Greatest Of All Legends

Chapter 439: Why Do You Train?

***16th January 2021***

**6:28 am**

“*Heut*” Jason involuntarily let out a sound as he turned sharply towards the left after a sharp dash forward as he and Ronaldo trained on the field behind the mansion.

Following behind him was Ronaldo who turned sharply to the right.

On the left where Jason was, there was a ball and Jason kicked it to Ronaldo on the right before continuing his run forward.

His attention stayed on Ronaldo as he expected the ball back, and before long, the ball came back flying towards him, evading the training constructs that mimicked players.

The ball reached Jason in front of a goal that was almost half as small as a normal post, and as if that was not enough, there was a person in goal.

The person was one of Ronaldo’s personal trainers and though he wasn’t able to compare to a professional goalkeeper, he was still a presence in goal.

Jason’s job was to get the ball past the trainer goalkeeper and into the back of the net before the time for the training session elapsed and that was less than three seconds away.

This was only one of the kind of training sessions that Jason had been subjected to since they began training at 4 am.

It was an attacking form of training that incorporated agility, passing, vision, spatial awareness, shooting, and finishing all in one and it was barely one of many.

That was the first thing Jason had realized from merely training for just over two hours with Ronaldo.

This guy didn’t do the normal types of training that focused on one attribute most of the time and usually made his training more tailored towards putting himself in the toughest situations on the pitch.

That was probably why he was able to keep his composure in very crazy situations and was able to deliver most of the time even in the toughest of situations while keeping his composure and wits around him.

Another thing about this type of eccentric training method was that due to it incorporating a lot more than one aspect of training, it was faster, more effective, and more draining.

While other players were focusing on agility, Ronaldo’s training methods would focus on agility and about three other aspects which always made it seem like Jason was doing 4x the training, but the truth remained that he was probably growing 4x faster because of it.

The downside was that it was very draining and currently Jason who was about to receive the ball in front of goal was feeling like there was no more air in his lungs despite the day just beginning, but he pushed himself and caught the ball on the volley and sent it at the goal with a powerful drive.

Maybe it was too powerful as the goalkeeper wasn’t able to react, but Jason missed the target and the ball flew just wide of the goal.

“Ah, fu*k!” he muttered as he collapsed to the floor, tired out of his mind.

His whole body ached and this was merely from personal training.

He would still be going to Continassa for team training and he was sure to be exhausted even further if he was to be training with this monster, but he didn’t exactly have much of a choice in this matter anymore.

After all, he had wanted this.

While Jason was laying on the ground internally monologuing, Ronaldo had collected two hand held massagers and walked over to him.

“Here,” he said as he handed one of the massagers to Jason.

“Thanks,” Jason muttered as he received the massager and turned it on, putting it on his thighs and running it slowly across the whole length.

The silence between the two of them as the massaged their legs was broken by Jason who had a question he had on his mind.

“You know, I’ve always wondered… just as we are training, some others are also training, granted they might not be training as hard as we are… maybe,”

“But in an actual match, there are many times when even being the best in the world does not stop you from losing a game,”

“How do you deal with that?” he asked.

“Like you know you train harder than your opponents ever could and sometimes, it feels like your hard work is invalidated by losing a game to luck, or sometimes a bad decision from the referee,” he was going to continue, but Ronaldo interjected.

“I don’t train to win,” he said calmly.

“Huh?” Jason asked in confusion, his head tilted.

“I don’t train to win,” Ronaldo repeated, slowly massaging his legs.

“You don’t train to win?” Jason asked and involuntarily looked around at the whole field full of training equipment.

‘All this training equipment, waking up at times when the whole world is still asleep and then working till you’re half dead, but you’re not training to win?’ Jason questioned internally.

“Then… why do you train?” he asked, feeling that he might be missing something.

“All over the world, there are players that train to win. As a matter of fact, almost all football players in the world train to win,” Ronaldo began, his voice calm and clear.

“If I do the same thing, then how would I stand out?” he asked, not looking up from the massager.

“… By training harder?” Jason answered, but his answer was more of a question to himself.

“That would simply make me a more frequent winner than most players. Training a bit harder would make you slightly better placed to use your talents, but if there is one thing I’ve learned over the years, it is that…”

“Talent is not enough,”

“No matter how much talent a person has, if he doesn’t work hard, one day he would fall to one who has no talent but works hard enough for it to not matter,”

“And that is why, I say, I don’t train to win… I train to dominate,”

“Talent, luck, form… I train to dominate all that,”

“I train hard enough that I can change luck with my efforts alone… sure I might still lose sometimes, but it’s a process,”

“There’s no such thing as perfection, but you don’t need perfection to become the best,”

“All you need to do is to keep stepping forward with a mindset to dominate,”

“If you didn’t dominate in a match, go back to the training ground, work yourself off and come back to dominate in the next match, that’s all there is to it,” Ronaldo said and finally looked up, but he was looking at the sky instead of at Jason.

“Get up, we have more training to do,” Ronaldo said and stood up.