Utterly, Utterly Demotivated
As I sit here in this gym, I have no shits left to give.
Every miniscule amount of progress I make is either immediately lost or falls by the wayside, as I struggle to improve elsewhere.
Inside or outside my training, I’m starting to feel totally numb to everything.
For every month I spend hitting punchbags and skipping, I get weaker. For every month I lift weights, I lose fitness and forget everything skill I have learned. If I combine my training, I exhaust myself and get slowly worse at everything.
Every time I beat a personal best in one lift, I can hardly shift the others. Every time I iron out a flaw in one technique, another one develops. Every time I think I’ve finally nailed something, I try it again a week or so later to find I’m right back where I started.
I always try to be upbeat on this blog, but frankly this is starting to suck. Everything I know about my training have taught myself over months and years of relentless practise and experimentation.
I’ve spent thousands of hours in gyms, studios and on mats, drilling myself half to death to get that little bit better. I’ve injured myself more times than I can remember and suffered more than my fair share of aches and pains for days after training.
Christ, I even stumped up two grand and drove up and down the country, sleeping in cars and on floors throughout the middle of winter, to earn my Diploma in Personal Training faster than anybody else in the history of Lifetime Health and Fitness.
After all that, to turn back up at the gym and still find myself feeling weak and uninspired is…galling.
More than that, though. To do work at anything this hard, knowing that you will make little or no progress in the long run is, frankly, stupid! Unless, of course, you are happy to potter along not getting any better, which I’m not.
I hope it’s just a passing phase but, right now, I don’t care. The worst bit of all is that, for the life of me, I don’t know what I’d rather be doing…
Mar 6, 2012 at 7:43 PM /
I think a lot of fitness minded people go through bouts of what you’re experiencing – I know I do. Sometimes fitness is like an abusive lover that you just can’t stay away from – you give and give and do everything you can to even get a little bit of approval from them – and you have it momentarily… And it’s everything you hoped and dreamed it would be, but the very next week, month, day, it’s back to busting your ass putting all your time and dedication into striving for another moment of approval. I guess when I feel that way, I take a step back, think about what I really truly want to yield from my lifestyle of fitness, and then start doing things I enjoy. Breathe a little, clear the fitness drunk mindset, and make your relationship with it more than one sided – make it work for you. Best wishes.