Your long term health investment fund.

One of the best yet simplest things I've read in recent times was a thread about looking at movement/exercise as a long term investment fund into your quality of life and health.

It doesn't matter how big each "deposit" to a fund is, it all adds up over time.

If you keep showing up, you keep depositing in no matter how big or small, then by default you end up with more than you could ever have thought of (the fund being healthy joints, healthy muscles, more mobility, potentially higher quality and longer life span, fitness and strength that you wouldn't have had if you just keep writing it off...)

I used to be so all or nothing with my training. If I was feeling like I would have to lighten the weights I'd just write it off. If I was missing some training sessions due to life getting in the way then I'd just sack the whole week and vow to start again the next.

If my sleep wasn't great or I only had time for half an hour I'd think "nah, pointless, if I can't get it perfect then I'm not doing it at all."

Imagine the same logic applied to saving into a fund.

Imagine if just because I couldn't put something absolutely spectacular like £1000 a week in a "perfect" fund then I just wrote off saving entirely.

I would end up with next to nothing in a whole lifetime versus if I just put what I could in and kept plugging away at it over time.

Some days your training will feel like a million quid. Those days where you are fresh, your schedule is on point, you're feeling strong and you can smash it. In my experience after 15 years of training I reckon those million quid days are actually quite rare. Life gets in the way because we are human.

Instead, some days you'll feel more like a scabby fiver rather than a million quid. You're tired, you're burnt out, your motivation is low, your sleep wasn't great, you've had family/work/life stresses that are playing on your mind or maybe you're just feeling like you're squeezing it in rather than having an abundance of time...

But remember in those moments that even a lifetime of scabby fivers still leaves you with waaaayyy more than completely writing it off.

Like the rest of the world, Kenny and I were struck with the flu/COVID/cold(?) a few months back and even now we can still feel the remnants of it. We've rested lots, tried to listen to our bodies and we have absolutely missed a few training sessions too.

But mostly we've just been trying to consistently make some small, tiny deposits a few times a week into the long term fund of health and fitness.

Nothing spectacular, nothing that made us feel worse and nothing that we could compare to what we were doing before we felt run down.... But happy to do a bunch of scabby fiver sessions that still add up over time. Not to mention the stress reducing benefits of moving and getting some endorphins.

That little saying "something is usually better than nothing" is so true. Don't beat yourself up for having to slow things down, lighten the load or not feeling a million quid every time you train. Don't put pressure on yourself to only show up when you can be perfect, it's too tough. Believe it or not the scabby fiver feeling sessions actually matter more.