Spartan Series #27 ”When My Body Gets Tired,My Mind Says: This is Where Winners Are Made”

In the gym during training there is/are moments when your body is telling you that you have exceeded it’s ability to go any further.  It cries out for you to give it a break and to stop.  The pain and fatigue are so great that there seems to be no way forward, to keep pushing, to accept another second of the exhaustion that you have created.  Accompanying this state sometimes is the sensation that I am about to faint, I’m lightheaded, things stop feeling real.  It’s here that I sit down and take a break to recover.  It’s very tempting to just say to yourself, “this is too hard and I want to quit.”

However, this is the time that your mind or your will has to take over.  It reminds me that the reason I am doing what I am doing is because I wanted to be something special.  I wanted to be a champion and the only way to becoming a winner is to go through this pain and this seeming misery to get there.  It’s here that we find out what lives inside us.

There are days when motivating myself to get to the gym is too much.  I lay in bed fighting the temptation to fall back to sleep.  I fight the urge to wake up my wife and have a conversation that will distract me long enough to come up with an excuse not to rise and get at it.  Again, this is where my mind must take over and remind me of what it takes to be a winner.  I chose this path and I had best be about the business of winning.

My favorite quote on this issue is, “the trophy is won in the hours when nobody is watching.”  Flex Lewis….I am a solo warrior.  I train alone because I am the only person I trust with my training and my winning.  I depend on nobody else with the exception of my wife Christine and my Coach, Justin Dees.  These are the only people who have access to my dreams and my effort to win.  These two people mean the world to me as I push to win.

In closing, remember that there will come a time when deciding to continue or quit is on the table for consideration.  This is the time when allowing your mind and heart to do the driving.  Your body has checked out, but it’s the mind and the heart that will carry you to the next level.

Until next time, I remain, Douglas E. Graham, Lt Col, USAF, (ret), MHSM