Yield…please!

Thursday, November 11th, 2010

I am going to have to ‘fess some things up to you just to give you an idea of where I am coming from today:  1) I am an offensive driver (not OHfensive, but Awwfensive–get it straight;) 2) I drive at all times with the mindset of getting from point A to point B–no fiddling around and 3) I am a stickler about the rules of the road.  KNOW what they are.  And I need to give you one more piece of info to make this all come together…I live in Massachusets.  So to say being in the car with me is an adventure in and of itself is an understatement.  For Heaven’s sake, my car has a name.  And better yet, it’s name is Whippy.  Are you hearing me?

Every week day I drive my kids to school–who by the way note the difference between the way I drive and my husband drives with comments like, “We’re never late with mama” and “Are you gonna take that from him?”  Shame…clearly some unlearning I need to do there.;)  But we have perfected the school route to eliminate as many rotaries, merges, long stretches of road that can be abused by *really* slow people, long lights and places of confusion as possible.  Driving them now is much less painful than before when we had to go through 2 rotaries. 

I have no idea where you live so I am not sure if you even know what a rotary is, but some places call them round abouts or traffic circles whereas I call them the dumbest thing ever invented in driving history.  The concept:  A big circle that people enter into to keep the flow of traffic moving in an intersection that calls for a good amount of turns.  The rules:  The people *continuing* the rotary have the right of way and those entering the rotary must “yield”.   The way it used to go down: barrel into a rotary full steam ahead and hope and pray you don’t hit anyone and get out the same way you got in.  Somehow there has been enough accidents and signage in MA to make that lunacy stop.  Now, the new lunacy:  treat the yield sign as a stop sign and come to a complete stop whether there is someone in the rotary or not and jack up all the traffic behind you because you wait for all the traffic in the state of MA to get IN to the rotary before you even *think* of hopping in.  OY VEY!  Not an adequate solution people.  The best thing to do was to know what yield means and who has the right of way.  If you respect those laws then the flow would be normal and natural.  When you choose to ignore the traffic rules, there is always someone there–not saying me (whistling right now and clearing throat) to remind you that you have zero business being on the road.

YIELD: When you see a yield sign you are to slow down and be PREPARED to stop but stopping MAY NOT be necessary.  This means as you come to the rotary you note if anyone is currently in it.  If they are not, then you do not have to stop, you may just continue on as you normally were and head on to your destination.  If there is someone then you YIELD to them–but just them.  You do not need to lie down and play dead for the rest of the time in the car and wait for cars that may be in NH to enter the rotary.  We are such an ALL or NONE society!  Very little YIN and YANG!

Why do I take time to point this out to you?  Am I really trying to turn this blog into a driving blog?  Umm no.  But what a metaphor driving provides for the follies of life!  Let’s see how this applies:

1. You want a goal–no wait…you NEED a goal–so you schedule a race/meet/event to keep you motivated.  However, you schedule it close to your sister’s wedding because you think that it will provide the motivation necessary to keep you looking good for the wedding.  You neglect to think about the fact that you are the maid of honor and will be planning for this like a psycho.  Oh, and did I mention that your thesis will be due that month, too and your pregnant.   All is well in the beginning but do I even need to say where this goes by the time the event comes around?  You are going to have to YIELD to this situation.  Who or what has the right of way because you cannot barrel into this full steam ahead and be a winner?  Instead of choosing, actually STOP acting as if you are superwoman by facing that fact that you can only do one or two of these well and the rest are just coming along for the ride. 
2. You desire an outcome that may not be natural to your physique.  Let’s use running as an example.  You are built for marathons and endurance type events but you want to be a sprinter.  You are not super slow on a short distance, but you are not fast either so what you desire requires work and perseverance.  This means that you are going to have to spend some time working on speed, running only short distances and strengthening your body.  Halfway through all this you plan a marathon because you “just can’t give up running long distances.”  You understand it’s going to slow you down from achieving your goal and you are good with that–kinda.  Two months later you run the marathon and you do ok.  Not bad–ok.  In fact, if you had stayed focused on just the marathon you would have been in the top percentile.  Suddenly, you are done with sprinting and focusing only on marathons…until you are at a track meet.  Do you see where this is going?  You need to YIELD to your true wants and desires because right now, you keep coming to a STOP and you’re incurring a tremendous amount of frustration because you cannot make a decision.  You cannot be both and be the best at both, so choose one!  We, as women, do this ALL the time.  I mean ALL the time.  We let every want that we have, have the right of way in our lives and we go back and forth and back and forth everyday and it gets old after a while.
3. Last scenario I will mention today because honestly, I could go on forever…  You used to be a great “fill in the blank”.  You can no longer focus on that because life has moved on and you have a different life now.  You may have children now, a new job, a sick relative what have you.  You do not need to give up whatever it is you were good at but it just is not the number one thing anymore–or at least not right now.  However, you still insist on competing in events to keep your foot in the game and to keep you motivated.  When the time comes around you either do really poorly or you don’t do it at all.   Now, instead of it motivating you, it condemns you day in and day out.  It screams failure to you.  Less than.  Suck.  Whatever word you like to use to abuse yourself, put it in there.  This is THE most counterproductive thing I see people doing all the time.  You need to YIELD to the fact that at this moment this is not a priority.  You must *allow* the other traffic in your life to have the right of way until you yourself are finally back in the rotary with the right of way.  Too much time is wasted in our lives chasing our glory days because we are too afraid or just plain resistant to making new ones! 

