Virtus daily blog # 24 - Why Do You Train?

“That’s a high-performance habit”

A cool thing my mate and yogi extraordinaire said to me the other day over coffee.

Where I watched my friends trained, and I made friends with a lacrosse ball, resistance bands and some belly breathing.

I am no stranger to injuries. A knee injury sidelined me for 18 months.

An ankle injury which saw me miss a netball grand final.

And a handful of niggles that amounted too much more time off than it should.

I woke up with some WICKED pain in my L4 - L5 region on Wednesday.

A region that’s been giving me grief for some time. The pain comes and goes.

I’ve learned, I have to adjust my training, training load and training MODE to accommodate for where I’m currently at with my back.

It's no longer about KEEPING UP,

At a detriment to myself,

To ‘be the best’ and it was at this moment I realised something.

Since I stopped worrying about keeping up, I was no longer faced with this pressure to be on top of my game.

This is when my thinking changed. This is when the game changed.

In more recent times, I’ve been waging an internal battle with myself, after having a few people asking me;

‘Why I train’

I realised I didn’t have an answer.

So I asked myself;

"WHY DO I TRAIN?"

I spent a long time thinking about this,

Contemplating,

Listening to podcasts,

Reading (more thinking) and this is where I ended up;

I’ve been training for the wrong reasons. I used to train to look a certain way, to be appealing in a certain way.

To find the balance between being strong and being ‘toned’ or ‘skinny’

Which was so bad for my mental health and self-esteem.

I now look at my training differently.

I train for PERFORMANCE. To be strong, to be functional, to be an absolute WEAPON!

But, on a more serious note, I train to be the best I can be.

In the safest and most positive way possible,

And to turn my back on something that could have ended up being self-destructive.

So I ask you “Why do you train?”

No one gives a shit what you’re lifting,

Or how fast you’re going,

Or how far you’ve gone,

The only thing they notice is that you showed up,

Rain, hail or shine, you showed up.

Even when you didn’t want to,

You showed up anyway.

And THAT’S what counts.

… Be kind to your body, it’s doing its best.