Lessons from Exercising
Why you do it?
Before you start you have to understand this Failure is an option. You keep trying to break your previous record and most of the time your fail, whether your doing handstand, lifting 200KG, or running 5k, maybe you will do it from the first time, maybe not. The thing is it doesn’t matter, you do it because you love to do it, not because you wan’t to achieve something. If it comes along the way — and sometimes it will — thats fine, but if not you won’t regret the time you spend, and you won’t identify it as a wasted time.
Problem with having a goal to achieve is that goal is based on your current state and your current environment variables, change that and you have completely different goals. Sometimes it will get very dark and you will feel that this goal is unattainable and you start to think of giving up, until you do.
Do yourself a favour, and do what you love, because you love to do it.
Start with the basics, and build on it
Before you go lifting you need to learn how to lift so you won’t hurt yourself when you add crazy weight later. Same goes for software, you need to have a strong base to build on. Having a half assed software is the worst, building a lot of features with lots of bugs, not organising code for the sake of speed. Seth Godin said: “Hurrying almost always makes it take longer”.
Take your time build a base by choosing the main feature or purpose and finish it completely, then work your way up slowly.
Don’t think. Show up
After you finish the basics all your left with is the actual work, the progress, the scary work. You show up in the gym and your supposed to lift 5KG more than your previous time, it doesn’t seem scary when you lift 20KG but when you lift 200KG it will be terrifying. At some point you will find yourself in a self doubting questions, can I really do it? is it possible? will it break my body? All you have to do is remove your mind. Thats how lifters, writers, entrepreneurs do it. They don’t think about what they are doing, they just go do it, they just show up and do their thing. If you think about what you are going to do every time you go do it, it will not end. Imagine having the same conversation over and over with alzheimer’s patient, thats the conversation with our minds are like.
Don’t think too much, just show up do your thing and get back to your life.
Work hard. Rest harder
People who exercise understand this, muscles are not made at the gym. In order to get better at what your doing you need to kill yourself at the gym then take the necessary rest to restore and rebuild your muscles, because unless you rest; you wont grow. Memory works in the same manner as muscles work, they have to rest inorder to save the data you learned and be ready for more work the next day. Not doing this will cause you overworking which will burn you out, lower your performance and get you couple of steps back.
One thing I learned from the Super Slow Protocol, you can go once a week to the gym lift till you can’t lift your keys, then take the rest of the week off and you still show progress next time.
Some people think that the more they work the better they will be, they go do it everyday, nonstop unnecessary excerption and keep whining about it. I’m not saying you shouldn’t wake all night working hard; all I’m saying it just shouldn’t be your way of life, do it when necessity calls, and do it for maximum of a week, but take the sufficient rest later.
So if it gets down to choosing between being a Marathoner or a Sprinter, what would you choose?
Originally published at seifsallam.com.
