Accentuate the Up

Right before my family left Texas for our 4,000 mile trek to Alaska, I decided to train for and run a half marathon on the local trail just behind my house. To get myself ready for the task, I dedicated three days a week to run training, three days a week to strength training, one day a week to flexibility training, and one glorious day a week to my favorite fitness component--REST. This is basically what my morning calendar looked like for about ten weeks prior to moving, and I was in some pretty solid shape when I left.

But then I sat my solidly-shaped glutes in a car for twelve straight days.
And then I perfected my "rest day" craft for an entire month after that.

(My glutes are still shaped like something, but I don't want to talk about it.)

After venting a little about our moving situation last week, I decided that one of the best things to make this place feel more like home was to establish a new morning fitness routine. Yesterday was the kick-off, because I figured a new week deserves a new start.
(But new starts don't necessarily mean fresh starts, y'all.)
As I struggled through my twenty minute workout, it was hard not to get discouraged. It was even harder not to take it easy. (I am pretty good at resting, after all.) But as I struggled to make my muscles relearn how to bear weight, I remembered something I had been coached on before:

When you are pushing for the top of the exercise, accentuate the up.
In other words, when you are getting ready to do something hard, put in extra effort on the way up to help carry you to the top.

In a workout, what this does is cue all of your muscles correctly so you don't strain yourself as you start to fatigue. Most injuries happen as people get sloppy and lose form. It also keeps you from growing discouraged, because you are focusing on the effort in the middle instead of the distance from the bottom to the top.
What I've come to find is that this extra effort in the middle of the exercise--in the climb--somehow makes getting to the top not seem quite as hard.

This doesn't have to be specific to single exercises, but is true in fitness as a whole.

Most people can't pinpoint the exact moment that they were able to become distance runners--it's a slow build. In my run training, I just started where I was at (a little shy of 3 miles) and tacked on one more mile, then another, and another, and another. Three days of running a week for eight weeks doesn't seem like it should have been enough to add on ten miles to my ability. But I pressed hard through the middle, and it carried me to my goal at the top.
Strength training isn't much different. It's amazing what can happen when you tell yourself to do just one more than last time. *Just one more.* Eventually you realize that adding one more rep isn't challenging enough and you have to add heavier weights. There's no one moment it happened and you were magically strong enough. The effort in the middle carries you to your gains at the top.

And crazier still, this doesn't have to be specific to fitness, but to your life as a whole.

Moving to a new place is always scary for me, because it challenges me to look at my life and see how I can grow. I always have to struggle with the questions of whether or not I will work, where I want to serve in the community and in my church, how I can foster opportunities for my children, how I can carve out quality time for my marriage, how I can build new friendships, how I can experience new things, learn new skills, and how I can make this place feel like my favorite place that we've ever lived. (Because I always want to be striving towards better!) It's a daunting task, to be sure. When I think about all of the things I'm hoping for at the end, it's easy to get discouraged and overwhelmed at how far I have to go.
(And as I unfortunately learned in my last home, being an expert-level rest-er makes it far too easy not to push and just to settle.)

If that mistake has taught me anything, it's this:
We're not supposed to strive. That doesn't mean we're not supposed to grow.

Newsflash, friends:
Growth takes effort.
And form.
And persistence.
And time.

The good news is, if you're working, you're probably growing.
(Unless you're my glutes, in which case the opposite is true. HA!)

And you don't have to do anything crazy to start, aside from *just one more thing.*
Accentuate the up, friends. Put in that extra effort.

We'll see each other at the top.