1. Team spirit

“USA, USA, USA!” Your friends and family are cheering as you fire up the grill and set out the chips and dip. Or, if you’re more like me, you’re probably sitting on your couch eating an entire bag of kettle corn and snuggling with your dog. Same difference, right? No matter how we show our support we all have that team spirit inside us ready to cheer on our favorite athletes during our favorite olympic events.

2. Inspired

These athletes are true ballers; machines that perform close to impossible feats. Not to mention how shocked you are when you find out how much work they put into their health and fitness for their sport. Their time, effort, and determination is no less than inspiring.

3. Motivated

After hours and hours of watching your favorite athletes you feel like you have the ability and qualifications to be a professional athlete. So, you go out with your friends and play beach volleyball with the expectation of blocking every shot as if you are Dalhausser. Even more, you get amped up from all of the extremely inspirational people that you get on a fitness grind and bump up your goals.

4. Attempted Effort

At this point you are excited and motivated to at least take a shot at the fitness-athlete life. Next thing you know you're getting the gear, going to the gym, making a new workout playlist, and heading out to reach your new found dreams.

5. Reality Sets In

Reality check, being an athlete hurts. Once the excitement of becoming a pro-athlete dwindles down you realize how hard it is and remember how uncoordinated you are.

6. Denial

"Definitely superhumans. Yup, that’s the only explanation” you tell yourself. They must have a really high pain tolerance, right? I don't know about that, but I bet they have a strong will to hold up under all of the mental and physical pressure.

7. Acceptance

Now that you have accepted that to be a beast of an athlete - which entails leaving the house and experiencing an almost intolerable level of pain - you decide to let the professionals be the professionals and stick to being their adoring fans.

8. Finally, respect.

You're just happy that you don’t have to go through pain every day like they do, but you have so much respect for these incredible beacons of hope who will forever be your inspiration and motivation. “Wow 28 Olympic Medals and you’re 31...you go Michael Phelps. I feel like I should maybe do something with my life, brb.”

Whether you're athletic or not, I think we can all relate to how awestruck we are of the incredible talent displayed at the Olympics. Congrats to all of the incredible athletes out there on being awesome humans.