Happy Sunday Everyone:
Bragging alert is in effect. Most of these thoughts come from me being a moron, but today….I get to brag, meathead style.
When Thomas Marckwardt (13) decides he wants to accomplish something, it’s nothing short of amazing to watch his singular focus on what he wants, including having his parents (i.e. me) buy him things. Thomas decided he wants to get strong, he wants to start working out with weights. Truth be told, 2 places I don’t mind spending money is education and health. So for 3 weeks, all I hear about, see about, talk about, is weight sets. I finally crumbled in a moment of weakness and told him we would go to the gym store and check things out with no promises of walking out with weights….we were just “looking”…..$1800 later, we now have Arnolds Gym in our garage. Full cage, more weights than any of us can lift, he’s fired up.
After the weight set gets delivered, and built (not my strong point), Thomas says to me “dad, do you think you can bench press with the “plates?”. He’s talking like this is a very big deal to him, like he would be blown away if I could, and I’d be a worthless turd if I couldn’t. I didn’t know what “the plates” were, turns out they were the big plates, 45lb. So bar and plates is 135lbs. I told him I had absolutely no idea as I hadn’t done a bench press in 15 years (maybe longer). I come home from work and he’s waiting for me, “dad, let’s see if you can do the plates”. We go out in the garage, put the plates on. I truly have no idea what to expect. He’s spotting me and I proceed to do the press 15 times. He then gets his buddy to come over and watch, I do another set 20 times, then my neighbor comes over, we put on 185, I do it 10 times, then we put on 235, I do it two times. Thomas is in utter disbelief at what I’m doing. Quite frankly, as I stated above, I’m feeling pretty freaking cool myself….I’ve never had anyone stop me on the street and say “wow man, you must work out”, but I’m feeling strong!!
So why am I telling you this story? A few of you who actually read these might recall I started a push up challenge at the beginning of the year, doing a push up for every day of the year, so today we are on 215. Doesn’t have to be done at one time, just needs to be done by end of day. This push challenge is the single reason I can do what I did on the bench press. I’ve hated this challenge many times. Waking up every morning the first thing that comes into my head is the #, and it seems so stupid. Then something like this happens and its cause for reflection. It’s the point of not truly understanding what you’re doing for yourself at the time. I had no idea until I was with Thomas that night on what the results could look like.
My personal take away after thinking through this:
* accountability is everything. Kevin/John/Brad/Brett and I are all in this together. Daily texts confirming when it’s done is the only reason I’m still doing it.
* as much self-loathing as we all put ourselves through, a bit of self-reflection on doing some good things and recognizing them is needed, healthy, and good.
* realizing how one activity affects another is important. I swear this to be true, I hated doing the pushups until the bench press, now I look forward to them knowing what they’re doing to me and for me. Whether it’s cold calling, speaking in public, whatever, getting out of the comfort zone and reflecting on it is important. My ceiling is getting higher.
* There is no greater joy than impressing your kid.
Have a great Sunday!!