Holding onto the Treadmill for Dear Life!

In the gyms that I frequent I often see the following phenomenon… Somebody starts working on the treadmill and begins to jack up the incline but they put the incline so high that they can’t actually work at that level so they have to cling onto the bar just to stay on the treadmill.

Last week I saw a really extreme example of this behaviour. A man who often seems to do things very strangely in the gym set the incline level at what I can only assume to be the maximum. In order just to keep himself from flying off the thing, not only did he have to hold on tightly but he also leaned back so that the angle between his body and the base of the treadmill was the same as if he was standing normally with the incline flat.

I couldn’t find any pictures of anybody doing this so let me try to illustrate with some silly diagrams!

Diagram 1 - Running on flat treadmill

Ok diagram 1 here is pretty standard – the treadmill is flat and somebody is running (or walking) without holding onto the bar. Look at the dotted red line. This serves the highlight the angle between the runner and the running surface. Here it is clearly a right angle: 90 degrees.

[Edit] Oh bugger, there's no dotted red line in that picture! Well I could recreate the picture but it would be easier to ask you to scroll down at look at diagram 3 which has the red line in the same place! Oooopsie! :-)

Diagram 2 - Running on a high incline

Now in diagram two the runner has increased the incline of the treadmill but he is still running and not holding on. Because of gravity, humans need to be positioned at a right angle to the core of the earth. The treadmill provides an artificial ground for the runner and in order to stay on the treadmill and not fall off, the runner has to effectively learn forward to keep the centre of gravity positioned correctly through his body.

What the incline of the treadmill does here is increase the angle between the runner and the artificial surface beneath him. Notice how that angle is larger (or smaller depending on which of the two angles you are looking at! I’m looking at the one to the left of the red line.) That’s what gives him the extra resistance and thus makes the run harder. Basic principles at work here.

Diagram 3- Holding on to a treadmill on a high incline

So far so good but look what happens when the runner decides that he can’t actually run at the incline he has set so instead decides to hold on. What usually happens is that as he holds onto the bar he effectively hangs his bodyweight off it which changes the angle of his body – he is now positioned once again at a right angle to his artificial ground. This means that the resistance that he tried to increase by increasing the incline is effectively cancelled out by his need to hold on.

Now this diagram is an extreme example but this was exactly what I saw in my gym last week. The angle was so high that I couldn’t see how anyone could get up a hill like that without holding onto something. This man was literally holding on for dear life and as I watched him I could see the angle of his body positioned just like the one in my diagram above.

So What? What Does it Matter Anyway?

This guy is kidding himself. He thinks he is pushing himself to the max by setting the incline so high and yet he is defeating his own efforts by having to hold on. Of course I also see many people holding onto the bar even when the treadmill is flat. This carries health problems of its own and a quick Google search will reveal lots of informative pages about that. However what I would really like to get across is not so much the health problems of holding on exactly, but the fact that this man is sabotaging his own efforts and tricking himself into thinking that he is working much harder than he is.

This is a recurring theme in the fat loss and fitness arena. I have been guilty of kidding myself in so many ways over the years and it is only now that I am starting to see where many of us are going wrong. I think it’s important to highlight the ways in which we do this to ourselves because there is nothing worse than coming to the end of the week where you think you have eaten well and exercised well and you do your weighing and measuring and do not get the results you expect. You wonder why your plan doesn’t seem to be working when you are obviously doing everything right.

I’m going to start a new category for this post and I’ll be putting in quite a few more articles in it in the coming weeks.

Year 2, Week 1 Check-In

This post is the first in a series of weekly progress that I am going to post as I go through my second year on my fat loss and fitness plan. Many weeks I see that I've made little or no progress and I think "damn, must try harder next week" but I don't really pinpoint specific issues I had or look at ways that I could do better. By blogging about it I hope that I will be a bit more diligent.

Weight GAIN: 0.25 lbs

Oh dear! Not a good start to my second year. I didn't just not lose but I gained weight! I didn't bother doing the measurements and bodyfat calculations this week as the results will not really change much with such a small weight change. I usually do that when there's been a change of around 1lb.

Changes in Exercise Routine

Last week I tried quite a different routine to the norm. For quite a few months I had a fairly regular routine of doing cardio weekday mornings, weights weekday lunchtimes, karate two evenings a week and nothing at all on the weekend. This routine had two drawbacks. Firstly it took 14 hours out of my week, phew! Secondly it was all concentrated into 5 days and then I did nothing on weekends and that is when I tend to overeat the most.

