The other week, part of my workout involved several rounds of rowing sprints - rowing hard, then kicking up into a handstand. I had less than two minutes for each of the rowing segments ... whatever the seconds marked off after the first minute were, was the amount of time I had to hold the handstand. So if my row took 1.52, then I would need to hold the handstand 52 seconds. As part of the workout, I had 30 seconds to get myself up into the handstand from the time I got off the rower. A month or so back, I would probably need the 30 seconds to either (A) get over the mental fear of committing hands to ground or (B) I would need multiple tries to get up. After a stern talking to myself (which went something along the lines of, "stop thinking about it ... hands flat, foot to the wall and commit ..." I kicked every one of my handstands first time. Holding in position has never been the issue ... just getting there. I took 30 seconds I had, to get my breath back under control.
At the end of that session, my coach had a talk with me about the need to get comfortable being uncomfortable. His point was that I just need to transition to the next thing, even when it is not physically comfortable for me.
This brings me to the subject of comfort zones. Our best growth occurs when we push outside of them. Sometimes it is a mental comfort zone (such as me overcoming my fear of crashing down and injuring myself) and sometimes it is physical ... where we think we can't do another thing because we are sucking air! If we keep pushing through ... one thought ... one choice ... one rep ... one step at a time, we will win the moment and win the day!
Sometimes, we need those people in our lives who keep pushing us when we think we have stretched as far as we can. Commit to the stretch and get comfortable with discomfort!
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