When you find a sport or hobby you love, there can often come a time when you feel like nothing else matters; you only want to focus on what makes you happy. You may find you love running, for example, where you experience the oft-talked-about ‘runner’s high,’ induced by the release of dopamine in your central nervous system.
And, of course, cardio training such as running can help you to drop body fat and give you an enviable-looking body. But what do you do as and when you sustain an injury? Chances are, you’ll use that time as an indication of the universe telling you to slow down. This resting period could then have the potential to snowball into months of unhealthy habits, such as eating junk food or not exercising in any other way.
Soon, this becomes your new normal, and so getting back into running once you’ve shaken off your injury can prove to be an arduous task. If this sounds like you, then ultra-marathon runner David Goggins has some words…
Goggins is a man who doesn’t let anything get in his way of making himself a better person than he was the day before. He’s someone who doesn’t negotiate with himself.
“Let me explain to you how this works – when it’s early and you don’t want to get up, you wake the fuck up! When you don’t want to go to run, you put your shoes on and go run regardless if it is hot, cold, windy, snowing, etc.”
“Some of you make yourselves feel better by telling yourself that people in better life situations than you didn’t have the same challenges and problems that got you stuck in the negotiation/explain away phase. Sorry to tell you, most of them did, they just navigated them better than you.”
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David says his left leg has been “messed up for 20 years” (he’s now 46) but has only recently had surgery – around four months prior to the writing of this article – putting a temporary halt on his running. As someone who says he would often run “close to 20 miles/day for almost 20 years,” David says he didn’t see this as a chance to slack off. Instead, he turned his focus to resistance/weight training.
He explains this in a recent video posted to his Instagram account, where he shows he’s still living with the injury he sustained years ago by way of an edema, a “swelling caused by excess fluid trapped in your body’s tissues,” according to The Mayo Clinic.
He adds, “So a lot of you know I like to run, but that got taken away from me for a few months. Who cares?”
“Life will not always be seventy and sunny. Life is the ultimate competitor. It’s relentless. It will continue to attack when you least expect it.”
“We must learn to adapt and overcome any and all obstacles that are thrown at us. We have to evolve. And, the way I evolved, I changed my diet, had to start a lot more cross-training.”
“When the obstacle gets in front of you, don’t let it stop you, don’t let it deter you. Navigate around that m****rf****r.”
While he’s speaking these words of wisdom, David can be seen performing an incline dumbbell chest press, inferring that during his time away from running, he instead focused his efforts on maintaining and improving his fitness, albeit via a different medium to the one he’s used to.
If you take a look back at some previous videos he’s posted of himself training with weights, you can clearly see how much his body has transformed in the time since.
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The takeaway? If life throws you a curveball, bringing you to a halt, don’t see it as an opportunity to rest, but see it as an opportunity to try something new.
This doesn’t necessarily have to relate to just fitness, but as we’ve recently discussed, cardio training isn’t as bad for weightlifters as you may think. In fact, the two can work in harmony with one another, with fitness influencer and athlete Henry Matthews saying,
“Contrary to popular belief regular cardio training, whether that is running or cycling can help those who train with weights, experience improved gains in muscle strength and endurance.”
This works vice versa, as David proves; strength training can also benefit those who regularly practice cardio training.
David’s post received plenty of positive comments, including:
“That lack of running is making you look pretty f*cking jacked though.”
“You built different Dave, stay hard!”
Another comment was: “Looks like you’re packing on solid lean muscle. Way to adapt.”
Once again, David gifts us words to live by.
Check out David Goggins’ soul destroying assault bike workout in the video below.
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The post David Goggins’ Transformation Shows What Happens When You Switch Cardio For Weight Training appeared first on DMARGE.
This content was originally published here.
