Alright, I admit it. My girlfriend got me into watching The Voice. Now before you go revoking my man card, hear me out; I promise there’s actually a good point to this post.

I really don’t watch a lot of TV, which is okay with me because the vast majority of what’s on is usually complete crap anyway. Take, for instance, Keeping Up With The Kardashians. Why would I want to watch a reality show with a girl who in her free time gets x-rays of her ass to prove that she didn’t get implants?

I don’t know who’s more annoying: Kim Kardashian or Sasha Vujacic?

They both make me want to puke, but I digress. Anyways, I spend most of my time doing what I love: coaching, getting my swolification on, reading, writing, ingesting dead animal flesh, and of course, spending time with my girlfriend. One night recently, we were relaxing and got to watching The Voice. As the competition narrowed, those remaining on the show were actually pretty good, and the judges were entertaining, too. The first season wrapped up last week and it got me thinking.

The eventual winner of the show, Javier Colon, has a pretty cool story. Coincidently, I had just read an article in Sports Illustrated last week about major league baseball player Jose Bautista, who, as it turns out, also has a pretty cool story. When I thought about both individuals, I realized that there were many similarities between them, and one in particular, that helped get them to where they are today.

Javier Colon has been trying to get his music career to take off for years. He’s released two albums as well as an EP, all of which haven’t been received very well. Before he auditioned for The Voice in January, he had just been rejected from another record label that he thought he was going to get. Regardless, Javier decided to stay the course and pursue his goal of a successful career in music.

Jose Bautista was drafted in the 20^th round of the amateur draft in 2000. Since then, he has played for 6 different losing teams in the big leagues and has been sent down to the minors. He could barely make it into the lineup for any of the teams he played for, and these were bad teams. His career batting average was .238 and he was not viewed as part of the future for any team. Still, Jose did not stray from his goal of becoming a major league star, and kept forging ahead.

Today, things are a little bit different for these two. Javier Colon is $100,000 richer, has inked a recording deal with Universal Republic, and will begin The Voice summer tour later this month. In addition to having an awesome beard, Jose Bautista is arguably the best player in baseball right now. After hitting 54 home runs last year, he signed a 5-year, $65 million contract with the Toronto Blue Jays. He is leading the league this year in home runs, walks, and his slugging percentage is 61 points higher than anyone else’s. His on-base percentage is the highest since Frank Thomas’s in 1994 and he’s on pace to hit over 50 home runs again this year. He’s also the leading vote-getter for this year’s all-star game.

What quality (among many others) do these two men have in common? Persistence.

The stories of these two individuals, as well as their persistence, can be translated to the world of strength training. I think it’s safe to say that many of us who go to the gym have a goal. If you don’t, then you should; but that’s another post for another day. Where many fall short with regards to their goals is that they expect to achieve them overnight. You can’t expect to walk into the gym, train for a week, a month, or even a year, and have a 600 lb deadlift. Likewise, you can’t expect to train hard for a few days before your vacation and have a beach-ready, shredded 8-pack of abz.

The achievement of goals, or success, takes time. Often, it takes a long time, longer than you might anticipate. To give you an idea, as I was thinking about this article, Jim Wendler posted his 10 Training Rules of Being Awesome over on T-Nation. These are rules that he follows that are in accordance with his training goals. He encouraged readers to make their own list of 10 training rules, and to see results, assess where you’re at after 5 years. You read that right, folks…5 YEARS! Stick to your list for 5 years and you should be pleased with your results.

This is where persistence comes in. As you can see, the path to success is not always quick and easy. There will almost undoubtedly be some type of adversity, which will take some amount of time to overcome. For example, if your goal was to deadlift 600 lbs, your gains in strength would almost certainly not be completely linear. In other words, your deadlift may be going up and up and up, but then suddenly, you will plateau, and be stuck at the same weight for awhile. Your numbers might even go down at some point. However, if you don’t get too discouraged, stick to your training philosophy, keep your goal in mind, and be PERSISTENT, the odds for success are in your favor.

In the training world, very little is handed to you. You have to earn everything and work hard to see results. Too many times we expect things to just suddenly “happen,” and get discouraged when, of course, they don’t. We start looking for the easy way out, trying the latest fad workout guaranteed to make us ripped in just 30 days, buying the hottest supplement that promises to melt away bodyfat, or doing the “diet of the stars” that you saw on the cover of some magazine at the check-out line. Sometimes, and maybe worst of all, we simply give-up. What we have to do to reach our goals is usually right in front of us. However, we need to be positive, patient, and persistent to get there.

Success takes time. It took Javier Colon and Jose Bautista years to get to where they are, and they wouldn’t be enjoying the success they are now without being persistent. And once you nail that 600 lb deadlift or shed those pounds of fat, you’ll probably realize that in the end, it wasn’t really about your goal at all; it was about your effort, your concentrated, relentless, persistent effort. Embrace the process, go after your goals, and make them a reality.