When you enjoy it, you’ll keep training. When it becomes a grind, most people either have the discipline to keep going, or quit.

But there’s another option: You can change your approach.

I think of a time when I went to the gym for weight training six days a week. I was in my twenties, and the working out changed my body. I’d been a chubby kid through high school and now I was not. Being a dumb twenty-something, I thought I could maintain the workout schedule forever. I remember telling people, “I’m never not going to the gym.”

And of course, I couldn’t keep the routine. I had a different life after college, then I left the country, lived a new lifestyle in the Czech Repubic, came back to America, and tried to go back to the old ways. It was hard. I was a different person. Older. Slower. Fatter. But I was stubborn, and I thought the old way was the only way. And trying to do it that way was too hard so I quit.

Fast forward. I started training jiu-jitsu. And it was a similar path. I progressed quickly doing it one way, and so I thought it was the way. But I got older, got married, had three kids. The way was not going to work. I tried anyway, but it was too hard.

Richard Feynman said: “Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent, and original manner possible.”

Whatever it takes to keep you on the mats, is the way to keep yourself training.

And remember, no one cares about your jiu-jitsu. The more you think about it as a self-development tool, and less of an “impress other people” hobby, the longer you’ll train. And the longer you train, the better you’ll get.