LIMITS – WHY WE HAVE TO BREAK

PART 1 – BREAK IF YOU CAN, IT HAPPENS A LOT LESS THAN YOU THINK

STRONGER, FASTER, BETTER

This morning I found myself fearing my workout routine. I knew exactly when the hardest, most grueling section of my workout was going to occur, and the entire time I was dreading it. I had psyched myself up starting last night before going to bed, my entire preworkout, and then during my workout itself up until the moment I was dreading…and it could have ruined my workout.

You see, when people know something strenuous is coming up we normally hold back until it’s time to face that something…and that’s what I found myself doing – holding back…holding back my energy in hopes of saving enough for the hardest part of the workout…and it was just ruining my entire workout!

Normally I would tell myself, “It’s okay to hold back…we’ll need that energy in a bit.” BUT TODAY WAS DIFFERENT.

Today I faced my fear from the precise moment I thought about holding back and I said to myself, “F-it! I’m not going to let what’s coming make the now any less effective! Go hard now!” Yeah, I talk to myself while I workout, hell, we all do, but most of the time it’s a “stop-now” voice….BUT NOT TODAY!

FACE YOUR FEAR NOW – NOT LATER

Today I faced my fear before it happened and when the moment came, when the toughest part of the workout came, I found myself seconds away from giving up for 220 seconds. The toughest part of my latest workout routine comes 45 minutes into Monday’s routine and lasts for 4-full minutes…4 minutes of hell if you ask me.

So, there I was, at minute 45, and all I could think was, “Well, here we are…GO!” And, 20 seconds later I felt like giving up!

Typically I last about 1:30 into the set before I give in…but that’s because I always conserve my energy out of fear. So, when I decided to go all out almost 9 minutes into my hour routine, 20 seconds into the 45 minute mark (the hardest 4 minutes of the entire workout) I was done!

There I was, at my breaking point, at my limit…or so I thought.

20 seconds into the 4-minute round from hell I was ready to throw in the towel, and I was so close to doing so…but lucky for me, my self loves to talk to itself so I thought, “Shoot man, just make it to 1:30 and you’ll be as good as you were last time…” “As good as you were last time?” I asked myself. “ Last time? That was a week ago! And if you say that every week…” “Yeah, I get the point, shut up!” I injected into the conversation as I simultaneously decided to push until the 1:45 mark no matter what happened.

SPOON, WHAT SPOON?!

And then it happened, 1:45 came and I was still pushing….so I kept pushing!

I kept pushing because I wanted to see when I would break – I wanted to see when my body would simply stop responding to my will power…AND IT NEVER DID…I went the entire 4 minutes! And, when it was done, there I was – proud and terrified even more than before the workout started!

Yeah, I had broken through my own personal limit, hell, I shattered the 1:30 mark and I should have been very happy with myself right? Well, in a word – nope!

Why wasn’t I proud, happy, and feeling confident?

Well, because it was at that very moment, the moment I should have been proud of myself, that I realized I had proven to myself that there was no reason to stop short. I realized that the limit I thought existed existed only because I had put it there. In other words, “There (was) no spoon!” And I was going to have to push through the entire 4-minute set next time – NOOOOOOO!

LIMIT, WHAT LIMIT? SPOON!

Yeah, I know this is nothing new or groundbreaking, I mean we’ve all heard the only limits we have are those we create, BUT WE DON’T ACTUALLY LIVE THIS KNOWLEDGE.

Too many of us put limits on what we can do and we think, “That’s okay, that’s all I can do.” Well my friends, IT’S NOT OKAY! It’s not okay NOT TO BE BETTER than you were yesterday each and every single day.

Be it 1 more second faster, 1 more second longer, 1 more rep, 1 more pound, 1 more whatever, we need to push ourselves to our breaking point to be better because when we do we’ll realize we have no idea what our limits are…because who the hell is crazy enough to push to their breaking point…uhm, no one but the best of us.