BodyRock Workout #51: Lower Body Blast with Kettlebell
Hi Team,
This is Amanda, and she is making her debut with us in today’s Lower Body Blast.
I want to share this story about my first (and last) cross-country race.
When I was 15, I joined the school Cross-Country team. Ahead of my first race, I went to walk the course the day before the event. The race was going to be held at a picturesque conservation area, and wind it’s way through a lightly forested hiking trail.
As I strode through the path set for the race, I remember laying down my plans for victory. I marked out a large tree that partially overhung the race route as to when I would start to sprint and pull away from the pack to victory. Feeling confident that my brief planning and plotting had conferred a profound advantage, I went to bed that night feeling assured that if I didn’t win outright, I would at least place in the top three.
The next day I arrived back at the conservation area for the race. Unlike the solitude of the day before, there were hundreds of kids everywhere, all pinned with race numbers. This wasn’t going to be a race, it was going to be a stampede. I didn’t have long to wonder about anything, this was my first ever race, and I had no idea what the hell was going on. Kids started massing towards the starting line, every single one of them steely eyed and looking more determined than I felt. I followed this gaggle of kids to the field just off of the parking area. Why were we here, when the path that I walked through the Forrest was several hundred yards away? Then suddenly someone fired a gun and we were off, a hundred sets of arms and legs pumping and scampering through the shin high grass, every blade of which seemed to be trying to slow me down – 200 yards from where I thought the race started, and everyone already in a flat out sprint.
By the time I hit the entrance to the Forrest, I had long abandoned any thoughts of winning. I was just trying to breathe and keep from shitting my shorts. I don’t remember the tree that I marked to signal when I was going to turn on the jets and glide to victory. By then I was just one of several dozen kids in the back of the pack just trying to finish without dying. I remember the realization of, ‘wow, that really didn’t go the way I thought it would’, being one of my last thoughts before my body diverted all resources into keeping my flailing legs pumping.
I didn’t quit, and when I finally crossed the finish line and threw myself down in a gasping, dry heaving, asthmatic heap I was completely spent, and had gone so far beyond what I had ever believed I was capable of that my head spun. I was no where near the top of the field, and the experience gave me instantaneous clarity that running Cross-Country wasn’t something I was naturally gifted at. If I wanted to run, I was going to have to work at it.
Most of the time in life our plans don’t survive their first brush with reality. That includes your fitness. And my fitness. And pretty much everyones fitness. Before I started that race, I needed a Coach that would have prepared me, that could have got me to that finish line faster by helping me realize that the only true competition that day was taking place internally, between me and that voice that we all have inside that tells us to quit.
If you’ve tried and failed, if you’ve tried and quit, if you haven’t been assed to try in years, sometimes my friend, progress isn’t measured in predictable outcomes. Could you be leaner, fitter, faster at (how old are you now?)… yes. So could we all. We could all be further along. The real question is, will you finish the race, or are your racing, striving, fighting for days over?
If you’ve f@cked up your fitness in the past, and still have some fight in you, I’m inviting you to join us for our daily BodyRock Workout on BodyRockPlus.com. There is nothing online that feels (or looks) like one of our classes – our Coaches train with you – every drop of sweat is real, and it really does feel like they are right there with you. Each workout is 15-20 minutes of HIIT / Strength which is designed for rapid fat loss and overall athletic conditioning. This is what we are doing. This is a new daily series, and it’s the best workout series I’ve shot and produced in the last 15 years. I hope you have a few races left in you.
See you at the start line. And remember,
It’s not how fast you run, it’s who you run with that makes the difference.
Freddy.
28 September 2022 at 21:55