Discuss: “When You Have a Capacity and You Don’t Use It You Lose Motivation”

Bigger Stronger Leaner
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“When you have a capacity and you don’t use it you lose motivation.”

I just heard @Christian_Thibaudeau say this in a YouTube video and it got me thinking.

For me personally it’s hard for me to do/learn any skill without also studying and analysing it, even when I know that I know enough and any further study will be of negative value. It’s unavoidably a big part of the appeal for me. I don’t think that’s what Thib was talking about - he was talking about things like neurological explosiveness, muscle endurance, etc. - but maybe the “thinking about lifting” thing relates to this too. I don’t believe in the whole neurotype thing but there might be some truth to it and from my limited knowledge of the system it would relate to what he calls “2A”.

For a while I managed to make washing dishes slightly interesting when one day I had the thought “I wonder what the optimal (fastest) way to wash the dishes is?” and I basically tried to speedrun hand washing the dishes. I tried a few different approaches and timed myself. I came up with two methods, one which uses a lot of water and soap but is fastest, and one that uses much less water and soap but is only a little slower. These were with the setup I had, so I also thought of what the ideal “realistic” home kitchen setup would be (because I quickly realised that an industrial/restaurant kitchen scenario is easily the fastest).

Anyway, leave your thoughts below about the quote. It doesn’t have to be about “thinking about lifting” like I just talked about. I’m interested if you marathon types or sprinter types “have to” do your type of thing in training or else you lose interest.

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Generally, we are motivated to do things we are already good at. Generally, you have a capacity for something you are good at. If we accept those statements to be true, then by avoiding something that you have capacity for, you lose a source of motivation.

I do think this statement mostly holds up. I consider myself a sprinter type. If I don’t regularly do something explosive in my training I will lose interest

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@j4gga2 @oscare interest in or motivation for what? For that particular capability? Or training in general?

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I took it to mean overall motivation to train

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I think it depends on the mindset of the individual then. I’m a believer that as your capabilities expand, so does your “world map”, or your view of what’s possible for yourself and how you respond to that larger map will determine your motivation. Some people will find a larger map demotivating because suddenly they aren’t such a big deal anymore. Some people, it will have the opposite effect.

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That was deep. I liked it

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