I've had a week of illness and then a week on holiday and around that time I also realised that I could no longer afford to spend 14 hours of my week on exercise so I've changed things around quite a lot. I now exercise daily, but no more than twice daily (cardio, weights AND karate in one day is just overkill) and I started replacing cardio at the gym for running near my house as that's something I want to improve.

Running Problems

My current routine has me running 4 times - both weekend days and also two mornings during the week. I had real issue with my mid-week runs as I was doing these straight after getting up at 6am. I don't like to exercise immediately after waking as I'm like a zombie for a while. Secondly, I am greatly dehydrated when I first wake up. Usually I'll have a big glass of water first thing but by running first I missed out on that. Lastly, I'm hungry and have no energy.

I was having a very hard time with the running, feeling terribly lethargic and I kept getting headaches. This week I'm changing the routine to overcome these problems. I'll still run on weekends but not straight away. I'll get up, have my water, have breakfast and wake up a bit before I go. I did that this morning and felt much better for it. During the week, I'm dropping the running and replacing it with two cardio sessions instead. I always workout very well doing cardio at the gym because I put in a solid 40 minutes and I monitor my heart rate the entire time and keep it pretty high.

Snacking

Last week I snacked quite a lot, mostly on sweets and chocolates but I also had peanut butter on toast in the evening twice. Snacking has always been a problem for me and I don't think I'll ever be able to completely give up sweets, chocolates, cakes biscuits etc. Well it's not so much that I can't give them up, as I don't want to. However, I need to do something about it so next week I'll try and compromise by allowing myself one unplanned treat daily. If I raid the receptionists sweetie bowl (she has toffees! how can I resist!!?) then no chocolate and no toast that day!

Those Indulgent Days

Unfortunately I've already got myself off to a bad start this morning by eating a cheese burger! I do my weekly shop on Saturday mornings (which I hate) and a few months ago they went and installed an in-store McDonalds! Usually it doesn't tempt me as I'm not actually a huge fan, I find their food pretty gross really but today I was just so hungry and I caved.

Not only that but in an hour or so I'm taking my son to Legoland where I will no doubt eat more crappy food like burgers. And we always have one of their scrumptious chocolate dipped waffles when we go there! Usually I take my own food with me but I'm just having one of those days today and I just can't be bothered! Lastly, I just know I'll be knackered tonight and I wont want to cook. I've already decided that we're having a Chinese takeaway - I even bought the crispy duck already as I can get it at the shops a lot cheaper!

I don't beat myself up about days like today even though they do tend to sabotage my progress for the whole week. It doesn't happen every week and I still get a life. The key point though is that I go straight back on plan the following day, I never lose sight of the big picture.

To Plan Or Go With the Flow?

As I mentioned in my previous post, I have a tendency to plan things in great detail. I do this with all things related to my fat loss goal such as planning of all of my food and my exercise routines. The main reason I do this is because it gives me a sense of certainty. For example, if I know that I need 2000 calories a day and I plan my food to exactly 1500 calories a day then I can be fairly sure that I'll lose 1lb of fat in a week as there are 3500 calories in 1lb of fat.

Planning Problems

However, there are problems when it comes to planning, especially when that plan relies on a certain amount of progress being made. Here's an example: when I first started running I had a goal in mind. I wanted to run 5k on the 22nd July for the Race for Life event. I also knew what my starting circumstances were so I took a logical approach and drew up a plan of how I could go from where I was to where I wanted to be (in running terms) in the time that I had available.

The plan went something like this... I started out running something like 10 minutes in blocks of two minutes at a time and walking for a minute in between. Each week I would increase the overall duration of the run and over time I would increase the length of each block. The aim was to get me to a point where I would be able to run for 40 minutes non-stop. I did this on a spreadsheet in a very linear fashion and it all looked fine but there was a fatal flaw in the plan - it did not take into account my physical and emotional states and capabilities.

Plans Have to be Executed by People

When I first started out I made progress quite quickly and looking back I think the reason for that is that my fitness has increased quite a bit from my other exercise so I started out being able to do more than I realised. However I soon hit a wall and then workouts became serious effort and this is where the problems started. I find running hard, really hard. And painful. There were times when my legs were screaming and I can't put myself through that kind of pain unless I'm in a certain emotional state. I have to be feeling highly motivated and fired up, and physically feeling fresh and strong. But of course I simply don't feel like that every day.