Ok…I’m done.  This started out a simple post and clearly I need therapy.  I need to move from MA and get away from all rotaries and I need to hide under my couch from folks who do not understand the art of yielding. 

All jokes aside, what I want for you more than I want anything is to learn how to listen to your inner self and yield to it.  Stop letting the world dictate your life.  You only want those things when you are there that day in front of it.  The rest of the time, you are yielding to your true wants and desires.  Stand strong and stay focused.  Learn to love yourself and the track you’re on enough that when someone else or something else presents you something different you do not cave and make that your new goal.  In the mean time, do not stop at a yield sign unless you need to yield or I will drive over you and wave while doing so.  Tootles!

Stop Running Scared

Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010

Last week I asked how much it takes to effectuate change.  In that post I espoused on how sometimes we are scared to trust that the plan in place will work – and even more-so we are scared to do the bare minimum to trigger that change, thinking we need to move from one extreme to the other. 

 This week I’m piggy backing off that topic and going to touch upon those who are scared to give up what they are doing and try something new.  For me, this came in when Jodi and I were having that conversation where she said to just add one more day of lifting to my program to see if that would trigger the change I wanted.  I had been lifting twice/week and doing two plyo/agility/speed workouts (along with cardio and yoga).  Thus, my follow up question to Jodi was, if I lift three days, should I keep in the two functional sessions?  She hesitated and structured her response in a way that let me know I did not have to, but if I absolutely wanted to, I had to make sure at least one was more cardio in nature. 

 I walked away from the conversation knowing that I would be lifting three times and getting in, at a minimum, one day of plyos with the hopes of two.  However, I haven’t dropped that type of training down to once/week in um…..the past 3-4 years!  Making this change really scared me.  With that being said, I knew to trust in the plan Jodi and I put in place.  Further, if I really wanted to, I would make my two functional sessions work.   

 Thankfully I was able to stop being scared and move forward with the plan as decided – and have been ok with only getting one functional in per week for the past two weeks.  Try as I might, work has kept me uber busy and I just couldn’t get the second in.  That is not to say I won’t keep pushing to make it happen – but I know that extra session is just a bonus. 

 I learned, however, that the sky did not fall when I changed up the structure of my training, despite my fear.  However, I know this many people are unable to do the same.  So often we either don’t want to admit that what we are currently doing is not working, so we refuse to change (wait, isn’t that the definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result); or we are simply scared to make the change simply because we are afraid to try and fail.  Whatever the reason is, it is not a fun place to be.  So here comes my challenge for this week….

 Last week I challenged you to trust in the process, regardless if it was with respect to an athletic/physique goal or some other goal.  This week I challenge you to look at what part of the process you wrote off and stop writing it off.  I am sure there is something – not taking the rest day you have been prescribed, not wanting to eat as much as your nutrition calls for, wanting to jump from point A to Z without stopping off at the steps in between, simply refusing to do X, Y, or Z because you have a good reason which is really just an excuse, or whatever else other process you are not entirely adhering too.    Whatever your something is – stop running scared and move forward toward you goal!

What Does it Take to Effectuate Change?

Tuesday, October 26th, 2010

What does it take to effectuate change?  What must you do to cause a change?  This is really the crux of any athlete’s goals be it weight loss, weight gain, increased speed, longer distance running, faster swim….you name it.  What we really seek is a change. 

 If a change is what we seek, what must we do make it happen?  I had been mulling that over for quite some time when I struck up a conversation with Jodi.  We were discussing my current goal and how I felt like I did not know what to do to reach it.  She sat for a minute and then simply said, add another day of lifting.  That was it – one additional day. 

 I responded with a million “shouldn’t I also do X” or “should I add on Y” and finally, “is that all?”  This is when she told me something I already knew, but somehow had forgotten.  Always start with less and add on more.  Why would I go from zero to sixty without first stopping at ten, twenty, thirty and so on?  First of all, if I jump all the way to sixty, when I plateau, I will have nowhere else to go.  Second of all, who wants to jump from zero to sixty?

 This conversation, so simply and fast, really resonated with me.  I’ve worked with Jodi for years now, on both diet and training, and have always slowly increased or decreased my activity depending on the desired goal.  But I must admit, all of those times I was listening to her advice and following her plan.  Now that I’ve been putting together my own nutrition/training I forgot the beauty of incrementally increasing/decreasing.  I became scared that if I did not go to the extreme, I wouldn’t get where I need to be. 

 How many of you have fallen prey to this fear?  You might be the marathon runner who increased her mileage too fast only to suffer an injury or burn out and have to take time off.  You might be the dieter who restricted too much to fast only to either lose all energy at an important moment in a game/tournament or to blow it and eat too much when you have your cheat meal.  Or you might by trying to get stronger, lift too much too often and hit a wall.  Whatever yours was, I know you have been there. 

 The reason I wanted to push it to the extreme was fear that if I did not, I would not reach my goal.  Lack of trust in the process that has worked for me for many, many, years.  It took someone else to remind me of that fact.  It then took the courage to set aside my fear and trust in the process.  I know I don’t have to tell you that the process worked and worked like a charm.  We all know that it does.  But having the courage to trust the process is where the work really lies. 

 Be it your athletic/physique goal or any other aspect in your life, I challenge all of you to trust in the process.  Slow down, move intentionally step by step and trust!