“You get what you give” is a song by the New Radicals and an album by the Zac Brown Brand. It’s also a truism for life and any athletic training you do. If you push hard during training, you will see bigger and better results. It’s as simple as that. How many times have we cheated here and cut corners there? I know I have. And the old saying is so true: You are only cheating yourself.
Today we did an exercise that I haven’t done before (surprisingly). We started by squatting, picking up hand weights, doing a curl and then shuffling to the next set of hand weights. There were ten of them in a row and we kept moving down the football field. We did that for a few minutes and then we moved forward to a row of chairs. We’d sit down, rock back and then forward. Then we’d jump up and move to the next chair. We did that for a few minutes. Then we’d move forward to a row of cones. At each cone, we’d do a half-burpee (the on the ground part) and move to the next one. By the time I got to the cones, I was pretty tired. And every part of me wanted to slack off. But instead, I focused on each single phase of the drill and pushed myself. My plan? To be better next time.
Sure, I could have cut corners. But the time we were running on the bleachers at the end of the day, I could have slacked off. But I pushed until I nearly vomited. Why? Because I wanted to be better the next time.
Life is tough. We get fatigued. It is tempting to cut corners — but don’t. Life gives us what we put into it whether it is a 5 a.m. boot camp or a relationship or a job. So just remember this the next time you feel like you can’t give any thing else:
You get what you give.