Many days I would drag myself down the gym early in the morning, I'd be yawning away not looking forward to another day in the office and just feeling generally low. On days like that I just didn't want any more pain. Yes I'd think about my goals and visualise the results I wanted but on some days I simply didn't care! I was happy to do a workout as long as I didn't have to push too hard and for me, running was always hard.

Plans Must be Able to Accommodate Change

I found myself getting stressed because the routine was not going according to the plans I had laid out. In my first plan I was trying to increase my overall duration by three minutes per week and at the time I ran three times per week so that equated to a minute more on every run. Once I began to hit that wall I couldn't find that extra minute in me and then of course the next day I'd need to run an extra two minutes if I wanted to stay on plan and that's the problem with a plan that relies on a linear progression - one slip and the whole plan falls apart.

Another problem is that if I push myself really hard it tends to have repercussions later on. Sometimes they are physical - I'll get such cramps in my legs that I wont want to run for a few days or they are emotional - I keep thinking about how much the last run hurt and I end up skipping gym sessions in the following few days. This is counter productive - two average workouts would be better than one great one and one skipped one!

Ditching the Plan

I've already decided to pull out of the race so I feel like the pressure has been lifted but I would still like to persevere with running simply because it's such a convenient form of exercise. I don't need a gym and I can run anywhere. A week off work doesn't have to mean a week of missed exercise.

After a holiday in France I wanted to get back into it but I didn't want to dive in and push too hard and just put myself off again so I started off very gently. I went right back to basics. I had plotted out a 3k route and my only objective was simply to complete that route on foot, be it walking, jogging or some mixture. I started out just walking and I didn't look at my watch at all. Of course after a while I was warmed up and I felt fine so I moved into a jog. When I got tired I just stopped and walked again. I didn't check my watch, I didn't try to 'reach the next milestone' - I simply did as much as I felt like without pushing too hard.

Of course it was not a fantastic workout. I would have burned more calories by doing a workout on one of the elliptical machines at the gym but that's not the point. What I am trying to do here is reintroduce myself to the idea of running as a form of regular exercise. I can supplement my routine with gym sessions to ensure I do enough real fitness but as far as running goes I just want to try and get comfortable with it.

Progress Still Needs to be Measurable

The question is, will I get any better? If I just go with the flow in this way and don't try to set myself any goals or time myself in any way then how will I know if I am getting any better? And if I don't get any better then what is the point? What I think I can do here is use a couple of methods of measurement that are much less formal than the plans I used to draw up.

Firstly, I can plot new routes that are longer. My 3k route took me 30 minutes and I walked most of it. Ideally I'd like to be doing a 30 minute workout that is mostly running but as I physically can't do that yet I'll settle for longer routes that I walk large chunks of. If I make the route longer then I know I am doing more without having to explicitly measure anything.

Secondly, I can time the overall route. Where as before I would have a strict schedule such as run 8 minutes, walk 2 minutes, and repeat three times, now I can just do a run/walk mixture as I feel able and time it on a regular basis to see if I am getting any faster. Plus, I can use my intuition. How do I know I walked most of the route if I didn't do any timings? Well I just know! I can use that same sense to give me an idea of whether or not I am running more than before. Every week or so I can time the run so I have a better idea. If after a few weeks the same route is taking me the same time to cover then I know I am not making any improvement. Perhaps then I could try and use more formal methods to step up the effort a little.

For now, I'm going to just go with the flow and see how that works out.
(01/07/2007 13:40 | delete)

Pulling Out of the Race

A couple of weeks ago I made a breakthrough with my running and this was about 6 weeks before the scheduled date of my 5k Race For Life. Until then I had been tempted to pull out but my breakthrough had convinced me otherwise. I immediately came up with a little plan of increasing the length of the route I run by 0.5k each week until the race. I used a cool tool called GMaps Pedometer to plot my routes.

Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to put it into action. The morning I was supposed to go for my first run I was feeling really ill. I phoned in sick to work and went back to bed. I stayed off work for a couple of days then felt a bit better so went back. I planned to try a run again at the weekend. However, my flu-like symptoms developed into a nasty cough and by Saturday morning I couldn't go more than a couple of minutes without coughing up something gross so I skipped the run again.

