Shannon’s BodyBlog

I was watching the Military Channel yesterday (while NOT folding laundry) about men joining the Navy Seals.  The documentary was covering 12 days of grueling exercises to see who would stay and who would quit and move on to the next phase of the program.

There was one exercise where they had to swim from one end of an indoor pool to the other end while staying under water.  They couldn’t come up for air at any point.  It took approximately 4 minutes or so to cross.  Brain damage occurs around the 5 minute mark, so those men want to make sure they swim to the other side before that happens.

Well, quite a few of the men made it to the other side, but they were either on the verge of being passed out, or they WERE passed out and had to be saved.

What got me is that these mens bodies pushed themselves beyond the point of reasoning.  While their minds were probably screaming at them to come up for air, they bypassed that instinct and somehow kept their bodies moving despite being barely conscious by the end.

I took that thought with me while thinking about myself at the gym.  While I’m not about to lift weights until I pass out….how f*cking embarrassing would that be….I need to find a way to push past what my mind is telling me my body can do.

Another thing I saw that struck me is when teams of men had a boat race in the ocean.  The first place team won the chance to rest, while everyone else had to do some excruciating exercises as punishment.

One instructor informed the men that the only thing worse than what they had to do is being captured by the enemy and to think of these exercises as being captured by the enemy.

He also said that "being in second place is just being the first to come in last".  Because if you’re not first, you’re either captured or dead.  I took that quote to heart.

It made me think of the quote Ricky Bobby’s dad always said in Talledega Nights:  "If you ain’t first, you’re last."  And then I laughed to myself.

Dammit!  I can never take anything seriously.

Shows like the Navy Seals documentary, or seeing competitors in triathlon races or any other event that requires a lot of mind-strength, have always appealed to me.  I love seeing people push themselves past the limits of what their minds set for them.

I also have to mention my son whose mind power is amazing to me.  No matter how cr*ppy he’s feeling while playing a sport because of out of whack blood sugars, he fixes the problem by drinking some juice to raise his blood sugars, or coming in for a dose of insulin if they’re running too high, and he gets right back out a continues playing.  He NEVER uses his limitations as an excuse to compete with less than 200% effort.
Usually I can never get past curling 15# dumbbells, but last week I was able to curl 20# DB’s 5 times during the end of a particular bicep exercise.  The next time out, I plan to curl those 20# bastards for the majority of the reps I have to do.

The show also got me motivated to do more than I had done yesterday morning.  It was my off-day for weight training, but I still did my 500 calorie burn.  Well, Mdrane suggested I burn another 500 calories earlier in the day that I scoffed at.  I decided to burn another 500 calories for a total of 1,000 calories for the day.

I expect to push past a lot of the limitations my mind has set for me.

Weight Training:  shoulders, back, abs

Cardio:  500
Breakfast:  Must I write it?  I will anyway:  5 eggs (1 whole, 4 whites)

oatmeal

coffee w/ milk

Lunch:  open faced Sardine sandwich (1 can sardines, 1 slice whole wheat)

Dinner:  fish

brown rice

vegetable

This entry was posted on Monday, January 12th, 2009 at 6:56 am and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.