For the most part in fitness, you read in the magazine about
this workout or in sports you hear about this or that way to throw, shoot or
kick a ball but in the end it all boils down to the individual. We don’t have the
same structures and our bodies handle things differently than others. That one
size fits all bullshit is just getting you to pay up for their little schemes.
Who can you
trust when it comes to your goals? I like to believe that we can always use a
coach, a friend, mentor or someone to show us the ropes. We learn and we get to
see in action what is being done, however; once we learn a thing or two, it’s
up to us to figure out how to put into action according to our own feeling and
how we see things for ourselves. I have been trained by some of the strongest
and athletic people in the world and learn a ton from them but I don’t always
do things their way because if I did, I’d just be a guy that follows yet I
rather build my own style from the things I learned from them.
I've come
to learn that there is never one way to do things. A lot of what we see today
is generic and not very imaginative. You learn certain things and you get a
feel for how they work for you. There is always something different and it’s
important to understand that but not many accept it. I love certain methods
like Hindu Style Conditioning, Animal Exercises, MovNat, Gymnastics and Grip
Training for example but I don’t always go by what I’m told to do and for some
it pisses them which I’m fine with. Once you get to a certain point in your
training or whatever where you’ll begin to see things from a different
perspective, some might see it very clearly right away for others it takes a
while. You are one person, you don’t have the same strength as another, you
don’t have the type of injuries or setbacks they've faced and you certainly
don’t have the same capacity to try and keep up with them. The only thing you
should keep up is yourself and what you want to go after.
There’s
always a challenge in training and in life no matter what. If everything were
easy it be (in the words of Danny McBride in Your Highness) tedious and boring
so find the right challenges for you and don’t try to compete with anybody
else. Be creative and utilize what you have learned into forming your own
personal quest and not following someone else’s. It can be demanding at times
but it’s more rewarding when you set something apart from the general
population. There are things I've seen friends do that I would never attempt to
do but there are things that I can do that they can’t, that doesn't mean either
one of us is better than the other, it just means that we have different views
on our goals an we set them to what can be achieved just for us.
If you have
practiced a variety of methods, you’re on the right track to expanding your
mind and learning how body handles itself in certain situations. If you just
focus on one thing and that’s all you know and ever want to do more power to
you but you’re also narrowing your mind set and you’re shrinking the plethora
of knowledge that is out there. Some people are just full of themselves and
think only their style is the best and everything else is crap. Be objective
and expand your horizons. You’ll be surprised what you might find.