This cough has persisted for a whole week and all week I've done no exercise whatsoever. Today I have a wedding to go to and then tomorrow morning we go from the hotel to the airport to fly out to France for a week on holiday. I might be able to do some running in France but obviously I can't do my usual route; I have no way of knowing how far I go so it will be haphazard at best.

When I get back I'll have just 3 weeks before the race. If I was to train hard it can be done, anything can be done. But having thought about it, I am simply not willing to put in that much effort in such a short space of time so I am pulling out of the race after all.

I have mixed feelings about this. Firstly I feel a huge burden has been lifted! But of course the downside is that I feel like a failure. My definition of failure is not missing a goal but but quitting on a goal and that's exactly what I have done. However, when I look back over how I arrived at this situation I realise that I have not failed in my physical capacity to run, but in my planning and training. I simply have not trained for this event. I've done a little bit of running here and there; it has been extremely sporadic.

If I was going to continue running I could take it very slowly. I could go for just one or two runs a week and slowly build up the length of the run. If I did this continuously for a whole year I should be able to run 5k quite easily next year and I feel quite confident about that. I haven't quite decided if I want to do that but I have decided to pull out of this year's race.

Oh well, we can't win 'em all :)

Running Too Fast

Back in April I tried moving my running from the (relative) comfort of the treadmill to the open road and met with great unexpected difficulty. I could barely run for 2 minutes without having to stop.

This really put me off. I tried outdoor running a couple more times and then gave up. I did a bit on the treadmill but found that I just couldn't seem to do what I had been doing before in my old gym. I'm sure this was partially psychological, but it was my reality just the same.

Then last week I managed to get an idea inspired by motivational speaker, Tony Robbins. In one of his books he had a chapter on exercise, (most of which I disagreed with!) and in there he said that most people do not take the time to build an aerobic base and they push themselves into anaerobic levels too quickly. The trouble I have with running is that there doesn't seem to be a way for me to make it aerobic because I just find it so difficult. As soon as I break into a run my heart rate just shoots through the roof.

Then I thought about it some more. Am I just running too fast? It never crossed my mind before because I see so many people in the gym running a LOT faster than me. But it made me wonder just how slow I could go. Perhaps I could find a speed that was barely above a walk that would keep my heart rate in the aerobic zone and allow me to keep going longer.

I tried it out on my next session. Success! I ran 15 minutes straight on the treadmill going about 20% slower than usual. It felt weird going that slow but I kept checking my heart rate and it was quite high but not too high. My stopping point was the pain in my lower legs - I can't stand that burn! But it was much slower to develop and I had no soreness afterwards where usually I'd have a sore calf for a day or two.

This morning I put my theory to test back on the open road. It was still way harder than on the treadmill but I made progress. I ran in blocks of five minutes with a 1-2 minute break between them. Once again it was my legs that let me down but I figure they will strengthen quite quickly. My route allowed me 3 little blocks and I could have gone longer so I'm going to plot out a new one that should add on an extra 5 minutes.

It's still not much but its progress just the same. My mantra with fitness and weight loss has always been "Take Baby Steps" and until now I hadn't realised that the steps I was taking with my runs were simply too large.

If you have hit a wall with some aspect of your physical exercise, scrutinise it and see if there is a way you can cut back on the intensity / difficulty and still make progress.

New Gym, New Resolutions, and New Disappointments...

It's been all change this Easter weekend! A few weeks ago I started getting really good progress by doing cardio & weight training 5 times a week and by really sticking to my diet and then it all kind of went a bit pear shaped and I started sabotaging badly.

This weekend I had 4 days off work, and I ate a ton of chocolate and just over-indulged all over the place! Don't you ever get times like that? Where you kind of rebell against yourself and stuff yourself silly with whatever you can fit in your mouth? I figured I wouldn't beat myself up about it but I had to do something different if I was going to make a change.

The deadline for my fat loss goal is in July, just 3 months away. Seems like a long time but I set it last July and I'm nowhere near it so I feel like it's slipping away fast! I realised that there are certain foods that are real weaknesses for me and I can't seem to eat them in sensible amounts. Once I start, I just can't stop. Familiar for many people I'm sure. These foods include chocolate, sweets, savoury snacks, takeaways, ice cream, alcohol etc.
Until now I've always believed that you shouldn't ban foods because that instantly causes a sense of deprivation which will make you rebell. But it's just not working for me. I have something like this quite often and it takes me well over my calorie limit each time. So I made the decision that I would ban everything on that list - just until I reach my goal. Now what I figure is that if I can go that long (heck, if I can go just a week!) that I'll see the results I want and I just wont want to go back to eating them but we'll see what happens.

