Perspective - emotional rollercoaster!

I came across some old notes for an event I was dong on training and a comment that came from Marius Morstad about general approaches to training that really stuck in my mind: "training is not an emotionally neutral process" he said. This really sums up the overarching mental approach that underpins everything about achieving improvement (physical or overall), in one sentence". Perhaps its a Scandinavian talent - being so exquisitely blunt?!

What does this mean? For me it means you have to open yourself up to frustration, and to whatever ups and downs follow as you go through the elements of training. This is a process - and it starts with feeling psyched to improve. This psyche might take the form of frustration at lack of ability, progress or disappointment at a bad performance. But I think any person who is ready to improve, and certainly all good athletes, actually feel this as a positive emotion. It is the food of motivation. So don't suppress it!

Personally speaking I feel these things so strongly I think I'm going to explode. But the objective is to let go of this energy through training over time, and reap the rewards of it. The alternative is to start with feeling frustrated, but to suppress this emotion into dull acceptance, or to lose the fire for the activity and drift into other activities (more often than not simply taking the feeling of frustration with you to your new activities).

phew! I was in danger of going a bit 'rock warriors way' there...