YOU CAN BE PROUD

You don't need to beat yourself up.

You're allowed to be proud of yourself.

Not the announce-it-to-the-world kind of proud. A high-five. A number on the PB board. A post you almost didn't share. None of that needs an apology.

Credit is earned. But earned doesn't mean big. Some of the most important progress you'll ever make looks small from the outside, and that's exactly where the recognition matters most.

I recently put one of the athletes I coach through a de-load week, with a small amount of testing built in. Training alone is hard. It's easy to lose awareness of your own progress when there's nobody there to point it out. I wanted to show her.

The session called for building to a heavy Clean & Jerk. One rule: miss a lift, and you're out (move onto the next piece).

She sent me the video of her last successful attempt. It was in fact her best to date.

"That Clean was so easy! Well done."

"Well done? That was so bad."

I laughed and sent back...

"So bad? What video are you watching? Notice how much faster you stand up. Last time you cleaned that weight it almost crushed you. See how you control your knee position, how upright you are in the catch and through standing, and your timing under the bar is much more accurate."

Nothing came back. I knew exactly what she was doing. Watching it again. And again.

"There's real improvement here. You can be stoked."

I left it there. Late that afternoon, she replied…

"What you said has helped me realise I'm too hard on myself. Honestly, I was pretty disappointed today before we spoke."

That's the trap. Feeling like you're standing still when really you are just isolated.

Most of the time, the feeling isn't coming from your training. It's coming from your feed.

You tell yourself that you don't compare yourself to anyone. That you're above it. Your subconscious doesn't care what you tell yourself. Open Instagram and count how many posts are someone's best day, filtered through their best angle, on their best rep. Nobody's posting the miss. Nobody's posting the plateau. You're not watching people progress, you're watching their highlight reel, and measuring your Tuesday against it.

What if you compared yourself to yourself?

That's the only version of this that actually means anything. Being a better version of you. Looking back at where you started and being able to laugh at how far you've come.

I sent an old video to a close friend recently, it was the first time he’d ever strung together a Ring Muscle Up. Rough. Somewhat unsafe. He watched it back and grinned, because now he can do five in a row and it looks nothing like that anymore. That's the comparison that matters.

There's a story Matthew McConaughey tells about chasing his own future self as a hero…

“I need 3 things. One is something to look up to. The second is something to look forward to, and another is someone to chase.

… My hero, that’s who I chase. When I was 15 years old I had a very important person say to me, who’s ya hero? I said I don’t know, give me a couple of weeks. A few weeks later that same person came up to me and said, who’s ya hero? I said you know what, it's me, ten years from now. So, when I turned 25, that same person came to me and said, so are you a hero? I replied, not even close. No, my hero’s me at 35. So, every day my hero is always 10 years away. I’m never going to be my hero. I’m not going to attain that. But that’s fine with me, because that keeps me with someone to chase.

… To that I say alright, alright, alright”

That's what the small wins are for. Not the finish line. The chase.

Every step forward is a step closer to a better you, whether it shows up on a leaderboard or not.

So take the win. Post the PB. Send the video. Be proud of whatever step you take, not just the summit.