A couple of days ago I was at wrestling practice. I have been working with some high level athletes after being away from competition for a while so I was a little timid. My biggest concern was how my body would hold up.

During a live match I got thrown hard. I landed hard and I layed there for a second and thought about what had just happened to me. I realized that I wasn’t hurt and the landing didn’t hurt as much I had thought it would.

I continued wrestling and a short time later I got tossed on my head again. This time it didn’t phase me. I got back up again, made some adjustments and didn’t get thrown again the rest of the practice.
After practice I was sitting down and I got to thinking about what happened during that workout and what I could take away from it.

That is when I realized just how significant those two crash landings were. Prior to getting thrown I was worried about what it was going to be like when I did get tossed. Would I get hurt? What part of my body would get hurt? How long would I be out for when I did get hurt. I built it up in my mind that getting thrown, which was inevitable, was going to be a terrible experience.

The crazy thing was that it didn’t hurt as bad as I thought and wasn’t nearly as traumatic as I had built it up to be. The second time it didn’t even phase me and after the second time I was able to make some adjustments to keep it from happening again.

On my drive home I thought about how I could relate this lesson to people in their everyday life. Here goes. I think many of us have faced times in our lives when we were feeling a little intimidated by a situation. Perhaps we were timid and afraid to go full blast into a situation because we were worried about what might or might not happen. We hold back because we are afraid that the consequences of committing whole-heartedly may hurt.

For some people, when they do face adversity; like taking a fall for example, they lay there and think about how bad they hurt. Unfortunately, a lot of people will lay there focusing on the pain instead of getting up and going back for more.

On the other hand, if that same person simply took a moment to process what just happened, realized that it really wasn’t that bad, and then got back up and started again, they could then begin to see progress.

It is very possible that they may get tossed around again, but after having already experiencing what it feels like to fall and get back up again, it is more likely that they won’t focus on the pain and will begin to make adjustments so that it doesn’t continue to happen over and over.

I guess the short summary of what I am trying to say is this. We all take a fall now and then. In those moments it is easy to lay there and think about how much it hurt and how much easier it would be to stay down. In those times it is important to get back up and take the chance of getting knocked down again and possibly again. Only when you get back up can you learn from what just happened and what changes we need to make to keep whatever it was from happening again.

When things get tough, we are much better served by looking at what we can learn from the experience rather than focusing on how much we hurt.

Biggest Loser, exercise, goal setting, Matt Hoover, Persistance, workout frustration

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009, 11:37 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.