Also last week the company I worked for moved offices and as a result I changed gyms. I joined up today and had a quick nose around. It's great! This is a true bodybuilders gym unlike the hotel guest gym I was in before. It's full of people with real muscles lol! Its very inspiring and somebody helped me straight away to get started. I just can't wait to get back in there tomorrow. I actually WANT to get up at 5.30 so I can get a session in before work!

And now for the disappointment... Back in January I started running (on the treadmill) and after a few weeks I make quite good progress so I signed up for Race for Life which is a 5k race. A couple of weeks ago I was thrilled when I managed to run my first 5k, again on the treadmill. So I figured it was about time I got out of my comfort zone again and start running for real outdoors. Oh my, what a shock that was! I was right back where I started, barely able to run for two minutes before my legs (calves and shins) started screaming in agony. I went through all this on the treadmill so I know it goes away with time but damn, I don't want to have to go through all that pain again! It makes me sad but such is life, these things are sent to test us I think.

It would be easy to say that its just too hard and to give up but then I'd feel lousy. I've been able to push through it before, I can do it again. I just think about how great it will feel to actually cross the finish line on Race day - and thats over 3 months away so I have time to train for it.

Grab the Unexpected Opportunities... But Tie Your Shoelaces First!

Life is weird... One day you can be sitting at work just fixing bugs as usual and then you get the phone call that every parent dreads: "Your son has had a bad fall and he's on his way to hospital." The next minute you're being told that your two year old needs surgery and it has to be done under general anaesthetic.

Then the very next day (three stitches and a fat lip later, he's fine) you can feel great for no reason whatsoever, hit the gym and smash through all personal records.

In January I started incorporating a little running into my cardio and at the beginning of February, out of nowhere I got on the treadmill and managed to run for a continuous 20 minutes when I'd previously only been doing 3 minutes consistently. That day I was so inspired that I signed up for Race For Life, a women's only 5k race to raise money for Cancer Research.

Since then I've obviously been featuring running in my training a lot more. I have focussed on time rather than speed. My standard workout is a three minute walk to warmup followed by 3 blocks of running with two minutes walking after each one. I started out running 4 minute blocks, then 5, 6, 7 and this week I took it to 8.

I only run 3 times a week so I add on the minute to one block per day so today was my day to do 3 x 8. I was in my 10th minute about to slow down to the walk and I thought to myself, "I feel good today, I could do another endurance test. I wonder if I could do a full 3k continuously?" You know how you have a dialogue with yourself in your mind. "No, no, I'm not in the mood, I don't want to feel that pain". "But there will be pain any time I do it, today is a good day, I can take it." All this only took a moment in my head but before I knew it I'd passed the 11 minute mark and I was on my way.

Today would be the day I set another record for myself.

So, there I am pounding away on the treadmill and I realised that this time it's not about time, its distance. Consciously I thought to myself that I didn't really want to run 3k, I wanted to run 4. But subconsciously I knew that even that was a lie. I wanted nothing less than 5k. So I started to push up the speed. I usually run at a very slow 7.2 but I gradually pushed it up to 7.8. I didn't stay there for long and settled down to a fairly comfortable 7.5.

Then in the 17th minute disaster struck. I heard the familiar noise of my shoe laces coming undone and smacking onto the treadmill. I still don't have proper running shoes and that's fast becoming a priority. I hadn't tightened them before I started. I carried on for a bit longer hoping they were just a bit loose but nope, after another 30 seconds or so they were completely undone and I had to stop. I hit the emergency stop and tied them up as quick as I could and pushed the speed straight back up again. I stopped for no more than 30 seconds but I felt like a failure.

I beat myself up about this for several minutes. How I could I count my efforts when I'd stopped in between? How could I have been so stupid not to check them? I continued berating myself for quite some time that I hadn't noticed that I had just whizzed past my previous 20 minute record!

That changed my state a bit! I realised how much easier it was this time than just 7 weeks earlier and that the 5k was really in my grasp. 4k came and went and I absolutely knew my goal would be achieved. The only real question was how long would it take?

