Monday 2 September 2019

Improvements don’t come in a steady incline


“If it was easy, everyone would do it.”
How many times have you heard this, after spending 10 minutes explaining that you’re finding something difficult? I’m guessing a fair few. Although it may not seem supportive, nor helpful, our audience are conveying a very simple and important message.

Change is difficult, get used to it.

We as humans have the irrational belief that the process of improvement is linear. Deciding what you want to improve is the start point, improving in that area is the end point, with a steady rising gradient connecting the two. It’s a lovely fairytale, but it’s looking upon the issue with rose-tinted glasses. 

Your road to improvement - no matter how large or small - comes with peaks and troughs. 

Lets take an example; building muscle. 
Most lads (aged 18-30) will initiate the idea of going to the gym in the hope that they can ‘get hench/swole/big/etc’. The concept usually derives from some minor ribbing off their friends, or even glancing at the cover of one of the popular fitness magazines. They see, they want, they ‘commit’. 

Fast-forward 3-6 months… 

The majority of our fledgling Mr Olympias have hung up their lifting belts, and slumped right back into their old habits - but why?

These guys saw what they wanted and assumed it was an upward trajectory from the second they walked onto the gym floor. They thought that all they had to do was pick up heavy shit like the rest of the meathead bodybuilders, and they’d be big in no time. 

Well, weren’t they disappointed. 

Their intentions were positive, but their expectations were not. The men you see on the front of those magazines have spent the majority of their time on this earth living the fitness model lifestyle. 

They spend 2-3 hours in the gym, 7 days a week. 
They eat a ridiculously low amount, regardless of the time of year.
They skip out on enjoying social occasions and birthdays, fearing their body will turn to mush overnight. 

These guys commit; 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year to get that physique, and you were expecting to smash it out in 3 months? 

So expectations were high, surely as humans we have the capabilities to realign our forecast with reality, and continue to progress regardless? 

Possibly, but unlikely. 

Imagine jumping on a bronco whilst under the impression that it enjoys being ridden, and inevitably (at least to everyone else) being launched 6ft into the air and crashing to the ground. Would you re-saddle without question?

So, now we’ve crashed back down to earth, with our expectations looking like they’ve gone through the set of Honey I Shrunk The Kids, how about we tackle the whys?

Let’s go back to our previous example; why can’t any old person just walk into the gym, pick stuff up and eventually gain muscle?

They can, with emphasis on the word ‘eventually’.

Most believe that if your form is correct and you lift ‘heavy’ weight frequently, you’ll achieve your goal. Even though this belief has the basics covered, there’s a whole world of variables that are left in the cold. Namely; protein intake, sleep, nutrition, stress, anxiety, individual pain threshold, individual perceived levels of exertion, water intake, illness, diseases, age of individual, hormonal imbalance, injuries, handicaps, calorie intake, etc. Some of these things we can control, others not so much. 

These factors vary and fluctuate from day-to-day, hour-to-hour and minute-to-minute. It all boils down to something I like to call, indirect variability. 

How on earth could our gradient of improvement remain stable, when all these inconsistencies are at play? 

In fact, I would go as far as to call it a miracle if you managed to go 6 weeks with consistent improvements, never mind 6 months. 

So instead of entering the world of self-improvement with your eyes shut, start by accepting the unavoidable negatives as par for the course. 

You will have moments where you feel like you’ve regressed.
You will have negative thoughts and emotions about your progress.
You will go to bed some nights feeling like you’ve failed.
You will feel like quitting… a lot.
All of this is part and parcel of self-development and it’s not only normal, it’s inescapable.

Difficult, stressful and mentally draining times, are what help our minds grow, adapt and prosper. Bad days are what put the successes into perspective. They give us a memory to look back on, when we finally achieve what we set out to do. They don’t feel like gifts at the time, but it’s exactly what they are. 

After all; how would we know what a good day was, if that’s all that we lived?

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