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Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Every Peak Has Two Valleys

By Phil Stevens


The straight out fact is, no matter how much we think we can or want to be, we have to get it through our heads, WE CANT BE ON TOP ALL YEAR LONG!

Plain and simple, I don’t care what the fitness rags and the popular media portrays. It is all lies. If your training hard and trying to get to the extremes in your chosen sport or profession you cannot be at the top, in peaking all year long. The majority of your time is spent on one or the other side of the mountain, ramping up, or down to just have brief moments at the top. You have to learn to enjoy the process the ride.

You have to take an athletic mindset to your passions, your work, and realize it has to be a labor of love. Look forward to training, to the next challenge. Take on each step knowing that the way to the top is usually not a straight line. That once you reach that next step inevitably there is going to be a plateau, or a few needed steps backward to heal, to recover, from bringing your mind, your body, to the limits, to the point of breaking. Prior to once again making the trek to the peak.

This can be seen in any athletic endeavor.

Athletes train months on end peak for a single day or single event. Slowly ramping things up, slowly taking themselves higher and faster. Consistently adding steps, further and further stress for their bodies to adapt to in order to take a swing at the fences on one day, or one season, prior to once again resting.

The same goes for a nutrition protocol that has you reaching for extremes. The body can only take so much before it has to begin to break. You can only sport that ripped veiny six pack so long before you MUST, take a break. The body will limit you. You will start to lose things. Muscle mass will go, general health, cognitive function, state of well being. Just like being Obese, obscenely over fat.

Exteme leanness IS NOT a state of fitness or a state or marker of health. Your body does not want and cant sustain naturally and in health for extended periods of time at ultra low body fat. Again I don’t care what the media shows or some supplement companied and fitness rags portray. The most health and the most progress is done on one or another side of the slope away from that peak point that is short lived.

At times, you're going to have hurdles, have injuries and obstacles in your way. we all have them. They are something we have to accept, and use not as a point of stress, as something to fret an cry over, or force us to quit, but use as fire. That by over coming this next step, or going a few steps down on a rocky road to make our way around an obstacle we are on our way back to the many peaks along our path.

While in our mind there may be but one ultimate pinnacle, in reality the road up to that and after that is paved with many small hills and valleys each having there own peak.

We have to learn to take pride in those peaks, and then learn and move on keep going to new ones.

Even after sticking it out and making it to what we thought of as our ultimate goal, it not over. Our climbs, our rises, and our falls have just begun. You are done if you try to live life on the memory of one crest, one trip to the top. Or you simply try to maintain a certain level and slowly make progress on two roads at once. (getting huge, strong, and extremely lean) it’s a continuing journey. We must press on to new goals.

Having the ability to accept that your trek now leads down in into discomfort in order to once again rise up through hard work to a new higher and or different top. Accepting a fall to reach that next top is what separates those who will succeed from those who will continue to widdle away in mediocrity in an attempt to be on top none stop. All that leads to Is crashing, burning, or at the least plateauing, and staying the SAME for years. Never really reaching what you are capable, due to never taking a rest from pressing the limits in order to then break new ground.

There is a time for pushing the limits HARD, and a time to stop, step back, reload, and then reach for new heights.

Its those who realize this. That accept this. That educate and learn how they react. That take the months and years to travel those peaks and valleys enjoying the ride. Learning their personal mental and physical limits, and that healing, resting, and having fun will lead to great things that will last long and end up burning hotter and rising higher then their counter parts that burnt HOT and burnt out fast.

You have to have an off season if you push life, work, training and diet or diet to reach extremes. You have two choices Live hard, live heavy, make a mark, and then rest and recover for the next run. Or simply relegate your self to being average, mediocre, and likely unhappy and unhealthy. It’s your choice.

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