Brent stopped by my office to check on me and tell me about his new membership at Gold’s Gym. He’d just survived his first session with his trainer, Marcus, and he was still in significant hurt.
He said about halfway through the session Marcus noticed Brent’s pale skin and shallow breathing and asked, “How are you feeling? Most guys are ready to throw up about now.”
Good idea. Brent said the second half of the workout went a lot better once he got the throwing up part out of the way.
I told him my own story from last Saturday when I was at Gold’s in a Bodypump class (an endurance strength workout set to music) and I was hurting. We often joke in class that the louder the music the less it hurts, but that isn’t true. The music doesn’t make it easier, it makes the repetitions faster and the workout last longer. I think all the songs are 20 minutes long, which can be a lot of bicep curls or squats. I don’t know how they squeeze ten 20-minute workouts into a 1-hour class, but that’s what it feels like. The first time I went to a Bodypump class I had church orchestra practice afterward and I was hurting so bad in my chest and triceps I couldn’t hold my trombone up to play. I was a mess.
During Saturday’s class, as we were working the last set of chest reps, I realized that once again I had too much weight on my bar because I was too stubborn and too proud to back off, I could feel the muscle fibers screaming across my chest refusing to perform any longer. I realized that, had I been working out by myself on my own, I would never work this hard. I would’ve stopped long ago and considered it the best I could do. But being in a class where I couldn’t quit when it hurt (after all, there were girls in the room) forced me to do more than I thought I could do. The imposed structure opened up possibilities I would never see on my own.
As much as I like freedom and choices, I need structure in my life. I need structure to stay honest, to work as hard as I’m capable of, to not quit too soon.
Back in the summer of 1980 I learned a lesson about the value of structure in my first road race. It was a 5-miler in Lubbock, Texas, and it was a spanking. I thought I’d been running pretty good on my own during my training runs, but since I was never an athlete in my youth I had no idea what a race was like. It was harder than I’d expected, and hotter, and I thought it would kill me. I might’ve thrown up at the finish line but Cyndi and I had only been married a year and I didn’t want to get sick in front of her. I learned that my daily runs weren’t good indicators of my capabilities. I needed the structure of a race.
Since then I’ve run hundreds of races, long and short. I’ve never finished in the top 50%, and the only times I qualified for an age-group award was when the field was so small there just weren’t enough guys my age to race and they gave a trophy out of default. One of my friends once asked, “Why do you keep entering races if you know you’ll never come close to winning?” It was a good question, and one I couldn’t answer at the time. I think, now, my answer would be because races are imposed structure that I have to follow. I need that structure in my life to do my best … to even know what my best is.
Another story: one summer a friend was whining that his Community Bible Study class didn’t meet during the summer months and his discipline fell apart. Without the weekly deadline to study the Bible his motivation flew out the window. He was apparently incapable of independent study. During the year he occasionally complained about the week-to-week discipline required to be part of the class, but in the summer was hurting without it.
Even in writing these essays I’m more creative working within an 800-word framework and a Thursday deadline. I can’t do my best without some structure to hang on to. At least writing doesn’t hurt my triceps or quads, and I don’t have to worry about throwing up.
