The Goal Is To Keep The Goal The Goal

Dan John is famous for quipping that the most important thing about training is to "keep the goal the goal." It is so easy in the digital age where a constant stream of different workout/training plans stream across our feeds to jump from one training plan to another simply because the next routine up seems somehow better/more interesting than the last. Grinding out with consistency day after day can be so easily trumped by novelty.

My resistance training for the last few months has been along the "Easy Strength" lines, which means I never feel really hammered from training and have energy to focus on specific climbing training - endurance laps on my home wall, limit bouldering outdoors, projecting. I never feel really sledged because if you are training the Easy Strength way you virtually never go to maximum lifts. Sometimes, when you are used to finishing a workout maxed out, this can feel like cheating, and that nagging voice in back of your head says "shouldn't you be lifting harder?'

And then you go out on a climbing day - which brings me to day three of our lockdown - and you feel really strong, climb routes with relative ease which were a huge struggle before, finish only because it is getting late not because you are tired and realise that the training works, and keeping the goal the goal is the goal.