By Keegan Longueira from Activate Fitness

I've recently had some thoughts around "challenges" and working hard at something.

When someone asks for help, I love this because firstly, it acknowledges that they can't do something they want to do and they realise it requires work and guidance to get there.

I was lucky enough to have a massive background in sport from Rugby back in South Africa. The first time I ever bench pressed I was 14-years-old, and we had strength and conditioning programmes in all our sports teams. So when I made a move to CrossFit when I was 24, I was able to do a lot of the fundamental movements. Squat, deadlift, pull-ups, the list could go on. When I started coaching, I realised that many people didn't have a background in these things and that is okay, if not great, because they hadn't picked up any of the bad habits I had.

However, I realised the lack of confidence in trying new things and the patience to go through the weeks and months and sometimes years required to get there. It's a mix of patience and confidence, I think.

Instagram has its role to play in that; we see models and influencers lifting incredible amounts of weight and making some remarkable gymnastic moves on bars. Seeing this, we tend to give up before even giving ourselves a chance to get stronger.

We live in a time where natural ability and the result is celebrated way more than the hours of practice and patience. It leads to a stagnation of progress in strength, the way our bodies look and the way we grow emotionally. We want to skip the steps to get somewhere and are so scared to fail that we don't even try.

Here are a couple of steps to implement in your training if you would like to get that first strict pull-up, a bar muscle-up, get bigger shoulders or just generally move better and be healthier.

* Don't look at not being able to do something as a failure but rather an opportunity to learn

* Keep the carrot in front of the cart, challenge yourself just beyond your ability and not too far. Don't attempt something major if you haven't taken the natural next step

* Give yourself time. Nothing short of 12 weeks in our sports would see lasting and meaningful changes and adaptations in the body, so try to stick to something for at least 12 weeks consistently, even if that is 15 V ups every night before bed.

* Do it because you can, not because you have to. Learning a new skill as an adult is incredibly rewarding; it challenges your mind and keeps you feeling fit and young. People doing their first double under and wall walks this week just highlighted that for me

* Forget the scoreboard. First on the leader board means nothing if you didn't challenge yourself. I'm not saying you should overreach for the sake of making it difficult, but I am saying once in a while a challenge is a great thing!

Let’s celebrate trying over winning.

Effort over talent and lastly learning over losing.

Have a great week and see you in the gym.