59. From Reps to Reality

One of the first personal training tips I remember receiving was to always count down your client’s reps. For a set of 10, you wouldn’t finish counting out loud by saying “8, 9, 10.”, you’d finish by saying “3, 2, 1.” The reason for this was to keep your client motivated to actually finish the set, rather than stopping when they got tired. Without knowing how many reps are left in a set, it’s difficult to know how hard to push yourself. You might say you should just push hard no matter what, but that’s against our nature.

Continuing to work without knowing when you get to stop is incredibly difficult. Working hard is much easier when we know how long we have to work for, or at the very least, when we know what things need to look like in order to call it a day.

But you knew that.

What about when there’s no end in sight? What about when it seems like you’ve been running uphill for years and you still can’t see the horizon?

That’s what I want you to contemplate today.