The Limiting Factor

When it comes to strength training, and truly anything else in life, the most challenging and dramatic times… the times when you fail, or times when you need to dig deep into your soul and find a way to prevail, no matter how many times you fall, or get bruised, or cry, you get up, you learn, and you become stronger. 

As a strength coach and fitness professional I deal with these types of issues on a daily basis and I love it! I feel as if a higher source has placed me on this Earth to be doing exactly what I am doing. I understand all too personally the emotional demons that can creep up when people are dealing with body image issues. Thinking about going to the gym should be a highly motivating experience, but for some people it is a miserable and emotional one. They think about what others may think of their appearance or about a time in their life when they were humiliated in regards to their body image such as a gym class, swim team or spring break.  It hits them like a rush of anxiety, and suddenly their world is closing up around them. The demons start to speak words like “can’t,”  “won’t,”  “never,” “impossible,” “too old,” “too young,” “this is how you are,” “not worth it,” or “hate.” The list goes on and on.  Suddenly they feel like they do not deserve to feel good about themselves, or they don’t deserve to feel confident in their own body… because “what’s the point? Everybody else thinks I don’t deserve it”.  They live up to the expectations set by other people… most of those people are not even in their lives anymore, and most of those people do not and did not care one ounce about them. 

Is there a simple solution to overcoming all those anxieties?  Is it motivation, confidence, discipline, knowledge, or structure? It is simpler than having any of those things, and it is the strongest force in the universe… LOVE… Love is the answer.  For anybody to achieve anything they must love themselves and love what they want to do.  Love is what the universe is created of. Some people call it God, some people call it energy, whatever it is, it cannot be created nor destroyed and it always has been and always will be. 

Love is an invisible substance that connects everything together.  If you can allow love to flow through you, then you can achieve anything.  If the person who blames their lacks on not having motivation, confidence, discipline, knowledge, or structure starts to love themselves and the task set before them, then all the things they seemingly lacked will suddenly become a non issue, and they will automatically have them all.   Love… Love your spiritual self, love your physical self, and love your mental self, and keep that love during all the moments that you possibly can and miraculous things will happen.  Those moments of anxiety become obsolete because you love yourself. Those moments of failure are now viewed as moments of learning and strengthening because you love yourself, and with all the loving and learning you are doing, you will find yourself to be a much stronger person than you could ever have imagined. You will achieve all the goals you have set forth in front of you.  You are already beautiful. You are already disserving of love. You are already, in eyes of the universe, a perfect creation, and now all you need to do is allow that love to flow through you. 

To understand how powerful love is, take a look at its counterpart, hate.  If the universe were made of hate it would have never been. Since hate is destructive, it would have destroyed itself before it could have even begun to create.  If the person who has these anxieties, and excuses for why they will start “trying” again on Monday, do they love themselves?  Or do those actions appear to be self destructive in nature?  The feeling of hatred is a form of perfection in itself because of its ability to show us how great love truly is.  Think back to every tragic event in your life or every “failure” and ask yourself, “did that moment have a purpose, did that moment take me someplace else, did it inspire me to do something I was always hesitant to do, what lessons did I learn, and what mountains did I move?”

 Exercise is quite possibly the most metaphorical experience in comparison to life that there is.  You decide to embark on a journey to a place that you know will be paradise, to the body you have always dreamed of owning.  You know the road to paradise will be a tough journey but you know you love yourself and know that you are worthy.

Imagine:  you arrive at the gym with a plan in mind and with self made challenges to overcome.  You walk over to the squat rack with a workout in hand; the goal is to perform 4 sets of 10 repetitions descending for 3 seconds and ascending for 2 seconds in a non-stop fashion until the 10 repetitions are completed, making sure that you get the full range of motion on every single rep. 

Set 1: you know your strength level, and last week you could barely complete 315 pounds for the last set of 10.  The challenge is to be able to do more weight than that with still perfect form this week.  You warm up and then place 315 pounds on the bar… bang 10 perfect repetitions with relative ease in comparison to how it felt last week.

 Rest the given rest period, and the new challenge of 320 pounds for set 2 approaches.  Bam! Ten perfect repetitions, but this time it was more challenging. The last rep was more difficult to get out of the “hole” (bottom of the range of motion during a squat is termed the hole).  That weight feels like it may almost be too heavy for the next set, but “in order to make an omelet you’ve got to break a few eggs.”  Just like in life, you cannot become stronger without first overcoming obstacles. 

