Be like Hela: keep your eye on the Prize
One of my favorite moments in Ragnarok is when Hela is in the vault. She sees the Tesseract (which we now know to be the Space Gem, one of the most powerful items in the universe), and this happens:
but it sits right there. She is almost a million years old, she knows what it is. it’s more powerful than she is.
And she lets it go. Because she doesn’t WANT the Space Gem, she wants Asgard!
In fitness, this happens to us a lot. You get started and you say, “My goal is to be strong and powerful like this dude!”
Great! So you start eating clean, your sleep right, you lift heavy, you eat a lot of protein, and you train explosive movements. But the problem is that no matter what you are doing you get to the point where the plan looks like this: “Do this same thing again for a really long time.”
That’s not very exciting. And that’s cool, because you know that the thing you want is at the end of this long straight road. This long straight road with no turns or sights or other traffic ......
Holy Crap! What was that?! that guy looks super cool and what he’s doing is crazy fun! Like way more fun than my squats and walking and eating salmon salad!
So we think, “Well, I can do that, right? Let’s put that thing with the huge heavy balls on chains on hold till I can do muscle ups.
And you make progress relay fast because you’ve never done gymnastics work before! And then the progress slows down. And it gets repetitive again. If your workout were a in a movie this is where the training montage would happen. But you’re in the real world, so there’s no training montage. There’s just you getting closer and closer to a muscle up in teeny tiny increments monthly .....
Until you see some one doing Parkour! That looks cool and fun!
See, the trick is that consistency is the only think that works, at the end of the day. And while it can feel a little boring, there IS a small secret to it and this is it:
Every weekday I go to work. then I hit the gym at lunch time and do my workout as prescribed (MWF that’s lifting and on Tuesday and Thursday that’s swimming). Then I return to work and eat a big salad with lots of protein. it’s not exactly thrilling at all times, but it IS easy because it’s automatic now. I just do it and by the end of the week that time spend IS a montage. it’s just a string of memories of little flashes. Me doing laps in the pool, me doing a squat, me doing box jumps, etc. And every week the montage gets a little longer, I get a little stronger, and I get a little healthier.
Later, maybe after a year, I can re-evaluate and see if my goals have changed. That’s healthy. But keep your eye on the prize. I want functional strength and mobility, so I train for it. If you want a sweet competition bod, train and eat like it. Keep your eye on the prize. Yes, the Tesseract of CrossFit or GMB or Insanity is cool and it may even be powerful, but only you know what your Asgard is. Go get it and you will become the truest version of yourself. At least till Surtr shows up.
