That feeling of hitting a new benchmark is great, but it never lasts.
I have been doing sets of 28 pushups for most of this year, from about April to August. I realized that I had gotten in a rut and I decided to increase my frequency from working out 2 out of every 3 days to working out every day at the start of September. At the start of October I increased all my rep counts by 10%, which put my pushups to 31 per set.
For so long I recall distinctly the idea in my head that 30 pushups a set is the amount a strong person would do. When I got there, I thought, I would finally be big and strong and powerful. That first set of 31 felt great, and there was a rush of triumph and a sense of real progress. Two days later I went back to the gym and did 31 again, and my brain told me that seriously strong people do 40 pushups. Maybe someday I would get there, but for now, I am not strong.
Talk about moving the goalposts! I barely got 2 days of satisfaction and exhilaration at my progress and I was back to striving for another completely arbitrary goal.
This is just the way I am it would seem. No matter the strength, no matter the size, I feel skinny. I see muscular men out in the world and wish I had arms like they do. Hell, I probably do have arms like many of them, but I just can't see it.
I knew all of this ahead of time. This isn't the first time I have noted that my self perception doesn't change with my body, and my ideal appearance is unobtainable. What surprised me was just how *fast* that transformation from celebration to inadequacy happened. I figured I would get at least a couple of weeks of good feelings!
Working out is good for me though. I need exercise and this is the only regimen that has ever stuck. I am sure that working out hard has improved my mood and longevity, even though those changes are things I can't see or measure. Given that, I might as well think of my neverending, unquenchable need for progress as a useful tool for getting me into the gym day after day. It is foolish and puts my irrationality front and centre, but it does make my life better, so I might as well run with it.
No comments:
Post a Comment