Does It Feel Like You're Spinning Your Wheels?
The discipline to keep doing the work is the answer.
From the newsletter: The Running Week
Athlete: Coach, I feel stuck. I’ve been training for weeks, and I don’t see any real improvement. What am I doing wrong?
Coach: Probably nothing. You're just in the middle.
Athlete: The middle?
Coach: The part where progress feels invisible. Where work piles up, but results stay quiet.
Athlete: So, what do I do?
Coach: Keep going.
Athlete: That’s it?
Coach: That's everything. Most people quit in the middle, not because it's hard but because it's quiet.
Athlete: But what if I never see progress?
Coach: You will, but not when you expect it. The body adapts slowly, and the mind even slower. Think of it like water dripping on stone. It looks like nothing until, one day, there's a groove.
Athlete: It just feels like I’m spinning my wheels.
Coach: That’s how every champion feels right before the breakthrough. Every run, every set, every choice compounds. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's not working.
Athlete: So, I just trust the process?
Coach: Trust yourself. Consistency is the real miracle. Anyone can show up once. Few show up daily.
Athlete: What if I don’t have what it takes?
Coach: You don’t have to have it. You build it run by run, day by day.
This post hit home for me this week. My daughter, Brenna, is only a week away from finishing her freshman year at Portsmouth High School.
Brenna is getting As and Bs in her classes but has been struggling with how much homework she has compared to the workload from her middle school years.
She has often been up to midnight trying to complete time-consuming research projects and the accompanying presentations.
Many mornings, she wakes up exhausted and doesn't want to go to school or athletics afterward.
But I'm happy to say she gutted it out the entire year.
Brenna competed in Freshman soccer in the fall and won the coaches award. She competed in indoor track in the winter and received her first varsity letter running the 55 m hurdles, the 55 m sprint, and the 4 x 100 relay.
And much to her mother and my disbelief, she received her second varsity letter in outdoor track and posted a top 10 Division 1 finish in the State of New Hampshire in the 300 m hurdles?!
WHAT??
Brenna is five feet tall and ninety pounds soaking wet!
Everyone hates the 300 m hurdles. Runners gas out down the final stretch and find it difficult to gracefully jump over that last hurdle without falling face-first on the track surface.
Brenna notched her fastest time in her first outdoor meet in the 300 m hurdles and qualified for the State Championship meet, but then she kept getting a little bit slower meet after meet.
I tried to explain to Brenna that the discipline to keep working, even when the results are showing, is what separates the best from the rest.
Steph and I couldn't be more proud of our daughter as parents. She listened and didn't give up. She was very frustrated after every meet, as her goal was to break 50.00 seconds!
What happened at the Division 1 State Championship meet held at Portsmouth High School?
Brenna PR’d and finished with the 10 fastest 300 m hurdle time in the state!
Please watch my handheld video of the race:
https://youtube.com/shorts/WoSTeSnzHRw?si=2aNuShkBMacLjeGl
Highlight video of State Championship Track meet.
Brenna is slowly but surely learning one of the most important life lessons.
Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.
No one will ever reach their full potential without the discipline to keep doing the work, even when the results don't show.
It's called GRIT, and next week, we'll dive deeper into this personality trait.
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Until next week, remember the function of Freedom is to free someone else!
I wrote Against the Grain: Ditch the American Dream and Build Your Own! to show you how to plot an alternate route to Society's Path and provide instructions for breaking out of Society's Box.
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