How much are you willing to suffer?

I got on the exercise bike this morning and, from the first pedal stroke, I knew I was in trouble. My lower body workout was delayed yesterday by an audition I attended. So I worked out late in the day and I worked out pretty intensely. So today my legs are sore. On the bike, I was already in pain at resistance level three and my workout takes me to level eight. Honestly, I didn't know if my muscles would keep functioning at that level, but the bigger question was whether I could endure that much pain for twenty minutes.

Pain is an interesting thing. Our tendency in life is to avoid it. Our society really pushes us hard to take the easy way in everything, the painless way. But, when you think about it, the best things in life come with a cost. An effort is required. Some pain is necessary. I think the best philosophy is to avoid "needless pain" or, to put it another way, pain that doesn't lead to any kind of pleasure. The odd truth is, when I'm working out, I like it to hurt. That's how I can tell I'm accomplishing something.

But today was another matter. I kept pushing, for one minute and then another and then another. I kept waiting for the burn to lessen, but it didn't through the first ten minutes. I hit the fourth interval, the one where I hit resistance level eight at the end, and I knew I could finish. At level eight, I just closed my eyes and counted my breaths (you can't do that on a real bike!) and tried to relax into the effort. On the weekends, I do a longer cooldown, so I dropped the resistance level to three and just pedaled for about twenty minutes.

So, I get to chalk up another small victory, mind over muscle, determination over pain. I'm finding that the Body for Life Challenge is made up of moments like that, moments where you reach for your limits and find that there's more powerful stuff inside you than you thought.

Today is the day we were going to do our eight week pictures, but it's going to be next Sunday instead. So instead of two thirds of the way through, which we are today, the pictures will show us three fourths of the way through. That's one reason to use the number twelve in your workouts, as in twelve reps, twelve minutes, twelve days, or twelve weeks. It can be divided into either thirds, fourths or halves, so you always have a milestone handy (i.e., I'm halfway there, a third of the way there, three fourths of the way there) which can make the difference when your inner voice is telling you that you can't make it.

I'm thinking about doing a light upper body workout today. With all the bike time and the walking that I've been doing, my lower body seems to be a little ahead of my upper. Other than that, I'm trying to cut down on breads (they've been creeping into my diet lately) and go easy on the bad foods on my off day. I want to have it all going right for the photo shoot next week.