Discipline

I found myself grovelling on top of a wet exercise mat in front R.O.X. in Bonifacio Global City, as the rain continues to pour. It's Thursday, the second day of training camp hosted by a renowned running coach. I signed up to get proper physical training. I knew I need this jumpstart to fitness.

I could vaguely hear the pep talk. Finish strong! or so I'm inclined to hear. I can hardly push myself back up. This last routine in the circuit, aptly called "suicide planks", has exhausted every breath and effort. Every muscle that is supposed to hurt throb sharply. The only comfort to this day is the cold rain performing a massage on my whole body as I lay tired and wasted. I will later bike home, struggling to put kilometer after kilometer. My body will ache for two days. I will find myself doing the same next week, hoping that I am a little stronger, more willing to endure. I know what this is for.


As I laid in that puddle in the mat, I thought: this is discipline. There is pain. I have always played around with the idea of being athlete. I was into running. I recently purchased a bike. It's a preliminary to enlisting in a duathlon—a triathlon if I learn to swim well. But this clinic is showing me first-hand the sacrifice that any athlete needs to go through in order to excellently perform:

He sets his hearts to complete the enlisted event months before it transpires.
He dreams of the victory he knows is within reach with good training.
He finds the most efficient way to train.
He conditions his mind that he can finish his event.
He makes good on that conditioning by actually putting the work on the track.

These are the thoughts of an amateur, but I understand the principle that the mental is as important as the physical preparation. This is an all too repetitive process. It is day-to-day. It is boring to those who do not see the end, the attainment of the goal. It is habit-forming; it is strengthening. For the athlete, he can finish the event for he has conquered the necessary mileage time and again during his training. He has honed the attitude, the character, the skills necessary to complete. The prize is so worth his gaze that every vital arrangement has been made.

But there's also the reality that the athlete will not feel the same always. There's the lingering in bed, wallowing in muscle soreness, dreading the punishing routine. But most, if not all the time, he wills himself out of it. He does not let his feelings get the best of him. In this case as in many others, emotions are overrated. His will to continue for the goal dissipates whatever fleeting emotion attends him at any given moment.

But there's an equally suitable place for discipline, for those who run a race of a Spiritual sort. Discipline has been kind of wanting in this kind of race, which I could say so at least for myself. I could say that it is imperative for those who run this race to consider what discipline entails.

"Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self- control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified" [1 Corinthians 9:24-27]