Why I train
I train to say yes.
Not for a number. For the capacity to accept what gets offered without doing the arithmetic first about whether my body can afford it.
It took me a long time to arrive at that answer.
For a long time I didn’t have to answer that question. I played baseball. Training was the job, the standard was written by somebody else, and my only task was to meet it. The body was equipment.
Then it stopped. Nobody prepares you for the part where the season doesn’t come. I kept training and I couldn’t have told you why. Some of it was momentum. Some of it was that I didn’t know who I was on a Tuesday if I wasn’t somebody who trained.
For a while I think I was keeping a body that used to be for something, hoping it would tell me what it was for now.
That’s the stretch I don’t skip when clients ask, because most of them are somewhere in it.
Training for a number on a scale. For a photograph. For a date on a calendar, a wedding, a reunion, a birthday with a zero in it. All of it borrowed from outside, and all of it ends the day it arrives.
What I landed on
I want to be able to say yes.
Somebody asks on Thursday about a hike on Saturday, and I want the answer to be yes rather than a calculation. Carrying the heavy end of something. A pickup game with people fifteen years younger. A long flight and a full day at the other end of it.
Eventually, picking up a kid who wants to be picked up, for as many years as that lasts.
Four things, and I don’t rank them
Start underneath is about the order, not the ranking.
Sleep
It sets the ceiling for the other three. Everything gets harder than it needs to be underneath it.
Breathing
The fastest way I know into a nervous system that has been stuck switched on all day.
Recovery
Training is the stimulus. This is the part where it becomes something.
Training
Progressive, heavy enough to matter. Capacity gets built, it doesn’t get preserved.
Most people are handed the fourth one first, with none of the other three underneath it, and then blame themselves when it comes apart.
What would you say yes to, if your body was ready?
That’s the first thing I’ll ask you. Bring your answer to a free call. No pitch, and if I’m not the right person I’ll tell you.
Twenty minutes to see if I’m the right person
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