“If you aren’t getting better, you’re getting worse!”

I can’t count the number of times my high school football coach shouted this in the Mead High School weight room during my prep years. The insinuation was that if you weren’t getting stronger, you could only get weaker. Coach Sean Carty’s constant declaration definitely increased our weight lifting intensity and it added plenty of pressure when max week came around.

This photo of me with Sean Carty was taken in either 2013 or 2014 after a University of Montana football game. Coach Carty was always fond of saying, “If you aren’t getting better, you’re getting worse!”

But Coach Carty wasn’t the first person to theorize about the regression that could ensue if constant improvement isn’t attained. In fact, we can go all the back to the 400s to hear something similar. Saint Leo the Great said: “For the one that is not advancing is going back, and the one that is gaining nothing is losing something.”

This is the thinking of the ultra-motivated, the high achievers who do incredible things in life. The people who embrace the thinking of Coach Carty and Saint Leo are never content. But is that necessarily a good thing? Well, probably not for everyone.

I feel most of the time I am a motivated person who likes to keep my foot on the gas pedal. Just ask my wife, she will describe me as a “go-go-go” type of dude. But I also do appreciate periods of rest. Taking a month in the summer to be lazy and not chase goals is something I feel worthwhile. If I do take that time do I really feel myself regressing? I guess it depends on how much ice cream I eat.

But as the Bible says, there is a time for everything and a season for every activity under Heaven. And even though “rest” or “relax” isn’t specifically mentioned in Ecclesiastes, I like to think that it probably is acceptable and that it can be achieved without drastic decline in one’s current state.

Bottom line, I admire the people who manage to always improve themselves and hesitate to take a break in fear of regressing. But I think I tend to agree more with the way that Coach Carty eventually modified his weight room warning just before I graduated high school: “If you aren’t getting better, you’re staying the same!” Don’t Blink.