Are You The Type To Burn Out Or Fade Away?

This is a philosophical question that probably impacts the way you approach not only fitness, but life in general.  Would you rather be the kind of person that burns out, or fades away?  Can you find a happy medium?

Those who burn out

I jokingly refer to my engineer friends as the type of people who prefer to attack a project or goal with reckless abandon.  They know they do it.  A goal becomes all-consuming for most of them — until they get bored with it.  Then they move on to the next project.  I have the same tendencies.  My wife jokes about riding the waves of interest.

When I first started down the path to fitness, I recruited a partner.  A friend whose level of fitness was nearly as bad as my own.  We were going to train for the Medical Center 5K, under the condition that we would take our time.  The endeavor would not become competitive.  We’re both very competitive people, and worried that if it became a competition, we would end up with injuries  The goal was to be accountable to one another for workouts, with the intention to simply finish the race.

That lasted about 5 weeks into the training.  He decided he wanted to hit a minimum time.  After all, ten years prior (he was 33 at the time), he had finished a 5K in less than 20-minutes.  Although his goal wasn’t that ambitious, it was still a stretch-goal.  That’s where we parted ways with our training regimens.  He managed to meet his goal.  His wife also tells me that he went home and laid on the couch for the rest of the day, totally spent.  At that point, he basically quit running.  He had gone at it hard and fast for 3 months, and was ready for something else.

Those who fade away

Then there is my buddy that conquered his own tendencies toward overachieving.  This is a guy who figures that nothing has been built that he can’t improve upon.  He tends to be hyper-focused on his goals.  Losing weight, for instance, but also can be easily distracted.

About six months ago, he got interested in coming to the gym with me.  He’s not a runner, nor does he want to be, but the gym sounded pretty good.  That was fine with me.  We started going together and predictably, he saw rapid progress.  Those of you who have started a new workout regiment know that in the early stages,  you make great progress.  He started losing weight at a pace of about 2-3 pounds per week.  After about 12 weeks, he hit a wall.  The weight stopped falling off, and progress slowed down dramatically.

Then the demands and inevitable distractions that life throws at us got in the way.  They’re perfectly understandable, and its not a judgement.  Simply an observation.  It started with one missed workout, and slowly snowballed.  Near as he can tell, he’s been to the gym once in the last 9 weeks.  The routine has simply …faded away.  Once the inertia takes hold, its difficult to overcome.

Conquer yourself

We are all capable of sabotaging ourselves.  To achieve lasting improvements in fitness, or life for that matter, you must first conquer yourself.  It begins by acknowledging who you are.  I’m the first type.  My tendency is to attack a project with all my resources until its knocked out.  Then I move on to the next goal.  It was a real challenge for me to conquer that particular demon.

How do you sabotage yourself?  Even more important, how do you overcome those tendencies?

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