The experienced know that no season lasts forever and none is ever skipped; this is an adage that has become a foundational training principle at The Forge, especially when the heat and enthusiastic drive of summer gives way to the slouchiness and reluctance of winter’s chill—when the cold steel becomes even colder, and when training becomes an attritional battle between the snooze button.
Usually, when the weather changes for the worse, motivation is the first thing to fly out of the window, followed by discipline. Once that has begun to ebb, so does all of the progress that has been made thus far. This, in turn, brings scrambled and rushed attempts to make up for lost time, an impossibility since one cannot make up for lost time, one can only work forwards towards what lies ahead. There is a natural inclination to avoid doing hard things in challenging circumstances, a disposition that the successful are always counting on: that those who want it less will be weeded out of the competition pool not by unfortunate factors but by the conditions of the test itself.
In other words: not all losses or defeats are handed out by errors, sometimes the cold asks questions of desire and determination that one cannot answer.
There is, however, the knowledge that the longer one does anything, the better one becomes at doing it. The longer one trains, the better one becomes at training. Not doing exercises—these can remain challenging, even after years of practice. But the ability to train, to do repetitive motions without losing motivation or focus, itself becomes a skill—one that can be deployed whether the sun is shining or the clouds hang low.
This, then, is the gift of years: the ability to find the right gear for every hill and each mile.
And this ability cannot be awakened at a whim; it is stoked like slowly burning embers, never quite being extinguished.
Now that winter has come, the real work begins.
Shift the gears and get into motion.
Rémy Ngamije is an award-winning Rwandan-born Namibian author, editor, publisher, photographer, literary educator, and entrepreneur. He is the founder of The Forge.