Thursday, August 09, 2007

Watch the Teeth


You have to listen to your body. Sometimes you get the gym, start warming up and realize you just don't have it in you that day. You have two options when this happens. You can listen to your body and just go home and put your workout off until tomorrow or you can try to get psyched up and plow through your workout. If you love training it's a tough decision sometimes.

It's kinda like deciding whether or not to utter those three words...

"Watch the teeth."

If you say nothing, chances are that it could get better... or it could get worse. Or maybe it just remains the same and you realize how lucky you are to be in that position in the first place so you just battle through the painful pleasure. But what if you say those three words? One of two things will happen; it will either get way better or it will immediately be over because no one likes to be told they are doing a bad job. This is a very, very, very difficult decision to make and one that I have wrestled with many times in my life. It is huge reward vs. huge risk.

Since I don't believe in doing anything half assed and would rather not do it at all then do it wrong, I always opt to utter those three risky words. Sometimes it works, other times it doesn't. But I think it's a risk you have to take.

Just like when you are feeling shitty and know that your workout is going to suck that day. Simply pack up and leave. It's just not worth having teeth marks, I mean a crappy workout that really does nothing but impede your progress. It doesn't make you tougher to fight through so don't bother doing it.

I should note that this should only happen on a very rare occasion (like once a month) where you feel so bad that you can't train effectively and make progress. Don't use this as an excuse to skip every other workout; just remember that everyone has a bad day on occasion and you have to listen to your body. Especially when there is biting involved...