Little hinges opening big doors

Ladies and gents, we’re back, and today our intention is to provoke some personal reflection and thought. 

A little while ago, we shared a piece about the importance of repetition and monotony in a training program. 

Today, we are going to flesh this out a little more, in particular reference to injury prevention. 

One of my favourite quotes as a testosterone-loaded teenage boy training his heart out was from Joe Lewis – “Everybody wants to go to heaven but no one wants to die”. Back then I used it for motivation to wake up at 4:45am and to flog myself at the gym or running and I can promise, I’ve come a long way since then. 

Nonetheless, the words still ring true, just contextually a little different. In this case, “dying” refers to the boring bits to reap the reward of “heaven”, pain free, result generating training. 

For example, the niggling shoulder of the eager bench presser can be dealt with. You just need to take an extra 10 mundane minutes of working on your scapular tracking and your external rotation strength before you lift. 

The sore lower back of the eager jogger can be dealt with by investing time and money into pilates and strength training to develop a body that can handle the stress and load of running. 

The poor sleeper, taking 15-30minutes a night to practice down regulating exercises instead of sitting on their phone in front of the TV after dinner.

The rules don’t discriminate. 

So next time you complain about your body, your habits or yourself, take a second to consider: are you prepared to die to get to heaven? 

#teamSOF