“Smile,
breathe and go slowly.” - Thich Nhat Hanh
In a key scene of the 1982 science fiction movie
“Blade Runner”, Roy Batty, a genetically engineered robot with super-human
power but a fixed lifespan, faces his creator and demands more life. His maker
tells him that it is impossible to enhance his operating-time and thus rejects
Roy’s request with the words: “The light
that burns twice as bright burns for half as long and you have burned so
very, very brightly.” Subsequently, Roy kills him ...but that’s not the point.
 |
| Be a light that burns for twice as long. |
The point is: don’t be the light that burns
twice as bright. Don’t be Roy Batty in your training approach. If you are not
making a living from your sport then your first aim should always be to enjoy
what you do. Joy in terms of sports and training comes from having fun, making progress, feeling better, improving
your health and keeping an aesthetic body (whatever that means to you). How you prioritize
these goals is up to you but you will enjoy neither of those for a
long lapse of time if you always enter the gym with a “go hard or go home”
attitude. The goal should be to enjoy your passion for a lifetime. I, for my part, want
to be able to step on the mat in my seventies, I want to be able to hit the gym
and do chin-ups, deadlifts and squats while my contemporaries attend information
events for the retirement home, and I want to be able to kick some youngster’s
ass and leave them staggered with a smile on my wrinkled face. Steady, healthy and
sane progress is key. I don’t want to burn twice as bright. I don’t want to be
Roy Batty.
