MONDAY MINDSET: THE ILLUSION OF STAGNATION

WEEK OF 6/17/24

 

There comes a time in your training career where it feels like you are just not progressing at all.

And if it hasn’t happened to you yet, it will.

We have to remember that “progress” is a relative term. Unlike in weightlifting, us martial artists don’t have a quantifiable metric to track (i.e. how much weight we’re moving) so it is nearly impossible to objectively measure our improvement. As such, we often track our progress via how we perform against our training partners.

The problem with this approach is that we generally don’t consider that our training partners are ALSO improving. Some at the same rate, some slower, and some even faster than we are.

What we have to understand is that if everyone is improving, then our ability to see our own improvement can be compromised – because as we get better, so do they, and relatively we are generally still equal.

Keep this in mind the next time you feel a little funky about your performance. We are all improving, just at different rates. The only way you are going to stagnate in your training is by not training. Period.

There’s one thing I can promise you, though: if you show up to practice, you will improve. You may not see it. You may not feel it. You may not even believe it.

And the people who get to the top? Those killers in the gym? Their secret?

They just continue to show up.

See you on the mats.