"The first thing in progress is to leave something behind." -George MacDonald

Inertia Training sounds like an excellent idea for yet another exercise contraption or gimmick. But it's no joke. If there's one thing that got us here and one thing that summarizes what we hope to accomplish at GoWags, it's Inertia Training.

You could swing until you've broken the last bat with bleeding palms, and still be a crappy hitter. Whether you practiced the wrong hitting mechanics 10 or 10,000 times, you're still a crappy hitter. You could work like a dog, exercising until you're lightheaded with nausea and your whole body groans, and still be weak. You can train with the best of effort and intention, and get nowhere. Hard work definitely has it's limits.

Ask Kyle or Bret or I about diligence with wrong ideas. Ask us what we paid for GoWags; the high cost of fruitless training and conditioning methods. You won't see us (or anybody) advertise "over 30 years experience in doing it wrong." But that's a critical part of what got us here.

And we most definitely did not get here by inertia.

You could be a tremendous "natural" talent; a 6'5" physically stacked powerhouse, and still routinely get rocked when pitching. What exactly does "natural" talent mean, anyway? If God has gifted an athlete with the ability to prepare intelligently and to repeatedly train brutally hard, are those things any less "natural?"

And who wants to be less than they can be, no matter the "gifts"? Potential only means that you haven't done it yet. Whatever the definition, natural talent means that it's more of a shame when you end up sitting around playing X-box with all the Average Joes.

Look to the baseball fields and gyms and fitness centers to see insanity. With a zillion different parameters on a million different training tools, you'll see people doing the same old things and wondering why they're getting less than extraordinary results. Outside of the natural growth and development of adolescence, it's rare to witness someone look or perform any differently than a year ago.

Now of course, the truth is that not everyone has it in them to get extraordinary results. And that's definitely okay. Just don't try to say it's because of a lack of natural talent. The real barrier, to all of us, is inertia. There's your bad guy.

And defeating the bad guy requires brutally hard work AND the know how that enables progress rather than the same old - same old. We'll look more at that in part II. If the first step in progress is to leave something behind, the second step is to recognize your opponent.

Whatever the sport or "sport," It's you and your inertia.