My Journey With Health And Fitness – Overcoming Mental Barriers

I got home from the gym this morning and listened to the weather forecast where they were predicting snow. Today should have been a run day but I thought hmm, maybe let’s do a rest day something I haven’t done in over 3 weeks. However, then that voice in my head starts up and tells me how bad that would be. And so to quiet the voice I looked at my stats the last 3 weeks and during that time I walked/ran 437 km’s, 697,740 steps and have burned an average of over 3,000 calories a day. I really don’t think taking a rest day is going to do any damage to my work.

I was the first one at the gym today and the instructor asked if I would set up the barbells for deadlifts. As I was about to start pulling out the plates to put on them she called over, new rule, minimum plates are 25 lbs. I’m like, what? 2 25 lb plates added to the 35 lb barbell means deadlifting 85 lbs. I thought, no way can I do multiple reps at that weight. The instructor looked at me and said, you are stronger than you give yourself credit for though I did not believe that.

I decided I was starting the set with the deadlifts and had i my mind that this was going to be horrible. I focused on my form and pushing through my feet and found it wasn’t that bad. The instructor came over and said, see you can do 3 reps at that weight. I responded that I actually had done 4 reps so next round I’m going to add 10 lbs. While I was finishing the other exercises in the round she brought over 2 5lb plates and 2 10lb plates. When I was ready to do deadlifts again she asked which ones I wanted to add and I said the 10lb plates. Yep, got through 4 reps again. For the final round I made the instructor giddy when I loaded on those 5lb plates as well. When done I did the math and I had done deadlift reps at 115lb’s. Ok, maybe I’m putting up mental barriers and not acknowledging how strong I really am.

I pushed myself during the 2nd round of exercises using weights a little heavier than I normally would and I didn’t die. In the final round we had to do side bends and I had convinced myself that I should use a 25lb weight rather than the 20lb I normally use. After the first set I thought now would be a good time to push myself so I upped the ante to a 30lb weight. And you know what, it felt pretty damn good.

I realize I probably should have upped these weights a while ago but there is always that fear that I am going to fail. But, the instructor reminded us that it’s ok needing to go to a lower weight, just do the higher number of reps. I guess that too is success.

I came out of the class with the mindset that going forward each week I will increase weights in some way. I figure if I can conquer the mental barriers around how strong I am next I can conquer my fear of doing box jumps. Hopefully I’ll be writing about that soon.