Sheri’s Rants #4

A Meditation on Moving Around

Yes, yes, it’s snowing on our blog site!  That’s what happens when my web developers (Snowdog Web in Whitefish MT) leave me to my own devices.  I make it snow on my blog.  In any case, that’s only going on for another week or two.  I’m enjoying it.

Where I live, we don’t have snow often.  It snows once in a great while and leaves in a hurry.  Today, it looks like this:

It’s warm and perfect out, and yes, that’s a flowering cactus.

I get outside to exercise daily.  When I lived in cold snowy climates, I spent much of my workout time on gym machines, watching the clock and my heartrate, and relying on endorphins to feel good.  Now, I get outside and I giggle and laugh and think and process and invent stuff and plus I get to hang out with these guys:

Mangas

This crew makes for great exercise partners.  They don’t talk much, they keep up, and they do whatever I say.  Mostly.

Seb and BabyDoll

Mangas, there on the left, was locked up for the first 8 months of his life in a little cage outdoors and virtually ignored because everytime his peeps let him out he ran and freaked out, and they didn’t like that.  I took him home, and now he gets to run around all the time and is a perfect hiking companion.  Once Seb and BabyDoll set him straight about the rules.  Like no pooping on the trail.  That’s a big one.

When I’m in the gym, it’s down to business lifting heavy stuff and putting it back down in a safe way that builds my body and keeps me functioning.  I love lifting.  I love it as much as my hiking and yoga.  When I think I don’t want to move around, all I have to do is show up and start.  Within a few minutes I’m stoked to be alive.  (In the gym, I hang out with 2-legged dogs.  Like Bobby.  I’ll introduce you to him sometime, he’s a character.)

Years ago I was getting ready to compete in a physique show and my coach had me on two 40 minute cardios per day, every day.  It was freaking hard sometimes.  This one day, I didn’t have an ounce of energy left for my second cardio – so drained I could have cried, and there was a blizzard going on and I didn’t want to drive the miles to the gym.  First I threw myself onto the couch rather dramatically and whined.  Then I thought about my goals.  I thought about how quiet my coach would get when I’d report a slip in my adherence (I dreaded his silence;  I’d SQUIRM).  I said, well – this ONE time I’ll push it.  So I gave myself this pep talk, went upstairs to a spare room, pushed all the furniture out of the way, turned the stereo on LOUD and strapped on my HR monitor.  I threw myself around, did lunges and pushups and danced in every way conceivable for the full 40 minutes and I made it.  The next day, my body had handed over that 2 lbs I’d been working for weeks on dropping.  I knew, right then, it was because of the EFFORT – the INTENT – the decision not to give up on me – rather than the actual exercise.  It was that I made the decision to go that extra inch, no matter what.  That lesson has stayed with me a long, long time.  I do it in all areas of my life.

What am I yammering on about?  Love what you do, show up, and go that extra inch.

CIAO!!

HAVE FUN,

Sheri Lynn