Back on the Mat and Punching the clock
As evidenced by my shingles vaccine this week, I recently turned fifty. While I cannot believe that I have already been on this wild journey for 50 years, what might be more relevant to you is that I have been training for the last 36 years. When I say training, I do not mean exercising and I do not mean playing sports, as those are things that all kids typically do or at least typically did in the 1900’s. When I say training, I am referring to the idea of intentionally trying to change your physiology and physical capacity towards a specific outcome. This outcome could be healthier, leaner, stronger, faster, bendier, etc.
My first experience with training was in the summer after my eighth-grade year and I had just turned fourteen. I was a fierce six foot four inches tall and 150lbs and our parents signed my friends and I up for a strength and conditioning camp through the Plano YMCA run by some of the middle school football coaches. Looking back, it was an excellent introduction to more serious physical fitness and strength training and more importantly expanding one’s personal beliefs about one’s own physical limitations. I also learned not to overeat Lucky Charms on that fateful first day.
Four days a week that summer, we would spend about an hour on the field doing various running, agility, and conditioning drills (the site of the Lucky Charms incident), and then an hour in the adjacent middle weight room doing basic weight training. On day one, it was very apparent that I was the weakest young man in the group, but two months later I was now much stronger. I was by no means the strongest or even close as some of my peers had beards and body hair and I just had limbs. As an entertaining aside, Coach Thomas nearly gave me a heart attack when I was spotting him on a 315lb bench press. After unracking the bar, he got pinned on his first rep and it was my responsibility to save his life and pry this iron death trap from his torso. As you can imagine, I was unsuccessful. Then with unstoppable laughter, he proceeded to easily press the weight ten times before placing it on the rack. (Do not worry, I have since used the same prank on both my kids and many clients – always pay it forward).
The crystalizing lesson that summer was that if you keep showing up, your body will slowly, steadily, and incrementally respond to what you are asking it to do. I can look back now and say that I have not missed a week, or more than a few days of training since 1990.
Success in life is about finding highly effective and efficient levers towards your goal and then repeating that thing consistently and repeatedly. For finance, it could be investing a small percent of every paycheck in an index fund for 30 years. For building muscle, strength and bone density, it is lifting weights at least twice a week and adding a little weight to the bar whenever you can. For mobility, it is practicing yoga 2-3 times a week (or more). For cardiovascular fitness, you need to elevate your heart rate and breathe hard 2-3 times a week. Rinse and repeat until strong or mobile or fit. Some days gravity will feel extra heavy, or you will not be able to stand on one leg to save your life. Some days you will feel like the weights are light and you can hold triangle pose for hours. But most of the time it will be somewhere in between.
One of the hallmarks of being fifty is that things are not as bendy as they used to be. This of course does not happen right at fifty, but our tissues’ elasticity slowly decreases over time. While this change undeniable and father time is undefeated, the degree and rate at which it is lost is within our control. As a result, I am back in the yoga room, trying to unstick all the things that got stuck. I will be traveling next week but I will still practice. You see, these sticky things are not going to unstick themselves. I might practice with the yoga videos on demand, or maybe I will find a little yoga studio in Des Moines. I hear Iowa is famous for corn and yoga. But it really does not matter. The key is to just show up and punch the clock and do the work. The showing up matters the most.
