Condition Your Mind Along With Your Body
My father used to remind me when I was growing up to never quit once I started something. Once I joined a little league baseball or midget football team, he said I should not quit the team, ever. Along with that used to come the preaching of give it 110%, always do your best, and no one is better than you but you are also not better than someone else (his version of all men and women are created equal). He wanted his children to not feel inferior to bullies or other intimidation, but at the same time didn’t want us to be the bullies and intimidators. My father left a lot of great advice and was a strong man, both physically and mentally. I hope I passed on that advice to my son and from what I can tell so far he turned out pretty good.
Of course I also learned a lot from my mother who is 79. She, even to this day, works out regularly and won an age group award last September in the Pittsburgh Great Race 5K. She has given me great advice all throughout my life, even though she does not or has not ever told me what to do. She pointed me in the right direction and let me make my own decisions all throughout my life. I made mistakes and she was right there to bail me out of them and point me back out there again. The advice that sticks in my head the most and always comes back clear as the day she told me is “If you have any doubt, don’t do it”. The scenario that she gave me that advice was that I had just finished 10th grade, had my driver’s license, and was now heading with my older brother to my grandparents’ summer cottage an hour away in the hills just east of Pittsburgh to spend a few weeks without any parental supervision. She meant, of course, was if you think you may be doing something wrong, don’t do it. It worked. I spent my summer event free. I worked out by running in the hills almost every day and from that summer I started my love affair with running.
From these two hard working people I developed my own personality traits. I was given the gift of these two great motivators as parents. Whenever I start to get lazy or negative, I think of what I was blessed to be handed and usually that is enough to get me back on track. Not everyone has or had two good parents or even two parents to grow up with at all. My father passed away from melanoma at 49 years old, when I was 24. My youngest sibling, my only sister out of 8 of us, was only 13 at the time. My younger siblings always tell me how they love to hear me and my brothers, who were closer in age to me, talk about things my dad said or did. They remember many things about him but of course having 10 years or so on them I am able to share more stories. My parents made it easy for me to have the drive, resiliency, and persistence that I have. I feel that I have to continue it and pass it along for others to learn.
One example of a life’s lesson for me is that cutting corners almost always ends up in a bad ending. If you don’t warm-up properly before you run you get hurt. If you are working and you cut a step in production the product fails or is weakened. Even us golfers, when we play a hole that has a dogleg, how many times do we try to cut that corner, only to see our ball disappear into the woods because we didn’t make it through? Unless you have a single digit handicap, you probably have much less than 50% success with that shot. So why do we cut corners? Our minds are naturally conditioned to seek the easiest way to do something. We need to work hard to not only make our bodies stronger but our minds as well. I learned how to do that from my parents but it is never too late to learn. Just to be clear, I am not implying that you should continue a workout if you feel pain as you may have an injury. What I am saying is that the chances of getting injured are less if you work on your mind to do the proper steps to prepare for a workout, to do the reasonable workout for where you stand in your conditioning program, and to not take on more than your body can handle. Use your mind so that you can succeed, finish what you start, and at 110% effort. Following my own advice I feel that I improve quicker and feel stronger.
Of course I also learned a lot from my mother who is 79. She, even to this day, works out regularly and won an age group award last September in the Pittsburgh Great Race 5K. She has given me great advice all throughout my life, even though she does not or has not ever told me what to do. She pointed me in the right direction and let me make my own decisions all throughout my life. I made mistakes and she was right there to bail me out of them and point me back out there again. The advice that sticks in my head the most and always comes back clear as the day she told me is “If you have any doubt, don’t do it”. The scenario that she gave me that advice was that I had just finished 10th grade, had my driver’s license, and was now heading with my older brother to my grandparents’ summer cottage an hour away in the hills just east of Pittsburgh to spend a few weeks without any parental supervision. She meant, of course, was if you think you may be doing something wrong, don’t do it. It worked. I spent my summer event free. I worked out by running in the hills almost every day and from that summer I started my love affair with running.
From these two hard working people I developed my own personality traits. I was given the gift of these two great motivators as parents. Whenever I start to get lazy or negative, I think of what I was blessed to be handed and usually that is enough to get me back on track. Not everyone has or had two good parents or even two parents to grow up with at all. My father passed away from melanoma at 49 years old, when I was 24. My youngest sibling, my only sister out of 8 of us, was only 13 at the time. My younger siblings always tell me how they love to hear me and my brothers, who were closer in age to me, talk about things my dad said or did. They remember many things about him but of course having 10 years or so on them I am able to share more stories. My parents made it easy for me to have the drive, resiliency, and persistence that I have. I feel that I have to continue it and pass it along for others to learn.
One example of a life’s lesson for me is that cutting corners almost always ends up in a bad ending. If you don’t warm-up properly before you run you get hurt. If you are working and you cut a step in production the product fails or is weakened. Even us golfers, when we play a hole that has a dogleg, how many times do we try to cut that corner, only to see our ball disappear into the woods because we didn’t make it through? Unless you have a single digit handicap, you probably have much less than 50% success with that shot. So why do we cut corners? Our minds are naturally conditioned to seek the easiest way to do something. We need to work hard to not only make our bodies stronger but our minds as well. I learned how to do that from my parents but it is never too late to learn. Just to be clear, I am not implying that you should continue a workout if you feel pain as you may have an injury. What I am saying is that the chances of getting injured are less if you work on your mind to do the proper steps to prepare for a workout, to do the reasonable workout for where you stand in your conditioning program, and to not take on more than your body can handle. Use your mind so that you can succeed, finish what you start, and at 110% effort. Following my own advice I feel that I improve quicker and feel stronger.
Comments
Post a Comment