle of the things you hate doing, surely I mentioned that’s also a necessary ingredient of the mix?)

To summarise, save your sacrifice, your unwillingness to give up, save that dog fight you know you have within you, for race days, for peak weeks, for times where you are going to need to absolutely give your all to the process. This isn’t a 24/7, 365 days a year type intensity. It’s one that needs to be reserved. Life, training, endurance in general - it can all be brought together by the age old saying ‘it’s a marathon, not a sprint’ - pace yourself and it will pay dividends. You have time, relax and enjoy yourself (by training hard of course).