HELD TOGETHER BY WILLPOWER

I’ve been running into a rash of people calling me “gifted” these past few days and it’s been making me chuckle.  I apparently have those super special genetic gifts that simply require 18 years of continuous training to unlock.  And when I rebut with this, they STILL maintain that I’m gifted, but now it’s different; it’s because I’ve been able to train for 18 years that I’m gifted compared to the average person.  Specifically, they point out how gifted I must be to have been able to train for 18 years without any serious injury that prevented my training.  At this point, I can no longer continue the dialogue, because I have inevitably collapsed a lung from laughing too hard, which ironically enough contributes to my growing list of injuries.  There is this myth that success training is injury free training, and that the way to the top is to never stop because of an injury.  It’s not that you never stop from injury; it’s that you never let an injury LET you stop.  No matter what breaks, you just keep on pushing through, because you are held together by something stronger than muscle, bone, tendon or sinew; you are held together by willpower.

I suppose hate is a good second choice

Yes, it’s true, and it can be done.  The secret is: it sucks!  And that’s why no one does it.  But it’s completely FREE for the taking.  It’s all up to you, and it’s a choice YOU get to make.  Isn’t freedom awesome?  When you get hurt, YOU get to choose if you are done or not.  YOU get to choose if you will heal or not.  YOU get to choose how the recovery will be.  People tend to choose the easy way BECAUSE it’s easy, yeah, but should you decide to take the hard way and be held together by your willpower alone, you will grow greater and stronger than ever.  THIS is the secret to those “gifts”; it’s the gift of accepting accountability for your fate.

Yeah, that above paragraph is a little cosmic, so let me wind it back a bit to reality.  Here’s the first thing: most people don’t even know the difference between pain and injury.  They consider them to be the same thing.  Look, I get it: people don’t like pain.  Hell, I’m mostly a person and I don’t like pain, primarily because I’m not a masochist.  Humans, in turn, are instinctively conditioned to avoid pain when possible.  But that’s the great thing about being a human: you are not a slave to your instincts.  Quite the opposite: you have WILLPOWER, and in turn you can override your instincts.  Your mind tells you to take your hand off the candle flame because it’s hot and will burn you, but ask Gordon Liddy about that.  The trick is not minding.  Knowing this, the pain vs injury thing becomes a little more clear, because pain is something you CAN work through, which in turn makes it NOT an injury.  This is why, when people ask me a question about training through injuries and then they bring up something like tendinitis I look at them like a dog looking at a wristwatch.  That’s not an injury.

See this guy gets it

So what is an injury?  And injury implies dysfunction.  It means that even with all your willpower, you cannot make your body work the way it normally does.  You can’t just pain tolerance your way through it.  When a bone breaks, you are injured: unless you are Wolverine, you’re not going to will it back together quickly.  Same with ligament ruptures, muscle tears, tendons fraying apart, etc.  But here once again we still witness the opportunity to be held together by willpower.  For one, training need not cease simply because injury occurred: it simply needs to be altered.  Far too many trainees are willing to just stop training the entire body for simply an appendage injury, ignoring the fact that they still have 3 good limbs, along with an entire upper and lower torso and neck intact.  “But what about IMBALANCES?” the weak masses cry.  Hey guy, would you rather have 4 weak limbs or 3 strong ones?  Seems like a pretty easy choice for someone who actually cares about being strong, no?   

And it’s the same for recovery too.  Immediately post injury you get to make the decision of how you’re going to react.  The day after I blew out my left knee, I spent 4 hours walking around an aquarium with my family because I make a promise to do so, I did squats 6 days later, and I trained 2 days post-surgery.  I did my physical therapy religiously, trained what could be trained, got strong, and got recovered.  And do I have pain?  Hell yeah I do, and I will myself through it, because I’m not dead yet.  Meanwhile, the entire time I was at physical therapy, I witnessed a ton of people who had just quit.  They complained and lamented their condition and cursed the doctors for “torturing them”, whereas I begged for more resistance, more aggressive therapy, faster recovery.  My mind was simply unready to let my body die. 

No joke, I was ready to do this if it was going to get me results

You have the complete and total control to decide WHEN you are going to quit moving forward.  You are an agent of pure willpower manifested into human form.  You can decide to stop moving as soon as you meet any resistance, or you can carry on through everything.  You can run forward until you have to walk, walk until you have to limp, limp until you have to crawl, and crawl on your belly until it’s just your fingers dragging your body across the ground.  Your will can carry you much further than your body wants, you simply have to be willing to let it happen.  Let yourself be bound together by willpower and you will never truly fall apart.