Still breathing heavy you step under the bar for your third set of squats at 320 pounds for 10 repetitions.  Reps 1 through 5 are perfect form, not a problem. Rep 6 your legs start to burn and your heart starts to pound. It is going to be a long tough battle to get to 10.  Rep 7 lower and up, whew… rep 8 down and up… little wobble from the hole. You tell yourself you can do this! Rep 9 about 2 seconds in the demons start to creep into your mind and tell you, “It’s ok if you don’t get all the way down, you will still get the benefit from ¾ the range of motion.”  You know that the demon is telling lies, so you push down deep and slowly ascend from the hole. With a surge of adrenaline from overcoming that obstacle, you descend back towards the hole. Now the demons start to speak again from another angle, “Well” they say, “you can get that low you’ve proved that, but that last rep was hard, why don’t you speed up the descent a little so it will help spring you out of the hole. After all the full range of motion is what makes you stronger.”  You are very tempted especially since you are not sure if you can actually complete the repetition without cheating it, but you know that with failure comes growth, and without doing it correctly you will only cheat yourself.  So you stay with the tempo strictly and you squeeze your muscles as hard as you can. They burn. Your heart is racing and you exhale your air with a little grunt of effort, stand up perfectly, and re-rack the bar.  Victory won over the demons. You have achieved your goal. You are already 5 pounds stronger than last week, but you know that you are capable of more! 

With heavy breathing and a new sense of self confidence, you proudly take off the 2 ½ pounds plates and put on 5 pound plates with a little more force than is maybe necessary, but hearing the plates crack together is affirmation that you are becoming stronger. Those demons that tried to create self destructive behaviors are now aggravated. Their hate is now in serious jeopardy of destruction as your love is becoming stronger. You know that they will creep into your thoughts this next set, but you are more confident in your abilities to ignore their plight.

Time is up as you step under your new personal best, and 325 pounds of dead weight is resting upon your shoulders.  You find yourself excited by how heavy it feels, and by the fact that you are not sure if physically you can perform the task, but mentally you know you will push until you are done.  Reps 1 through 3 are fairly easy. Rep 4, rep 5, and rep 6 are extremely tough but no demons yet. They know you are stronger than them at this point, but they will wait for you to become more fatigued.  Rep 7 starts to feel a lot like rep 10 of the last set. The demons start talking again about how “you could defiantly complete this one and you succeeded last time, but that was on that last rep of the set. There is no way you can do it this time with 3 more reps to go. Just do half reps and at a fast pace for the next 3. That will allow you to finish without falling and making noise. 

  “Everyone will look at you and think ‘that idiot thought they could squat 325. Why didn’t they just reduce the weight so they could get 10 reps?’ or say, ‘Why didn’t they put it up when it got hard?’ Everyone will view you as a failure. You are a failure if you don’t listen to us.”  Rep 8, ahhhhh! Barely stuck it out, almost there! Rep 9: wow, you almost fell.  The demons are screaming and they make a lot of sense, “just quit” they say, “you got what you needed out of the set. We both know that if you attempt this last on that you will fall. Your body is not capable of this.”  You overcome them and descend into your next repetition, last rep! You know if you do not attempt this rep you will go home wondering and kicking yourself for not giving it your best.  Lower and lower you go controlling yourself down for 3 seconds. You are in the hole. Here we go… push, push, push, push. You are moving up! 3 inches, then 2 inches then 1 inch. Then you halt just above the hole… “Push!!!”  You scream in your head “push!” The demons scream “we told you so!” You push and push and push, but your body is incapable today… as you lower the bar slowly to the safety catches just below your lowest point on your squat… clank! 

You failed to complete the 10^th repetition of your last set on squat.  As you sit below the bar, staring in the mirror, gasping for air, heart pounding, sweat pouring, and your legs are screaming for mercy. You manage to smirk at yourself, and you fill with a sense of pride because although you failed today to get the reps. You succeeded in teaching your body how to become stronger.  Exercise scientists know that through failure comes adaptation, comes strength.  You know you cheated yourself out of nothing, and that you will defiantly be stronger next week. Next week you know that 325 pounds will not be enough to bury you into that hole, and that it may have conquered you today, but next time, you will bury it!  Maybe the other people think you are dumb for attempting that 10^th rep, but they are not what make you feel good about yourself.  You feel good about yourself because you love yourself. Never mind what anybody else thinks.  Let that love flow though you, and one day they will be inspired by your self-love, and soon they will be making the same progresses you have made.  Through a seemingly tragic situation always comes growth.  What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger!  Love conquers all!