Breakdown of Если ты не тренируешься, то теряешь своё мастерство.
не
not
ты
you (singular)
свой
one's own
терять
to lose
если
if
то
then (in that case)
тренироваться
to train
мастерство
mastery
Questions & Answers about Если ты не тренируешься, то теряешь своё мастерство.
Why is there a то in the second half of the sentence?
In Russian, conditional sentences often use the pair Если ..., то ... (If ..., then ...). While you can sometimes drop the то just like you can drop 'then' in English, it is very common and helps clearly mark the result of the condition.
Why does the sentence use своё instead of твоё for 'your mastery'?
Russian strongly prefers the reflexive possessive pronoun свой (and its neuter form своё) when the owner is the subject of the clause. Since 'you' (implied by the verb form теряешь) are the subject doing the losing, you use своё to mean 'your own'. Using твоё here would sound unnatural to native speakers.
Why is тренируешься reflexive (ending in -ся) here?
The base verb тренировать means 'to train someone or something else' (like a coach training a team). To say that you are training yourself or working out, you must use the reflexive form тренироваться.
This sentence uses 'Если ..., то ...'. How would I express a similar idea using the чем ..., тем ... structure from this lesson?
To say 'The less you train, the more mastery you lose,' you would combine this vocabulary with comparative adverbs: Чем меньше ты тренируешься, тем больше своего мастерства ты теряешь. (Notice that мастерство changes to the genitive case мастерства after the quantity word больше!).
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