You have a full gas
tank that has just enough petrol to take you home. There isn’t enough petrol to
take you any further. In fact, driving incorrectly may cause the fuel to run
out quicker. Things like accelerating too much, or driving faster than you need
to will increase fuel consumption.
As a result, you slow
down as you approach red lights long before you reach them, you don’t
accelerate when you don’t need to and you drive according to the legal speed
limit (my mum is smiling right now…).
Had you accelerated
unnecessarily or exceeded the speed limit you may not have reached home, or you
may have crashed along the way.
Right now you are
probably thinking ‘WTF’, but bear with us because we haven’t lost the plot
(yet…). The above excerpt applies to driving, but is also a perfect training
analogy. All we have to do is substitute a few things: home = goal, fuel/petrol
= motivation, car = you, red lights = injury/burnout, acceleration = big
increments, speeding = too frequent…
Your motivation is
just enough to take you to your end goal (whatever it may be). Training
incorrectly may cause you to burn-out, and subsequently miss your goal. Things
like training too frequently or overloading incorrectly will be too much for
your CNS and your motivation will decline quickly, causing burnout.
As a result, you slow
down before you are even close to feeling burnt out or injured, you increase
with steady increments and you allow enough recovery time between sessions (you
didn’t progress too fast).
Had you aimed for huge
daily improvements or trained too frequently you would probably have lost
motivation and not reached your goal (or become injured).
But, now you are out
of fuel does that mean when you reach your goal that’s it? Definitely not! There
is a petrol station near your house that can top you up.
