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🌱 Training as a Practice

Milton Holdiem
Milton Holdiem
2 min read

My First Yoga Session

I've tried yoga a handful of times. My first time, I accidentally did hot yoga when I thought it was regular yoga. Lessons learned, bring a towel and extra shirt to all yoga classes! I did go on to try other yoga places and something I loved about it was that the instructor called the class a "practice."

"Good morning. Welcome to today's "practice."

I loooved that phrase. Ever since then, I thought of workouts as a practice. Before that, training was more like a performance. A game day. Something you can do well, or something that can suck.

Workouts as a Performance

While we want to push during a workout and create progress through overload, there will be sessions that won't feel the best. Some days you get to your workout tired from a workday, and you can't lift as heavy.

Usually you'd think of these as "crappy" sessions. You might not feel satisfied with your sessions if you're always looking for a "great" session. But it's life, sometimes you have to roll with the punches.

It's easy to have an underwhelming performance on off-days, but it's tough to have a crappy practice session.

What is Practice

When I look at workouts, I view them as a practice which has a completely different context from a performance. Training as a practice means doing reps towards improvement. It means being intentional with effort, but not judging yourself based on the outcome. With practice, you know that the outcome isn't supposed to come from today's session. It comes later.

It's harder to get discouraged with practice than a performance. You don't expect perfection, because it's just practice. Failure is expected. It makes "bad" training sessions learning tools.

Learning a Song Takes Time

In music for example, learning to play piano masterpiece takes time. Learning the notes of both hands, the rhythm, then memorizing it all can't be done in a quick session. It's a known, and instead of thinking of expecting yourself to perform perfectly on the first try, you learn the song and work on improving. You expect to play it in the future, but for now? You practice.

Wrap-up

Treating workouts as an intentional practice versus a performance leads to consistency and positivity. Intentional practice leads to progress. Having this mindset when it comes to training adds self-care to the process. 🙏🏾

Hope you enjoyed this weekly #52!

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Milton Holdiem Twitter

Focused on coaching busy professionals. Cold brew drinker.

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