It's easy to get caught up in that warrior mentality of pushing yourself so hard that getting sore, going to failure or even getting injured is considered a badge of honor. Now, I'm not saying don't challenge yourself or half-ass a workout by going through the motions, train to make yourself stronger little by little because over time, it adds up.
Unless you're a competitor, in law enforcement, the military or a pro athlete, pushing yourself to the brink is not always the way to go to make yourself better. When I performed feats of strength such as nail bending, hammer levering, tearing phonebooks or shaping long pieces of steel, I would hammer out what I could do and sometimes I pushed so hard that I did injure myself on a few occasions. Luckily nothing was damaged to where I couldn't do anything but there was a price to pay.
I believe in training hard without question, however; you can only go as far as you're willing to go and it's important you keep your mental game and body awareness in check. We understand that if you get hurt and you can't keep up with your responsibilities, you're no good to anyone but do we really get what that means? I'm lucky I'm able to train every single day without failure but when I got hurt, I have to adapt, modify and improvise at times in order to do things to help others plus still take on responsibilities that are asked of me.
Strength is not just physical but mental as well and it's important we understand the differences and similarities between the two. We learn how to progress and do so at our own pace, not the same as everyone else because everybody is different and if we act on the same progressions and the same pace as everybody else, it's not going to pan out well. We learn as we go along and find our strengths and decrease our weaknesses little by little.
Some days are easier than others but as we pace ourselves and pay attention to our energy, our awareness and the way we can recover, our strength in certain areas will go up even by a 1/10th of 1%. Some never see that or want to think that it's possible, if they're not stronger at a 5-10% increase in a day, they see it as a failure and not a success. Success eventually happens and failure is more of a lesson than a defeat. Now, this isn't the same if you're a policeman, a soldier, a fireman or whatever, if it comes down to life and death, failure can be fatal so building strength and awareness is a completely different area. You train for a specific purpose and do everything that's possible.
Work on building your strengths little by little. You may fail at some things and you may push to the brink where you can't hold on or move anymore (which I highly don't recommend) but never give up on making yourself better even by the smallest fraction because the tiniest or most microscopic improvements can make the biggest differences in what happens next.
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