Training for the Olympics Is Hard - but Easy

Between my husband and I, we went to eight Olympics, and both of us agreed training for the Olympics was easy.

I know it is quite the statement, both of us saying it is easy to train for the Olympics, but what makes it easy is that it is pretty simple. Just because something seems very hard to do, it doesn't need to feel hard to do the hard things. We “only” had to do the work the best way possible.

As professional athletes, we got up, prepared for ”work,” which was our training, and then we went to work. After the morning session, we took a break, and after that, we went back to work. Then we did whatever was necessary to be able to have high-quality work the next day again, like sleeping for hours. How easy is that?

Okay, there might be a few things that are harder than I make it sound like right now. What are those things 

• Training has to be done with high-quality
• It involves a lot of sweat
• Sometimes tears
• Injuries, illness, or other setbacks

There might be more, but it is not worth thinking about how hard things are. That would make them just harder. But there are things that make the hard stuff easy

• Passion 
• Loving and accepting challenges
• Staying humble and curious

Not having anything of the above makes training feel hard. For me, it is very hard just to sit around. I don't have a passion for it, I am missing the challenge, and I don't see what I could be curious about doing.

So, what is making the so-called hard things hard or harder? When you are not doing it with all of your heart, passion, and commitment.

It's like being in school. If you are present, listen, and do the things taught at that moment with focus and attention, you get a lot out of this class. If you are just sitting around, checking your watch every other minute, you´re wasting your time and have no idea what was going on. Not paying attention will make studying for the next exam much harder, and the result will not be the best either.

Going to every training session with an intention, like I descibed in the blog post What Are You Getting Out of Your Session, makes it easier than going there to just cruise around. The cruise is less exciting and makes it hard in the long run. That's why doing the hard thing is easier in the end than not doing what needs to be done. And training for the Olympics is easy when done with passion. If it will work out and actually go to the Olympics, this is a different story that I plan to cover in another post, so stay tuned! 

When you are having joy with the hard work, it ends up not feeling that hard. But if you dread the struggle, it's always going to be an uphill battle. 

Since many, many articles you can read describe how hard it is to be a professional athlete, I wanted to make sure you know that it is still lots of fun to COMPETE LIKE A PRO. 

Do You Have a Dream? Let´s Take the Next Step!