42 minutes and 5 seconds! However, that unfortunately includes the 3 minute warmup walk, as does the 5k distance. Ideally I would reset the machine after the warmup but both times I have done this I didn't know I was going to do it until I had been going for some time.

Sometimes you gotta just grab the opportunities when they hit you even if conditions aren't perfect. The feeling I got when I saw 5k on the distance meter is amazing. I think it was even better than last time because I knew I could have done more. But I was already late for work so I thought I'd better stop :-)

Even Greater Things Can Happen When...

... you totally destroy your limiting beliefs.

Hopefully you've read yesterdays blog entry about what can happen when you find the right motivation. If not, read it now!

All week long I've been listening to Tony Robbins banging on about the power of focusing on what is it you really want. He says that you should always ask yourself "What's my outcome?" for any situation, whether its something as big as your life or as small as a lunchtime workout. So I'm in my car driving to the gym and I asked myself out loud "What's my outcome for my workout today?". Well I want to get rid of my headache, shake off this tiredness, have a really great workout and feel vitalised. And as I said this I imagined myself on the crosstrainer at level 10 managing to keep up a fast pace for the full 20 minutes.

Straight away I had to change my approach as the gym was full today, the crosstrainers were in use so it had to be the treadmill again. I set myself a new standard yesterday of doing 3/2 so I had to do the same again. It was tough going, my legs were really aching and I wished I had remembered to stretch beforehand. I looked down at the clock and I'd only been going for 90 seconds. I had to change my state if I was going to do the full workout!

So I decided to focus on something positive - when was I going to go for my five minute goal? A few years ago (about 2002 I think) I joined a local gym and went fairly regularly for a couple of months. I used the cross trainer then too but secretly harbored aspirations of being able to run again. I set myself a vague goal of being able to run continuously for 20 minutes as an ultimate goal. Of course thats too big to tackle in one go so the first step was five minutes. Amusingly, at the time I tested myself to see how long I could run for and I had to bring the machine to an emergency stop after about 40 seconds!

Anyway that was then, this is now and I'm much fitter now. The five minute goal is within reach. Heck, I did almost 4 minutes yesterday! I could do it real soon. Yeah, first of March! Hmm, why wait a month? Why don't I just try it RIGHT NOW just for a laugh? It won't matter if I can't do it. I'll try just for fun. By now I was so busy thinking about this that I hadn't noticed the time, I was almost at my three minutes so I didn't stop - I decided to carry on and go for the goal!

The time is passing, my legs are screaming but four minutes comes and goes and I just KNOW I'm going to do five. Suddenly my mind starts racing. Can I do more than five? Who knows? I don't know what I'm capable of. Maybe I can do six, or seven, christ maybe I can really go mad and try for ten whole minutes!

Well five came and went! Oh yeah baby I did it, I got my five minute goal but now I didn't care about that because I had a new goal - I wanted ten! Minute after miute went by. At about 8 minutes I checked my heart rate and it was 180. To give you some perspective, on the crosstrainer I train at around 160, when running I go to about 172 then I start walking so this was high but not dangerously high. The biggest problem was the burning in the back of my calves. But that's just pain! Who cares about a little pain when 10 minutes is within my reach!

You know yesterday after my successful workout I had started planning how I was going to reach not only the five minute goal (as that seemed much closer) but the ten minute one. I figured that each month I'd increase my jogging duration by 1 minute so it would take 7 months to get to 10 minutes. Damn, seven months is a long time and by that time it would be a over a year since I started training and 10 minutes didn't seem like all that much for a years worth of training. Oh well, maybe I can up it every fotnight then - 30 seconds a week instead.

So yesterday I was thinking that I could reach 10 minutes in maybe 3-4 months and here I was just a couple of minutes away from it!

In the ninth minute I almost flaked out. NO, YOU CANT GIVE UP NOW, I screamed at myself inside my head. I kept going and then I had another big shift in mindset. Just a few minutes before the only thing I knew was that I could run 4 minutes. For years and years and years I've told myself that I can't run. How utterly absurd! I have two legs, no disabilities, I'm healthy and I'm young, OF COURSE I can run! Suddenly all my previous beliefs about what I could and couldn't do just evaporated. I was approaching ten minutes, this was brand new territory and I no longer had any idea what my real capabilities were. Right then I DECIDED, I made an absolute decision that I was going to run for 20 minutes. My absolute ultimate goal was happening TODAY, RIGHT NOW.

