Motivation Is Not Enough. Olivia Tabron on the Difference Between Wanting It and Doing It.
EPISODE 02 / OLIVIA TABRON
There is a sentence Olivia Tabron's mother gave her that does more work than most training philosophies.
"If you try to reach your goal and you don't hit it because you were lazy, you don't have the privilege to be upset."
-OLIVIA TABRON, QUOTING HER MOTHER
Read it twice.
The year she stopped
Olivia ran cross country and track and field growing up. Running was never the hard part for her. Then life happened, the way it does, and she stopped running for months, close to a year.
She is matter of fact about what brought her back.
"Finding ISI® was really what kind of brought me back."
-OLIVIA TABRON
Three years in, she starts most days there, mainly to get it done early, because the rest of the day runs better once it is behind her.
The part she could not do
Because she came from a running background, the running was easy, and the weight room was the humbling part. She is unusually willing to say so out loud.
"I couldn't even lift the bar and it was so embarrassing."
-OLIVIA TABRON
That admission is more useful to a nervous beginner than any transformation photo. A competitive distance runner walked into a strength environment and could not move an empty barbell, and the correct response to that was not to leave.
"Now I can do farmers carry all the way through without stopping, and I can just do so many other things I didn't think was possible."
-OLIVIA TABRON
Motivation versus discipline
Olivia's core argument is that motivation is a feeling, and feelings are unreliable narrators.
"When you want to hit goals, motivation is not enough. You need to have discipline. And that's the difference between people who really make it to reach their goal and the people who don't."
-OLIVIA TABRON
She is not claiming to feel great about it. She is clear that everyone is carrying something outside the gym, whether that is a relationship, an argument with a friend or family, or simply not wanting to. Her method is to get up and go anyway and see where the day takes her, on the grounds that it beats sitting at home doing nothing.
And then the reliable part happens. She always feels better after. Always.
The accountability is not metaphorical
Plenty of gyms describe themselves as accountable. At ISI®, that word has teeth.
"If you don't show up, someone's texting your phone immediately. One of our coaches will actually call you if you cancel a session and ask you why you canceled."
-OLIVIA TABRON
A coach calls. Not an automated message. That is either your nightmare or exactly what you have been missing, and the people it works for tend to know which one they are within about a week.
The social side goes well past the turf. Run clubs together, lunches, dinners. When two members of her group went to compete at HYROX Worlds, everybody had a sleepover to watch it. Olivia did not expect any of this from joining a gym, and says so.
The mother of two
Olivia tells one story that lands harder than any of her advice. She was mid partner workout, a two mile buy in, when her partner mentioned she has two kids.
"If a mother of two kids can get herself up out of bed, do this workout, crush the day, there's no reason why I can't."
-OLIVIA TABRON
Then she does something most people skip, and she corrects herself before anyone else can.
"Not to say that her life is worse than mine or harder than mine or vice versa, but just everyone from different walks of life, they still make it a point to show up. And you never know who's having a harder day than you."
-OLIVIA TABRON
Why she likes watching HYROX
Olivia's favorite thing about the sport is who gets to be good at it. Watching the elite field, she sees leaner athletes and bulkier athletes on the same floor, competing at the top.
"I just like that there's different body type representation happening. And I think that's important for girls growing up and even men as well, just seeing people that look like you doing what you do."
-OLIVIA TABRON
She is also plain about her own physical change. She is stronger, and she likes the way she looks now, which is not a small thing to hear from someone who spent her adolescence in a sport that rarely encourages women to say it.
Asked to complete the sentence "ISI® is ___," she chose inspiring.
Discipline is easier with witnesses
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