When you come to the gym are you focused? What I mean is, are you mentally in the mind set to put forth full effort into your warm-up, your movement prep, every rep of every set, your honest full effort during conditioning, and taking the necessary actions to mobilize post training? Be honest with yourself as you ponder that question. To make the biggest strides that you are all training for, you should be focused on getting better.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that you must be Drop-Dead-Dedicated-Serious-Faced-Mcgee all the time. Some day’s you just need to be with friends, get sweaty and move some weight around to forget about life; school, your job, whatever. Even if you may be having one of those days where you just want to sweat it out, the girl/guy next to you may be completely focused on their goal. So, when the clock beeps, switch your mindset to the task and give it that full effort. Push each other to greatness. Push each other to try and find your limits. Then, when you think you’ve found them, find the next limit. Limitations in ability are self-imposed and are seldom absolute.
Mechanics, Consistency, Intensity. That is the charter. And that is how progress is made. Move well, no move exquisitely. If you think you are a good mover then prove it. Do it consistently. Over and over, EVERY rep. Then and ONLY then should we be truly trying to add intensity to our movements.
Practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect. There is no point to doing more and more and more just for the sake of volume, or thinking that doing more will get you to where you want to be. Think of Michael Jordan’s story. He was cut from his high school basketball team. He practiced his butt off to become one of the best players of all time. But I guarantee he didn’t just go out and do sprints on sprints on sprints or just throw baskets over and over and hope to get better. He focused his efforts. He worked on virtuosity of his sport. The most basic of basics he worked on to make sure that he could perform them perfect without even having to think about what he was doing. This is how you become great. So think about it this way; why are you worried about doing a muscle up if you can’t perform a pull up? Why are you worried about Squatting 2x bodyweight if you can’t perform even a half decent air squat? Why are you worried about losing 20+ pounds if you can’t make good breakfast choices?
So I urge you to try this. Focus your attention on the basics, on the task right in front of you. Give it your full on conscious attention and effort, and execute to your fullest abilities and marvel at your progress.