A Guest Post by Kyle Gill…400m track athlete from Toronto
In life quitting is always the easiest way out when nothing good is going your way. There is a whole bunch of “what if” questions that start to come up. Look at some of the famous athletes and do some research on their stories. What if Michael Jordan quit basketball when he got cut from his high school team? He would not have been one of the greatest players in NBA history Or What if Usain Bolt quit track because of all the injuries that messed up his seasons in the past? He would not have been the fastest man alive. This leads me to my question for you readers. “
“How Far Does Quitting Get You?”
From a Track and Field standpoint I’ve seen people on the top of their game quit because they don’t want to do the work. I’ve also seen things not go an athletes way and they want to throw away the spikes. Why? Because they had a poor season and didn’t drop the times they wanted to or injuries wrecked their season. Quitting anything in life because things don’t go your way is based on you not wanting to keep at it because your too lazy and have no motivation to do so. In sports, you get out what you put in.
Speaking from experiencing with the whole quitting phase, when I quit it was because injuries came at the worst time. At one point in my season I felt like everything was going my way, I had it physically but I was weak mentally, and you best believe being mentally weak effects the way you train.
When I quit I told myself and my friends track isn’t for me because things didn’t go my way for my 2nd season running the 400m. I didn’t want anything to do with track after having everything go wrong.
Now that I was gone from track I had all the free time in the world, not training 5 days a week was beautiful…for the first few weeks, then I started to realize that track was my life. By not training every day, I had nothing to do with my life. It was school, work, home, and then boredom for hours. I felt so bored because the hours I should be sweating out on the track, I was at home doing nothing, with realization of how selfish I was by quitting. My coach was no where near free, so I basically threw my parents’ money away for the last 2 years.
After having talks with friends and family I realized I didn’t want to have the thought of “What if I didn’t quit track” for the rest of my life. I knew the best thing for me to do was put the past behind me and start my career again, this time with no doubt and a positive mind, because…
“Determination Never Fails”
When you want something in life you can’t expect it to be spoon fed to you because that’s not how life goes. You have to work at something to be successful. I never really understood the saying “When the going gets tough the tough gets going.” but what I do know is “When the going gets tough the cowards duck out.” I can’t lie that’s exactly what I did. No one can ever take a step forward from quitting, so when I look at how far quitting got me… no where and it cost me 4 months of my season.
