Helpful mantras/philosophies for training

Either during your actual training, planning for training, or mental attitude for training are there some sort of rules or mantras you live by?
For example, mine is usually that I have to EARN my rest days; if its a rest day and I feel like I'm able to climb, then its a huge failure on my part.
Or other mantras while you are training like "Just do it", "one more rep" etc.

Send it for the boys 

"Do or do not. There is no try." - Yoda

There's the ole' "4% more effort every day doesn't make a 4% better climber, it makes a 90% better climber." So, "four percent" is a constant whisper for me. 

Hard work is hard

I never want to look death in the face, AND THEN realize I have not yet lived.  Rough quote from an old bearded crager named John Muir.  

Put pants on, show up.

Best, Helen

“5.6 won’t send itself.” 

One that has been really helping me lately: keeping the route I want to do in mind I say to myself "the route is harder than this" Its been helping get extra reps in for sure.

The faster I run the sooner it will be over. 

“Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever.”

I thought I was going to use a new approach this last couple months: In a nutshell, I promised myself that i would repeat (or just work on, in case I didn't send) any gym route that I hated, or thought particularly awkward, because they must be highlighting my weaknesses... and working on your weaknesses is supposed to be good.

As a result, I'm now taking time off to heal/rehab a tweaked shoulder. Turns out that stupid awkward gym routes are just stupid awkward gym routes, and they don't make for good training.

"The best workout is the one you actually do."

This is useful for me in two different situations:

1. Sometimes I am super busy and get caught up in perfectionism, i.e. if I don't have the energy or time to do the ideal workout or the workout that I had planned to do, then I don't want to train at all. It helps to remind myself that doing an imperfect workout is better than not doing any workout, and often just getting started is all it takes--I'll often surprise myself by doing a lot more than I thought I could do that day, or more than I initially planned to.
2. Sometimes I get caught up in reading about training, listening to podcasts about training, or watching YouTube videos about training, rather than training. It helps to remember to use my time to train, if at all possible, and only do research on training when I have time that can't be used for actual training.

Lena chita wrote: I thought I was going to use a new approach this last couple months: In a nutshell, I promised myself that i would repeat (or just work on, in case I didn't send) any gym route that I hated, or thought particularly awkward, because they must be highlighting my weaknesses... and working on your weaknesses is supposed to be good.

As a result, I'm now taking time off to heal/rehab a tweaked shoulder. Turns out that stupid awkward gym routes are just stupid awkward gym routes, and they don't make for good training.

I dunno if I would draw the same conclusion from this experience.

When I used to spend a lot of time on plastic, I'd complain about routes that were awkward, didn't flow, had moves you would "never see outside", etc. It's easy to complain about that stuff, because you have a person to point your frustration at--the routesetter--and since it's possible for them to do things differently, it's easy to say that they should. After all, I'm the paying customer, right?

But spending more time on real rock since I moved to the Gunks has been a very humbling experience. The rock doesn't care that the moves are awkward, that the holds are sharp/slopey/slick/polished, that the weather is rainy/hot/humid/buggy/cold/snowy. The rock doesn't care about me. The rock doesn't care about anything. I can't complain that the rock isn't the way I want it to be. It's ridiculous to get frustrated at an inanimate object which exists due to forces of nature. I can't change the rock--all I can change is myself and my actions. So when there are awkward moves, it's up to me to find a way to make it less awkward: find a better technique, get stronger, or just accept the movement for what it is and build more pain tolerance.

In the Gunks, probably the most common move is the mantle, and that almost never happens in the gym. So that was extremely awkward for me (and often still is). But I'm a whole lot better at it after a few years of mantling 5 times per pitch. :)

I think the conclusion I've drawn from experiences similar to yours is that when I find something that feels awkward or difficult, like mantling, I need to set aside my notions of what I "should" be able to do, and start off easier. I'm really comfortable on crimpy routes but not on slopers. If I can hit V3 on a crimpy highball, that doesn't mean I can do even a very tame slopey V1, and setting out to do a slopey V3 with the same expectations is going to get me injured, or at the very least, discouraged.

This is just my opinion based on my experience. You're a lot more experienced and stronger than me so take it for what it's worth.

"Stick." - John Sherman

"Pain don't hurt"

-James Dalton, Roadhouse

Really the best advice I've received was to stop the session before you're totally trashed, especially in strength/power activities. Anaerobic endurance stuff is going to leave you feeling trashed, but again you can get there with about 4-5 intervals, after that you're just spinning your wheels and flirting with injuries. As you tire your movement patterns degrade, the smaller stabilizier musculature fatigue and it's easy to get hurt.

A 4hr gym session isn't going to do anything except get you injured or dig a hole too deep to recover from before the next session. Driven people always want to do more, push themselves further, etc. A slightly slower rate of progress will win out over the person who pushes to the point of injury, spends a month healing and another month getting back to pre-injury shape.