Improvement

Are you improving?

Sometimes in training and life, we get stuck in these ruts. Some we are aware of and some we aren’t. Doing the same stuff every day, day in, day out. Sleep, eat, work, train, eat, work, train, eat, sleep. We think turning up to training is improving, and it is, but, as much as we could be?

Do you get to training and go through the motions or feel like you are? Do you hit the pads with no intention? Do you do the same run every day? Do you lift the same weight every time? If you do then you need to change something because how are you going to improve? Training is not about going through the motions. It’s about pushing the boundaries and finding ways, EVERY SINGLE SESSION, to get better, to find the extra edge. When I say training, I don’t just mean the physical part. There are so many other avenues to explore to make us all better athletes. Diet, Mind, Strength, Endurance, Agility, the list goes on.

An Instructor can only push you so far and tell you so much. The rest is up to you and believe me, there is a never ending room for improvement. After years of training, I am still searching for ways to improve and feel I am within myself. If you can improve one thing per day, that’s 365 things per year – 365% increase in what you would if you weren’t going that extra mile- over time that’s a big improvement.

It’s one thing going through the motions. The hard part is doing the stuff you don’t like – the hours of perfecting footwork, flexibility work, purposely exposing your weaknesses in training so you can improve on them, training the things you’re NOT good at. That’s where the real hard work takes place. I train to be the best I can be, not just the bits I choose. As soon as I realise I can’t do something… Challenge accepted!

My training partner has influenced my thinking and one thing I’ve learned is to strive for progression, not perfection. This has been quite a hard concept to grasp for me being the perfectionist I am but I finally understand it. For example, the roundhouse is probably one of the first techniques you’ll learn in Muay Thai. However, in my opinion, it’s one of the last techniques you’ll master.

Training most days frustrates me a little as even though I am probably making baby steps, I don’t get to see progression. However, when I look back on the past 6 months, I have asked myself this: Have I improved? The answer is self explanatory.

Don’t be a person going though the motions.