A few weeks back I was exhibiting at a local trade show.
If there was ever a time in my life when I had to do ‘double time’ it was then.
Here’s the background info…
I only found out about the show 3 weeks in advance.
It was our first show ever, so I had to learn and cram for the event like you wouldn’t believe. (I wasn’t going to ‘wing it.’ We wanted to knock this out the park.)
I lost about a week due to issues with an incompetent fire marshal and an unreasonable health inspector.
Because of these issues, I put our marketing and printing on hold. No point in doing all of that if we might not be at the show…
Once I persuaded the fire and health officials to let me do what we wanted to do, I only had 5 days before the event!
From there I had one technical SNAFU after another.
If this was meant to challenge me, it was putting up a pretty good fight. Needless to say, the whole thing seemed like one long ‘11th hour.’ it was insane…
Here comes the pain…
During those weeks, I got a few hours of sleep…a week. Seriously.
The week before the show, I almost fell asleep in my plate of eggs at breakfast. I’m not kidding…
I nodded off, and my head slowly dropped lower and lower. Eventually I felt something funny on my forehead. I opened my eyes and found my breakfast staring back at me at point blank range.
Thankfully I didn’t ‘nose dive’ into my food.’ I barely made contact, but still, talk about a rude awakening.
When the day of the show finally did arrive, I was pumped.
I had barely slept an hour the night before, but it didn’t faze me. I was ready to kick butt and take names, literally.
My siblings were with me, who did an awesome job.
Our signs and printed material were ready. The last minute rush meant they weren’t ‘perfect,’ but they were good enough.
The payoff…
We ended up having one of the busiest, if not busiest, booths at the show. The promoters kept commenting on our efforts and how great of a job we were doing.
Most importantly, we had great feedback from the Visitors and left the show with a stack of leads. It was awesome…
The lesson…
Why do I bring all of this up? We’re supposed to be talking about training aren’t we? Correctamundo, which brings me to my next point…
During those ‘hell weeks,’ I was still able to make my training sessions. The lack of sleep meant that they weren’t record breaking performances, but I made them nevertheless.
I was also able to handle the lack of sleep, missed meals, dealing with officials, learning how to do a show from scratch, creating marketing materials, arranging and setting up our booth, ad infinitum…
I only had an hour’s worth of sleep for the first day of the show, and only 3 hours for the second day. Both due to dealing with technical problems the night before.
I strongly believe that I was able to handle all of this with flying colors due to my physical conditioning.
I knew some guys at the show who had a full night’s rest and only had to work the booth; who were dead by the end of the day.
Once we finished for the day, (spent entirely on our feet dealing with crowds of people), I’d hurry my butt on home to do follow up work and deal with other issues.
Without a doubt, my training had a lot to do with this.
Yes, I was excited for the show. I did have an intense desire to make the most of it. And I do have a ‘Never Give Up’ mind set…
But none of this would have meant much if my body couldn’t keep up.
This is turning into a full length novel, so I’ll say one last thing before signing off…
This is what I’m talking about when I say your training can benefit you in and OUT of the gym.
For me, it turned an impossible no win situation into a crushing victory…
It can do the same for YOU…
Train Smart, Train Hard
Ray Toulany
PS: If you want to make it though a situation like me, you need to fuel your body for success. The BodyDesign Nutritional System will show you how in easy to follow steps…
