6/4/2017 1 Comment In Praise of DiscomfortI feel my heart beating through the veins in my temples. I taste my barely digested lunch in the back of my throat. I am convinced that I cannot even so much as blink because, if I do, my eyes will not reopen. Each inhalation of air is more taxing than the last and if I were able to see my lungs, I imagine they would appear collapsed and charred, submitting to my inability to quell the anxieties that restrict my breathing. My vision is slightly blurred, and even though I look up at the clock, the numbers appear to be as familiar to me as quantum physics. The barbell that sits at my feet felt so light only 3 minutes ago, yet mustering up the energy to bend over and pick it up even once more seems as though it would be a feat of strength superior to any I’ve accomplished before...I will have to do this 19 more times, and then run 400 meters before I can say I am done. My brain shouts an internal tirade, telling me that I can’t do it, every muscle in my body rebelling against any movement that does not include collapsing to the floor… I bend over, trembling, sweat dripping from my brow to the floor despite the fact that it is just barely above 50 degrees beyond the bay door that stands wide open on the other side of the gym, a finish line taunting me from afar… “Pick up the bar, Crysta!” A voice that I cannot identify yells at me from across the room. Taking my best shot at a deep breath, I set my back, and lift the 95 pounds from the ground to my shoulders: once..twice...19 more times. My lead-filled legs stumble toward the door and I somehow complete the final 400m, although I could not tell you any details about the time in between. With my hands on my chest, I collapse to the floor, feeling the shallow rise and fall of my lungs, and note the time on the clock. A few people offer fist bumps and accolades as they walk by me, already recovered. And I am absolutely spent, but feel absolutely accomplished. I’m not very good at numbers, but I would venture to say that about 82% of my life has been spent avoiding situations similar to the aforementioned. Consequently, that is also why I’ve spent 82% of my life overweight and wondering why no exercise seemed to be effective in helping me change that. I remember my favorite gift for Christmas in sixth grade: a pair of flared jeans in a junior’s size 13. I was super stoked! With absolutely zero grace, I ran to the bathroom and clamored my way into one leg of the jeans, and then halfway into the other...Halfway. There was a soft knock on the door and my mom entered the bathroom to find me crying in the corner. “They don’t fit. You can take them back.” This was the first moment in my life that I realized that I was overweight. Not long afterward, my mom and I signed up for memberships at our local YMCA. My mom loved the Spinning classes, and I decided that riding a bike couldn't be all that bad, so I joined her every Monday and Wednesday evening. However, at any given moment during class, I could be caught goofing around: nodding my head to the beat of the music, making jokes about my mom’s facial expressions, singing instead of listening to the instructor. It was no surprise that I never heard her yell at me to turn the resistance up on the bike, nor that I left the class having barely broken a sweat, yet I was shocked when, a month later, I had lost no weight. Fast forward to my senior year of high school. This was one of my more serious attempts at working out. For the first time in my life I had a boyfriend, and as the end of the year approached, excitement for prom filtered into almost every conversation at school. With the realization that I might have the opportunity to go, my motivation to lose weight was sparked yet again. About three years prior to this, my mom had purchased an elliptical machine that, for the most part, sat idly in our living room, dust accumulating in the facets of the footholds. After a very squeaky yelp from the unused joints of the machine, I began a routine of spending 20 minutes on it every other afternoon. Although the dust had been brushed off of the pedals, the resistance knob and screen indicating pace and progress remained blanketed. Prom night had come and gone, but I decided to remain with this workout routine in the exact same manner: plodding along on the elliptical at a pace that allowed me to comfortably laugh at whichever midday sitcom was on television at the moment. Suddenly, I stopped shedding pounds. Then, I stopped trying. As I reminisce on these moments in my life, I can identify one stark difference between them and the scenario with which I opened this blog: discomfort. When I attempted a workout regimen in the past, I was merely going through the motions. I was moving, but staying entirely within my comfort zone. For a person who has been inactive for much of his/her life, any movement inevitably leads to progres...until it doesn’t. What I did not understand about fitness when I was younger is that progress cannot occur without discomfort. At least in terms of fitness, I generally gauge effort based on my level of exertion. At some point during my workout, I must encounter a moment that makes me question my physical capacity to complete the workout, a moment that requires me to have an inner monologue with myself to keep on going (within reason, of course). Do I feel like I could throw up? Sure. But am I going to? No. Keep on going. Does the weight feel heavy? Absolutely. But do I have the strength to pick it up again? Yes. Keep on going. Let me pause for a second here so that I’m not misunderstood. I do not advocate for pushing yourself to the point of passing out, vomiting, getting injured, etc in a workout. That is unsafe and, quite frankly, stupid. However, I AM advocating for reaching a level of smart and manageable discomfort. CrossFit Founder and CEO Greg Glassman is noted as saying, “We fail at the margins of our experience.” If I continue to take Spinning classes, but never turn up the resistance knob, I have failed. If I step on the elliptical and don’t try to go faster than what I’ve gone in the past, I have failed. The failure is not based on whether I could or could not manage higher resistance or a faster pace, but in the fact that I did not allow myself to reach a certain level of discomfort to strive for them. The margins of our experience encapsulate all of the things that we’ve already accomplished. There is merit in repeating the things we’ve already accomplished, but only with the objective to eventually expand those margins. Striving for anything less results in standing atop the dreaded “plateau” of fitness where many of us become frustrated and give up altogether. The cogent resolution to this is reaching beyond those margins of experience: moving faster, lifting heavier, jumping higher, adding resistance, and, in general, pushing harder. That can get uncomfortable, as it should if you expect to see progress. However, once you face that discomfort head on, something really quite interesting happens: you begin to embrace it, welcome it, even. Mentally, you are creating the facilities necessary to understand that discomfort and acquiesce to it. I chase that discomfort. I long for it. It is an indication that I am pushing on my margins of experience, and even if I am the very last person to complete a workout, I know that I have not failed because I’ve done everything in my power, in that moment, to make myself better.
1 Comment
Susan T.
6/5/2017 05:50:33 am
Great article, Crystal! :)
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