Motivation: Lords of discipline

Think of discipline as the great leveler among people: Discipline makes up for lack of talent, and the lack of discipline quickly siphons away talent. That’s why the most disciplined, rather than the most gifted, people rise to the top’and that’s just as true in bodybuilding and lifting as it is in other pursuits.

It’s important to remember that most people are pretty good about the discipline aspects of their training. Most of the time they at least largely follow their diets, stick to their training routines and so forth. As a result, most people make pretty decent gains. What we’re interested in here, however, isn’t pretty decent results; we want to put you on the path to exceptional results, and that requires exceptional discipline. Discipline takes many forms in the iron game, and usually the most obvious form’such as following your diet, grinding out those tough reps, hitting all your workouts and so forth’presents the fewest problems. It’s the more subtle areas that can trip you up.

Often, when people ask for training advice, they present a training routine that has elements from several different sources. Sometimes the results are a mishmash of training approaches that to some extent cancel each other out. We haven’t yet run into anybody who was simultaneously training to gain and lose weight, but we’ve seen some routines that come pretty close.

The usual cause is that the person’s enthusiasm is pulling him or her toward a handful of different training routines and goals at once. Stick with a good program from one source long enough to allow it to work. To accomplish that, you need to truly believe in the way you are training. Second, shut out thought of other training programs until your next cycle.

‘Randall J. Strossen, Ph.D. IronMind: Stronger Minds, Stronger Bodies Editor’s note: For an elaboration on the above, plus many more mental strategies to help you attain more size and strength, see IronMind: Stronger Minds, Stronger Bodies, available from Home Gym Warehouse, 1-800-447-0008, or visit www.home-gym.com.