Challenge - Day 6 (A Breakthrough)

Day 6

I got a jump on things before I left for work.  I was tired and beat up, but I did 6 sets of hills and some push-ups.  All night at work I was beat to shit.  It was a busy night too because we had a lot more going on with Canada Day that never happens on a Sunday night otherwise

I'm not proud of much, but Canada (and being Canadian) is one of them.

It was all worth it when I got home and was ahead in thee game for the day...even if just a little bit.  It was the opposite of what I had been feeling from having fallen behind so quickly on days 2 and 3.

I knocked off a couple more sets of push-ups before I crawled into bed so I would have a bunch done by the time I woke up for my afternoon.

When I did wake up I knocked out some more push-ups and then got on my bike straight away to get that behind me.  My bike is the biggest solid time chewer I have to deal with.  I put in another 25 minutes on my bike, which has put me ahead of schedule.  It felt good to be up on something rather than behind.  By the end of today I will be caught up with my calf raises, and tomorrow I will be caught up with my hills as well, so I’m showing some good signs of progress.  The biggest picture of optimism though, is within my push-ups. 

My push-ups started out really rough.  Sure I knocked off the 42 I needed to get done the first day, but it devastated my arms.  Sucked the life right out of them and shredded my shoulders to pieces.  That left me feeling weary and like I was a tad too ambitious with the path I chose for myself.  I was committed though, and I know how I am, so I couldn’t let myself down because I would mentally beat the shit outta myself in a very devastating and destructive fashion.  I hate that feeling and I will fight really freakin’ hard to keep it at bay…defend my mental ground in my fight against myself.  The next day was devastating for that thought.

On day 2, because of how messed up feeling I was, I only did 6 push-ups.  That quickly put me at -36 completed.  I was so mad with myself, and I was also rattled with how things were gonna turn out with the rest of all of this challenge.  That wasn’t the worst though.  Day three happened where I lost the entire day due to my work.

When I lost that third day, I didn’t know to do just on the push ups alone.  I mean, they were draining me and tearing my shoulders to pieces when I was fresh.  How the hell was I supposed to get through the next 4 weeks when I have that as my foundation and was sitting at -78 for my push-up total?!

Even with the bars, I have a real short range of motion in my wrist, so it impedes in a certain way when it is strong and stable enough to let me bang some out.  The good thing about these bars is that they let you go deeper into the movement than just on the floor.

To answer that question I turned to the same page in my book I always rely upon when I am beat down with the walls caving in and everything in my body and circumstance trying to impede my progress:  

Toughen up, suck it up, and go for it!

Thinking about it doesn’t help.  That just eats at your mind.  Giving up is not an option, so that choice is out the window!  The only thing left is knowing that, in this instance, the push-ups aren’t gonna complete themselves, and the more time I waste, the deeper of a hole I will fall into.  So what do I do?  

Dig the fuck in!

So, that’s just what I did, and here are the results…

-On Day 4, even though I felt like shit, I banged out 54 of them…bringing my total to -66.  
-On Day 5, I banged out 52…bringing my total to -42.  
-Today, on Day 6, I filled a little bit more dirt into the whole I dug for myself by banging out another 54 push-ups…bringing my deficit to -30 in total.

I can do more, but I’m being smart about it.  I don’t want to sacrifice the rest of my daily fitness challenge in terms of losing more ground on several other elements of my challenge, only to make up ground on one.

Although I still have a good sized deficit, I have shed any sense of doubt or trepidation in my mind about the rest of the month.  That shit’s gone.  The fight came in my mind early on and I whupped its ass as needed.  Holes are being filled and ground is being covered.  Better than that though, I have that mental challenge behind me already at Day 6.

My mangled hand.  Only my index finger works properly...but he's a workhorse and I make that shit work!

Even with this full turn around, I know my body is gonna go through some shit.  I’m way too beat up for it not too.  I have far too much experience in this kind of realm not to realize that.  Sporting injury has never been a big deal to me.  It isn’t real pain.  I live with something far worse every second of every day.  Sporting pain and injury is actually comforting to me.  It’s like a security blanket that comes with me that I don’t have to carry.  It’s such a familiar feeling, and comforting in the fact that I know I only feel that way because of doing the things that I love.

There’s no better feeling than pursuing a full faceted test of one’s self.  Testing the mind, body and spirit simultaneously!  The mental games and wars to elevate your body to transcend the impossible for yourself is pure bliss to overcome.  It’s an absolute drug.  Not many people seem to understand that the way it runs through me because of how often I get questioned as to why I challenge myself like this when I can.  Far too many people have told me they don’t understand why I do things like this the way I do, and will often go as far as to tell me what is best for me, even encroaching on telling me it’s stupid of me to charge like I do, especially in my broken body.  I’ve never changed my attitude towards them:  I feel sorry for them!  If they only took the chance to really test every aspect of themselves all at once, to face deep, deep adversity within as well as with everything around them, only to fight the mental and physical battles to transcend and persevere, my goodness…a whole new world opens up. 

A GAWD DAMNED BEAUTIFUL ONE!

I never really feel the urge to explain myself to those who question what I do.  For the most part they don’t want to understand, even if I could explain it properly.  If anything, it fuels me to go even harder…to dig in even more, to get my fix of the drug I love.  I don’t do that to prove anything to anyone, or even to myself, I do it just out of pure love for what I do.  

The bottom line though is something I believe deep within, the only way we can find out what our true potential is, is to have the courage to imagine the impossible for ourselves, and use that courage to go for it.  Sometimes you make it, sometimes you don’t, but there’s only one way to find out.  That falls into the realm of how I often look at failure.  I don’t look at failure as the lack of success, but rather the lack of trying.  

Not trying is an internal torment that hurts worse than any pain.  I hate it.  It’s almost like a fear of that internal torment is what can often drive me to fight and claw so hard to battle with everything I got when I find myself looking into the face of everything trying to tear me down.  The worse it gets, the harder I fight.  If I go down swinging, I go down swinging, but at least I’ll know I gave it everything I had, and that is all that matters to me.