Limitations
This was originally posted at Everyday Paleo, minus a couple of videos.
The vast majority of your success in this health and fitness endeavor will be determined by your head. If you begin with a head full of inhibitions, you will needlessly pre-obstruct your path. Age and injury are the examples I will use here, but we could just as easily be discussing an inability to visualize success due to having a large amount of weight to lose, severely deficient mobility, etc. Let’s get on with the proof.
The three ladies in the pictures and videos below all came to me in fairly typical shape for their respective ages, and all had very modest goals in mind. They just wanted to lose a few pounds and feel a little better. Like many good trainers, I guess I’m not a good listener when it comes to these things.
Debbie is 55 years old. She has always been active, but she was not in the shape she wanted to be in when she came to our gym. When I explained the workouts in the beginning of our group classes, Debbie was always one of the people that would let out a groan in anticipation of the agony she foresaw in her immediate future. Like most people, her sights were set much lower than her actual physical limits. This is what she looked like about a year ago:
Next we have Cheryl. Cheryl was 53 years old (she just turned 54) and suffered from low back pain for more than 10 years. Cortisone shots, physical therapy, and multiple meds didn’t help. If you would like to hear it in her words (including her description of our first meeting), she wrote about her situation in the comments of this post.
Finally, Deb (not to be confused with Debbie) came to me at age 50 and she was a mess. She was taking a lot of medications, she could hardly climb her stairs in her house, she had no energy, and she felt like she was on her way to an early grave.
Now for the results.
Debbie looks like this now:
Her current strength stats look like this:
Back Squat – 145 lbs
Shoulder Press – 67.5 lbs
Deadlift – 200 lbs
Power Clean – 100 lbs
Bench Press – 87.5 lbs
Here’s a sample of her skills. Remember, she’s 55 years old.
Cheryl was convinced she would always be hindered by her back pain. Here are her current strength numbers:
Back Squat – 145 lbs
Shoulder Press – 75 lbs
Deadlift – 185 lbs
Power Clean – 90 lbs
Bench Press – 95 lbs
Does this look like a 54 year old lady with a bulging disc?
Deb is a brand new person all together. Here is her testimonial and a picture of her new body. (And Debbie’s is just below Deb’s.) Her current strength stats look like this:
Back Squat – 190 lbs
Shoulder Press – 85 lbs
Deadlift – 200 lbs
Power Clean – 110 lbs
Bench Press – 117.5 lbs
Deb, who was losing her battle with her stairs, looks like this in the gym these days:
*Deb’s set-up isn’t perfect on that deadlift, but it’s still an impressive lift.
Okay, so I didn’t post this to brag about my training skills because you probably don’t live anywhere near my gym, and in reality I didn’t do any of the hard work anyway. I felt you needed to see this so that you might tell your inhibitions to go to hell. Do you think any of these ladies expected to end up with these results? On the contrary, they were all quite convinced of all the things they could not do. Nearly everything I threw at them sounded impossible and insane. Please understand that I’m trying to get you to reevaluate your goals and ditch some assumed limitation, but I’m not advocating insanity in the gym. You may not be ready for some of the exercises in the videos above, but that doesn’t mean you never will be.
Look, you are reading this now, which means you probably want more from your body. All I’m asking is that you shut off your head and let your body decide how far you will go. The picture in your mind of the perfect you is probably a far cry from what you are truly capable of achieving. Stop blocking your own path and who knows where you might end up.
Age and injury Jason?!
Your timing is impeccable.
I am proof as of lately knowing your limits. But conversely, if you don’t push yourself as these ladies did, and still do, HOW ARE YOU GOING TO KNOW WHAT YOU CAN DO??
I pushed myself, perhaps a little hard and pulled a hamstring,…. painful, yes. But it has NOT beaten me down. This is the human body we’re talking about, and ANYONE young or old can pull a muscle and hurt themselves,….you hurt, you heal, and then you keep going.
If you stop, you end up like Deb was before she started, fully medicated to numb the pain of deteriorating muscles. Your body and it’s muscles NEED to be used and worked, otherwise you end up in a wheelchair looking like the folks I serve in an assisted living facility.
It’s killing me mentally to NOT go to the gym now, but I have to know my limits, and listen to my body, and it says “relax, and recover”. Being physically fit at this time in my life (I’m 52 by the way) is become a way of life for me, I need it like I need basic necessities like food, shelter and water. Will I be back in the gym, and physically active in my life? You’d better believe it. Nothing’s stopping me now, this injury is just a minor setback.
Age should NEVER be the reason to not exercise,….EVER!
Impressive.. I love stories like these. Congrats ladies and congrats Coach!! Thanks for sharing!
Thank you for sharing! I am 51, started doing Crossfit about four months ago, and I believe it is saving my life! I was up over 200# ( on a 5″5″ frame), depressed, hormonal, achy all the time. I’m so grateful I stumbled on Crossfit, and the emphasis on healthy LIVING! I feel better than I have in 10 or 15 years. I’m still dialing in my nutrition, but I needed this nudge to stop weighing myself. Thanks. I will be visiting this site again.
So, this is amazing! Any advice for those with a limited budget who can’t afford to join gyms?
Walk, sprint short distances, climb stairs…
Unfortunately, the most important thing you can do is lift heavy weights with full-body compound movements, but that will take some instruction. If you can find a good trainer maybe you can hire them to just teach you to squat, deadlift, and press. Then all you would need are some cheap weights from Craig’s List.
Thank-you. Kyle at http://aptphysicaltraining.blogspot.com/ turned me on to this post and your site. I deeply appreciate that you realize how much of training is in the head, and when one is a woman and getting messages that say, ; “be weak, skinny and pretty’ all the time it can be misleading to one’s own sense of self and strength. I hope to blast past the stereotypes of strong women and kick some 40-something ass in the process.
Wow! I’m so inspired. I’m trying to get fit on my own. I definitely wallow in the “I can’t do this” outlook. All four of you have given me a view of what happens when you saw “I CAN do this.” Having a trainer probably doesn’t hurt
Thanks to all of you.
I taught myself how to squat, deadlift, bench press, overhead press and power clean with Mark Rippetoe’s Starting Strength (http://www.aasgaardco.com/store/store.php?crn=199&rn=312&action=show_detail) plus a Flip camera so I could see my form.
Costs: Cost of book ($30? I can’t remember)
Gym Membership (luckily I found a $30/month one)
Camera – free – I borrowed from a friend.
Plus: a number of hours of studying other people’s form (folks post their videos online and get help): Free
Many folks have done this without a coach or a trainer.
Awesome ideas. Thanks!
Wow. These ladies rock
I’m only 24, but I’ve had two back injuries (pulled a muscle in back and had pain from sciatic nerve, then less than a year later I fell down some public stairs and a disc popped out of place) and now that I’m working out regularly I’ve had no complaints from my back. I can feel those muscles strengthening and I can’t wait until I reach the point where I feel like I should!
Thanks for this great post!