Glorify the Grind and you’ll pay for it mentally and physically.
“‘There is no off-season! Grind don’t stop!’
Stalled Performance. Overuse Injuries. Limited Athletic Development. Identity Issues. Psychological Burnout.
Hell yeah, brother! So Cool!
You want to be sure you’re doing it wrong?
Don’t take time off & glorify the grind.”
-Ray Zingler on Twitter
You’ve heard all the terms from the clout chasing idiots playing the short game on the internet.
As dumb as these phrases and concepts are, they’ve quite literally bled into our athletic scene and are showing no signs of slowing down. (Until the bottom falls out.)
You see while these phrases in and of themselves aren’t harmful, per se, those who are consuming them are highly impressionable teenagers and extremely naive adults.
Put money in the mix and peak over the fence to see “everybody else doing it” and voila, we’ve got kids in dad led football leagues 12 months a year lol.
But let’s get away from the cute hashtags and catch phrases that are still ignorantly touted on your favorite pro athletes and “eLiTe” trainers Instagram pages (one of whom spends the majority of his calendar year in an off season and the other doesn’t have a season at all.)
You think it’s cool and beneficial to glorify the grind?
Physiologically and psychologically speaking, it is not.
I know the vast majority of people “on the grind” will never take time to study the research and learn how to actually optimize performance, but let me tell you what’s a lot less cool than those double taps you thirst for on the ‘gram.
Stalled Performance. You ever tried to overtighten a screw (I don’t even know if kids these days know what a screwdriver is) but guess what happens if you do, you strip it. It’s value is stalled. Same can be said for over prescribed sport.
Overuse Injury. You want to over-play, but under-prepare? Maybe not today, but you’ll pay for it sooner than you think. And it’s the adults fault. Not the kids.
Limited Athletic Development. You know what over playing a single sport and not developing other qualities is like? It’s like me giving you the keys to a race car but governing it at 15mph.
Those are just the physical ailments associated.
The mental side is far worse and longer lasting. Continuing to further tie children’s identities to a single sport creates a host of psychological issues ranging from burnout to depression and everywhere in between.
So yeah, glorify the grind all you want, but recognize this, it will always take far more from you than it will ever give.
