Maintenance Is Nothing

In my first posting, I took the stand that life demands athletic performance from us every day. Your city, neighborhood, home & office are your playing field. By this line of thought, we are all athletes. I may still be waiting on my offer letter guaranteeing a CC Sabathia sized paycheck, but none the less find myself contesting with my world on a daily basis.

This is why we should be training like athletes. The first rule of competitive training is that you always strive to elevate your performance. You can be stronger. You can be faster. You can move through your world with more ease and efficiency. You can experience your day with more energy and enjoyment. So it only makes sense that we should always be reaching higher, further.

"Maintenance" is nothing. To maintain is to automatically lose ground. Adapt and accommodate; it's what the body does. We throw a workout, a physical challenge at it, it adapts, gets stronger or faster to meet that challenge. That's adapting to accommodate an imposed demand. That's also progress! But, keep throwing the same thing at it over and over...no more adaptation. Once you figured out that 6x8=48, your teacher didn’t keep asking you what you get when you multiply 6x8. She asked you something harder, made you grow just a little more. You had already accommodated that demand.

The difference in math class and the gym is you still sweat after you’ve accommodated. You’ve stop progressing after lifting that same 135lbs for the last few months even though you may still feel fatigued after 15 repetitions. Then why are you tired? Because you haven’t trained your body to go further. If all you do is 10 or 15 squats at 135lbs, then as soon as you hit 10 or 15, you’ll have tapped the tank dry. Want to progress? Push through it. Make yourself hit 20. Over time, that fifteen is going to feel like the appetizer and you’ll be looking for the main course. After gaining the strength & endurance to make it happen, the body doesn't work as hard to do the same thing. You begin to move by rote and your body checks out more and more each time, losing ground.

Maintenance is regression. Find a goal. Set a date. Drive yourself forward. Achieve!
Yes treadmill people & spinners, your trusted daily workout is failing you. Not because it's bad, not because you're not trying, but because your body is so smart. Those three miles or 60 high intensity minutes just can't keep up with your adaptation. You have to build in those curve balls that keep your body guessing. Throw an extra weight plate on the stack. Go the extra mile. Add an extra set. Crank up that incline by even 1%. Stand up off that machine and try to lift that load through space. As you’re adapting, you're burning, building and striving forward.
You can thank me when you have a hard time standing up out of your chair tomorrow.