At a re­cent ser­vice, a priest in­spired me with the fol­low­ing quote from Mar­tin Luther King jnr, "If a man hasn't dis­cov­ered some­thing that he will die for, he isn't fit to live."

The priest said that Je­sus died at age 33 with­out any wealth, yet he was the great­est man that ever lived. He al­so used oth­er ex­am­ples such as Nel­son Man­dela and Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi who at­tained great­ness based on in­tegri­ty and their way of life.

Have you ever heard a eu­lo­gy where­by they spoke about how many cars the de­ceased owned or how many mil­lions he had in his bank ac­count? They al­ways speak about the per­son's char­ac­ter, nev­er his wealth. Yet some­times we get so caught up in ac­cu­mu­lat­ing wealth or striv­ing for the per­fect phys­i­cal im­age that we be­gin to lose touch with our spir­i­tu­al selves.

The above quote of Mar­tin Luther King Jnr refers to the fact that some tru­ly great men gave up their lives for love of oth­er peo­ple or for a cause–as was the case with King him­self. Love and char­ac­ter be­long to the spir­i­tu­al realm and is not mea­sured in dol­lars and cents, or by how great you look in den­im.

Fa­nati­cism in train­ing

It is so easy to fall vic­tim to the love of phys­i­cal train­ing be­cause the re­sults are ex­treme­ly vis­i­ble and the post-train­ing men­tal ef­fect is in­cred­i­ble. Now, noth­ing is wrong with see­ing great phys­i­cal re­sults on ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a nat­ur­al high af­ter your work­out.

How­ev­er, phys­i­cal train­ing should not be tak­en to the ex­treme, where­by you lose bal­ance in your life. This is es­pe­cial­ly rel­e­vant for to­day's youth. Many young peo­ple go to ex­cess; they ex­pe­ri­ence the swing of the pen­du­lum, its ei­ther black or white; there is no grey area in their lives.

Over-train­ing mode

Symp­toms of go­ing to the ex­treme are firm­ly em­bed­ded in some fit­ness en­thu­si­asts who go in­to over­train­ing mode. Let's look at some tell-tale signs of over­train­ing.

* You lose the abil­i­ty to laugh at your­self or at a joke;

* you be­gin to feel that every­one around you is a slack­er when it comes to train­ing;

* you be­lieve your body op­er­ates at a high­er lev­el than oth­er mere mor­tals and that you are def­i­nite­ly a su­pe­ri­or hu­man be­ing;

* if you miss a work­out, you feel as if you have put on ten pounds and you quar­rel with all fam­i­ly mem­bers;

* you place em­pha­sis on every­thing that re­lates to phys­i­cal train­ing, and have lit­tle time to lis­ten to peo­ple who may be try­ing to help you spir­i­tu­al­ly.

It is so im­por­tant to achieve that phys­i­cal/spir­i­tu­al bal­ance. If your whole world is cen­tred on your phys­i­cal im­age, have you ever thought, God for­bid, what would hap­pen to you men­tal­ly if you were to be phys­i­cal­ly in­ca­pac­i­tat­ed?

You would then have no choice but to cul­ti­vate your spir­i­tu­al be­ing. Why wait for some­thing like that to take place? Learn to put bal­ance in your life now! Con­tin­ue your phys­i­cal train­ing and en­joy those fan­tas­tic work­outs, but some­times de­lib­er­ate­ly miss a day or two and en­joy your friends and fam­i­ly that sur­round you.

Why not take an un­der­priv­i­leged child out for a week­end. It would bring im­mense joy to his/her life, and I guar­an­tee that your bench press pow­er is not go­ing to drop from a cou­ple days off; but your spir­i­tu­al strength will in­crease by leaps and bounds.

Keep Train­ing.