I’ve been there. I have been the guy on top, the winner, the best at that time. I have also been the runner up, gone home without the trophy, been hurt, knocked around and beaten down but I am proud to say that I never stayed down. There is a philosophy of winning that goes against the notion of the top prize and that is to say that in order to win, you don’t always need to come first. It is true, there will be a winner, of that there is no doubt, however on any given day there may be one person out there who is better than you. So how do you reconcile that loss with your psyche? How do you continue to rise after each fall and as a coach how do you help your athletes to realize that winning isn’t about winning at all but about striving to be the very best you can be with no regrets? It is paradoxical to say that winning isn’t about winning. After all, there is a trophy and a payday for the winner, there is a place in history for the winner. Nobody knows who came second to Lance Armstrong during his 7 Tour De France wins, nobody remembers who lost to Michael Jordan during his 6 NBA Championships and you would be hard pushed to find anyone who could tell you the runners up who followed Michael Schumacher to the podium during his 7 Formula 1 World Championships. However, in the end, there can be only 1 and that leaves no room for error. So in order to keep ourselves motivated, in order to make sure that we have something against which we can measure ourselves winning becomes secondary. It takes a back seat to the individual struggle and victory over ourselves. There is a saying I used to repeat to my rugby players and to my gymnastics athletes that there is always somebody somewhere who is working hard enough to beat you and it is your duty, your responsibility to yourself to disappoint them. But it doesn’t always work out that way and when it doesn’t, there is only one thing that matters. The ability to look yourself in the eye, to look at your teammates, parents, children and friends and tell them that you did everything you could. There is no greater pain in the world than knowing that you could have done more. But in contrast, there is nothing that will comfort the sting of defeat like the knowledge that you worked as hard as you could, and gave it everything you had.
You may not think that you are a hero. You may not think that what you do on a daily basis matters in the grand scheme of things but you are wrong. Each time you do anything that challenges you, each time you take part in a project, a game or a workout that pushes you, you are taking stock of yourself and either building yourself up or tearing yourself down. From a fitness perspective, every time you cut your workout short you hurt yourself both physically and psychologically. Each time you finish the last set and wonder how you made it through you add to your stock as a person. You owe it to yourself to do your best, if for no other reason that at the end of the day you can look at yourself in the mirror and be proud. So pick yourself up one more time, push through the pain one more day and trust that in the end, victory will be yours.
Believe me, you don’t want to be in a place where you can’t look yourself in the eye because if you can’t be proud of you, nothing else matters.
Getting back into your schedule is often harder than you think. The best way, then, is just to shut up and do as you are told. So I stuck with Tony and the gang and did the whole workout without skipping. It was a relief, gave me a great workout and got my focus back. It was a little odd doing the long slow weights thing again but made a nice change from the HIIT stuff I was doing before. I did find it challenging going at a slower pace though. I got a little restless about half way through, but instead of rushing ahead and skipping the time on the DVD I chose to rest, push out a few more reps and keep pace. I was so inspired that the next day I did the same with Shaun T and did Plyo Cardio but included all 3 rounds of the warmup and did every exercise as Rx’d. It was actually easy to keep pace and not think about it instead of planning which bits to skip and how to modify the workout. Since this is a reintroduction of sorts after a few days off, it has made the transition much easier.
I decided that I would modify my work yet again and this time develop a short workout that I could measure for rounds and time. That means you take certain movements and repeat them to failure which will give you both a repetition goal and a time goal. For me, because it was chest, shoulders and triceps I did bench with 135 lbs (due to my still sore shoulder), kettlebell swings or snatches with 25lbs and bar dips.
I literally dragged myself through this workout. Maybe I am overtraining, that did come into my mind again. Maybe I should be sticking to 3 on 1 off or 4 on 1 off. I don’t know but what I do know is that it is harder than ever to keep going through the workouts. Maybe my carbs are too low, maybe my GI intake is too low, I am not certain. When I look at my fitday though, it seems like I should be feeling better than I am. That is why I think maybe it is overtraining not out of whack eating. I am scheduled to do a major workout today, P90X chest shoulders and tri and it may not be prudent given that it will be my 5th workout in a row with a preceding set of several 4 and 5 workout stretches behind me. Trouble is, I don’t feel better when I don’t work out for a day and that scares me. I do realize now I think about it that my sleep isn’t where it should be. Maybe that is the issue, an extra 2 hours a night might fix me up completely. For now, I will soldier on with the CS&T today and see what tomorrow (rest day) feels like. I did shovel for about 25 minutes this morning too, at 530am which was an unexpected surprise.
My weight seems to have stagnated a little. However, this loss is totally different than any other weight loss I can remember. Usually when I am able to lose weight, I seem to shrink all over and end up as a smaller, lighter version of me. In other words, I don’t think my body composition changes much, I lost muscle and fat and end up being a mini me. This time however I find that my body fat is disappearing and I am really starting to see a change in the basic shape of my body. For once my waistline seems to have been the first thing to change and my pants are all falling off. It’s a bit weird, this has not happened before other than when I was at Western and got down to 11% fat but then again I was only 190lbs. I am hoping that this week is just a readjustment week which often happens after a certain amount of loss. Your body seems to take a breather before scaling down once again. It’s certainly no time to get discouraged since the Paleo lifestyle seems extremely easy to follow and is providing some amazing results. We will have to see what my official weight is on Sunday but as of now I am the same as I was last Sunday, albeit a slightly different shape!