With every single step I took I was setting a new record for myself. I imagined that I was running a hurdle race and each hurdle was a limiting belief that I had about myself but instead of jumping over them I just ran straight through them blasting them to peices! I started getting really excited, adrenaline was pumping and that must have been what kept me going. Each minute felt like an eternity but by about 16 minutes I knew I was there; all I had to do was endure a little more pain.

Another thing that Tony Robbins talks about is avoiding pain and gravitating towards pleasure. He says that we'll always do more to avoid pain than we will to gain pleasure. So why is it that I was able to put myself through that much pain? Because the pleasure of already having completed my five minute goal, and my ten minute goal and the idea of actually doing twenty minutes was the most pleasurable feeling I could imagine in that moment!

17...

18...

19...

Did I make it? You bet I did! I counted down the last 10 seconds in my head and pressed the slow down button as hard as I could! I stopped the treadmill, leaned on the bars and just breathed for a few moments. Then the reality of what I had done really hit me. I was so excited that I told the guy on the treadmill next to me! He must have thought I was a little mad! He asked me how far I'd ran. I hadn't even thought of that! I was so obsessed with the time that I didn't even notice the distance. He looked over at my machine, pointed to the indicator - 2.63 kilometres. Thats over a mile and a half!!!

18 months ago I could barely get up the stairs. I couldn't even run to the end of the driveway. Six months ago I managed 10 minutes on the cross trainer at level 1. Today I ran for 20 minutes. Today I ran over a mile and a half. Not a year from now, or six months from now but today. And why? Because I believed with all my heart and soul that I could.

To anyone reading this who is a reasonably fit person, it may seem like I'm making an awful lot of fuss over a little light jogging. After all, 20 minutes at a pace of 7km/hour is not much - it's a mere warmup to many of you but to ME, it's huge. Everybody has strengths and everybody has areas that they feel are weak but next time you catch yourself saying or thinking "I can't do that", think again. Really? Why can't you? How do you know?

You know what else is so great about this? It's an achievement that can never been taken away from me. Anytime I want to feel as powerful and triumphant, as elated or ecstatic as I did today I can just think about it. And of course, I can use it to help me destroy other limiting beliefs I may have. In what other areas could I be holding myself back? The more references you have for doing what you thought you couldn't, the more you start to realise that you can do more than you think!

Destroy your limiting beliefs and take it to next level baby!

Great Things Happen When...

Great Things Happen When...

... You have the right motivation. For the last 15 years or so I've been somebody who can't run; it's just too painful physically. Down the gym for my cardio I use the crosstrainer as that provides an excellent workout. But its always annoyed me that I can't run because it's something I was good at as a teenager - long distance running was my thing.

So six months into my training routine I decided that 2007 would be the year to start. I'd been experimenting with the treadmill a little on and off trying to find a comfortable pace and so on. Ideally I want to do a 20 minute workout and there's no way I can run for 20 minutes so the only way I can do this is to alternate between jogging and walking so thats what I did - two minutes of each.

I figured I'd do the 2/2 combination for as long as I could gradually working up to the full 20 minutes which would give me a total of 10 minutes jogging time. Well I underestimated my own ability and did the full 20 minute workout on my first go! So I've been doing that a couple of days a week for the last 3 or 4 weeks and its been working out fine.

Today I was having a bit of a bad day at work and my boss annoyed me a little so I decided that I was going to have a great workout to make me feel better. So, today I'd step it up a gear and jog for three minutes and walk for 2. It was really hard but I made it!

So there I was on the treadmill feeling all proud of myself doing my warmdown. I gradually decrease the speed for a couple of minutes so that I dont immediately fall over when I step off the machine! Then suddenly, one of my favourite songs came on. Whenever I hear good music it motivates me to work harder and something inside me told me I just had to run to it! So I slammed up the speed again and off I went. I lasted the entire duration of the song which was almost 4 minutes long! Just half an hour earlier I wasn't sure if I could run for 3 minutes!

But my story doesn't end there... I slowed down the treadmill again and started another cooldown and then the CD skipped and went back to my favourite song! So up the speed went again! It was getting quite funny now (if somewhat painful!) Luckily for me it had only skipped back a minute or so and I only had to run for 40 seconds and when the CD skipped for the second time they changed the CD :-)

So it just goes to show that you can always do more. Even when you think you're done, there's not a drop left in you - there is. You just need to find the motivation that will drag it out.