Easy Doesn't Get Results

Sometimes when I’m in the middle of a workout, I tend to say things out of habit. The three most common things I say are: “I can’t!”, “Am I doing this right?”, and “This is hard!”. And every time these things come out of my mouth I get the same reply from Michael. When I say “I can’t”, he says “that’s four burpees”. For each time I say the word can’t, I have earned myself four extra burpees. Typically it will slip out only once during the session, but there have been times when it slipped out more than once in a session. And because I want to do everything perfectly, I will ask “Am I doing this right?”, especially on exercises I have not perfected. I don’t know why I ask, because it’s like he has said, he’ll let me know if I’m doing something wrong. But, it’s out of habit. And then when I feel I’m struggling in a workout, or a specific exercise is difficult, I’ll say “this is hard!” And every time he’ll tell me, “it’s not supposed to be easy”.

The last couple weeks I’ve really been pushing myself, not only during my sessions with Michael, but outside of my sessions by going in for extra lunch workouts and extra cardio. There are some days I’m in there three times a day. Michael has also been pushing me harder as well, so over these past couple weeks I’ve been making the comment “it’s hard” more frequent. And so I’ve been thinking about it the past few days, and I remembered one time Michael telling me “easy doesn’t get results”. I have goals to conquer, including an end of year goal I desperately want to meet. The other day I had written myself a very challenging cardio workout and was thinking to myself “this is hard”, and even wondering what the heck I was doing here for the third time that day. I quickly remembered I have goals to meet and I heard Michael’s voice with all his advice. Typically when you tell people you hear voices in your head, they may tend to think you’re crazy; but, in this case I actually think it’s a good thing. I’m constantly hearing the voices of the trainers who have always been there for me and think about what they would say to encourage me, and because of that I’m able to push myself when I feel like giving up, which will get me one step closer to my goals.

So, next time you think something is too hard and you want to give up, I leave you with a couple quotes that help keep me going. One is from one of my favorite baseball movies, A League Of Their Own, "It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great." And then the second is what Michael has said to me many times, "It's not supposed to be easy. Easy doesn't get results."