Today’s workout was pretty cool. It showed me a few things. The workout was a 20 minute AMRAP (as many rounds as possible). You try to complete as much work as possible in the 20 minutes. The movements were handstand push-ups (which I had to scale because I can’t do them yet), pistols (which are one-legged squats, that I also had to scale since I can’t do those), and pull-ups.
The pull-ups were the thing that first made me think to write about this. I figured it out after that I did 90 pull-ups in the 20 minutes. When I think about that number, its amazing that I could do that. When I first started this pursuit of health and fitness back in July of last year I could barely manage 1 pull-up at a time, with 5 being the max before my arms gave out. That alone, shows I’ve come a long way since then. Through this whole process, I’ve really made an effort to stay positive and make sure I acknowledge these successes when they come up, because its far too easy to get discouraged, especially when weight loss is involved as well. So this was a pretty cool success.
After thinking to write about the success, I realized this workout showed me more though. A great lesson in humility as well. As awesome as it feels to have come so far with my pull-ups, as I mentioned above, I had to scale the other parts of the workout because I couldn’t do them. Its important for me to realize, I’ve by no means arrived at the destination of fitness. I still have vast room for improvement. I think this is the mindset we always need to be in though, with our pursuit of health and fitness. We will never truly arrive, so the best we can do is constantly pursue and improve.
Today felt good doing those pull-ups, but I still need a lot of work on them as well. I was able to do 1 semi-handstand push-up before deciding to scale to the easier movement. Who knows, maybe in another 6 months I’ll be able to do those handstand push-ups. I just know I will have to continue to pursue health and fitness and leverage my previous successes to move forward.
-Dr. Mark