The limit does not exist.
For the last 4 months, I’ve been trying to train for 20 hours a week.
I got a personal trainer to check in on me every Friday.
I meticulously tracked my training each day.
I prioritised my recovery efforts to make sure the increase in training would not hurt me.
And I did pretty well.
I haven’t calculated my average, but I’d say it was somewhere around the 15/16/17 hour mark.
I got a few 18.5 hour weeks and about three 19 hour weeks but I couldn’t seem to crack the 20 hour mark.
Maybe, I thought, 20 hours is just too much for someone.
Maybe, ‘less’ is healthier and more ‘sustainable’.
Then I get to week 21 and the universe sent me reality check in the form of a youtube video that appeared in my feed.
‘It’s Kobe and he has a message for you’
My world was changed in 16 seconds.
I then got 6.5 hours of training in that day.
I spent the next few days considering the implications of what had just happened and what this now meant for cycle-2-physical-challenge.
What if I can actually do this?
What does this mean for me?
For my schedule?
For every other limit I put on myself.
The following week I clocked 30 hours of training.
THIRTY.
Not 18.5. Not 20. Not 25.
30.
If you’d asked me at any point in time if this was possible, I would have said no.
And so now that I know 30 can be done, I have set my sights set on 36.
I know I said there were no limits, but I’m ok with this next one being it for a while.
And before the internet police come for me, a lot of people train 36 hours a week.
Kobe did.
Dancers, swimmers and Olympians do.
It’s quite acceptable to train 6 hours a day, 6 days a week.
It is reasonable to allow your body move for 6 hours when it has been completely stationery for 16 hours.
So thank you Kobe, and YouTube algo for helping me level up in such an epic and amazing way. The boundaries of my limitations (and my potential) have been expanded forevermore.
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So what did I learn from this experience?
1. The limit does not exist.
I’m sure that technically it does, but there’s probably no chance you’ll ever reach it so you don’t need to worry about it.
2. If you’ve reached a plateau or can’t imagine going any further than you have already – look for someone who has already done it.
There is a great quote from Rodney Mullen (another iconic, exceptional and revolutionary athlete) in his MUST WATCH interview with Tom Bilyeu that I love and appreciate so much more now.
“Rarely is it a question of talent or technique at those levels. It’s just one of belief and the concomitant will to kind of do something that either no one’s done before, or even more, I think, to crack open the barriers that people consider impossible or un-doable.” - Rodney Mullen
You can apply that to any craft, any discipline, and to both personal and collective contexts.
3. The upper limit problem is a real thing
Gay Hendricks wrote a whole book on the upper limit problem, and it’s definitely something I watch out for as I start to approach any of mine.
A ‘lite’ version of this a different kind of self-sabotage, which I think is rooted in fear.
Fear of what’s over the ledge that you’re just about to reach. What comes next?
Fear of losing yourself. A kind of pre-emptive grief as you start to long for the person that you are and have been, in anticipation of reaching this new level and becoming someone ‘else’.
For some of us, the fear of change is actually an unacknowledged fear and sadness of losing the current version of yourself.
The solution for me is to love and appreciate all versions of myself, and if I start to feel that sadness emerging, I make a pointed effort to appreciate myself RIGHT THEN AND THERE, and clearly acknowledge that new Linda is not better, just different, and that I am grateful for all versions of me.
The wild paradox is that the earlier versions of you are the ones that were the bravest, the strongest, and the most hopeful. They made the hard decisions. Survived all the shit.
They overcame the hardest challenges, with the least amount of support, experience and the crudest tools available.
They sacrificed themselves so that you could become the person that you are today, and you wouldn’t be where you are today without them.
Appreciate the current version of yourself in the present moment, in the exact state you’re in, because one day you won’t be able to. And that’s when you’ll be sad because you’ll wish you had been kinder to that version of yourself that wanted things to be easier for future you.
And then, when you’ve made peace with your older self, be brave and:
Become who you’re afraid to be. – Carl Jung
This fear of the unknown - what comes next?/I don’t know who I am after I reach this point – would keep me at 19 hours, and then let me go no further.
I’d get to 19 hours and then I’d stop.
I’d take it easy. I’d be tired. I’d accept any excuse I could think of so that I wouldn’t get to the edge of the known.
So when you start to approach your own upper limits, PAY ATTENTION. Something is guaranteed to come up, so watch out for it and be ready to disarm it as soon as you spot it.
4. One measure of growth
One measure of growth could be that your previous maximum, has now become your baseline minimum.
Levels that you once aspired to reach, have now become your minimum standards.
And when you look at your to do list for the week, you don’t hope you’ll get there, you just know that you will, because as Goggins says: “this is what we do now”.
Linda ✌🏻
P.S *Go see a doctor before you change anything in your exercise routine and don’t do anything stupid*