Lane 8.org

You Can Do It

There are somewhere in the neighborhood of 80-million blogs on the Internet, and growing daily.

There are 221-million results if you Google “Health Blogs”.

What are all these health-blog people trying to say? Please let me summarize for you:

1. Dream Big
2. Get There
3. Stay There

If your goal isn’t impossible, you’re not reaching high enough.

PS. Do your excuses make you stop or make you sick? Mine made me sick. Sick to think that I’m the only one responsible for my actions and I wasn’t doing anything about it, except making excuses.

Excuses be damned.

USA Team Jersey...Priceless

Last night at Gold’s Gym Orlando in the Dr Phillips area, I meet Pleasant Lewis, the owner of several Central Florida Gold’s Gym facilities.

As a 50-year old, I struggle like everyone else, to find time and motivation to exercise.

This is one of life’s big truths.  We all are given the same amount of time. Successful people figure it out, plan for set backs, never give up and they find a million ways to motivate themselves.

And sometimes, if not more often, the thought of, “Is this worth it?”, enters their mind.

Gold’s Gym, Lifestyle Litness, Bally’s, YMCA’s, all struggle too – with finding a way to inspire people to make a lifetime commitment of healthy living.

I proposed to Pleasant that I could help.  We’ll see if “Goliath” has any interest in “David”.

Gym owners have the same challenge as their customers – finding time to do the important things that make a difference.

Be Well. Are You? Will You?

Did you exercise yesterday?

Did you eat mostly healthy food?

Do you plan on doing it again today?

Excellent.

If you answered no to the questions, today’s another day.

If not you, who?  If not today, when?

Are you getting this?  Or is it getting old?

If it’s getting old, so are you.

Start Small and Never Stop

What the?  Keep my goals very small?  Didn’t you say to dream big?

Didn’t you say, “If your goal isn’t impossible, you’re not reaching high enough.”

Exactly.

And maybe the challenge for many people, including you, is that your definition of impossible is inaccurate.

When I started running 11 years ago, my impossible goal wasn’t to run in the Master’s Track & Field World Championships.

It also wasn’t to run one mailbox a day for a week, and then two mailboxes a day the second week and so on.

It was to get started and never stop.

One day at a time.  Get started and never quit.  Never quit, one day at a time – this is what I mean by very small goals.

Do you see the difference?

And on this day was born a child.  In a manger, at the stable. No room at the Inn.  And they called him Emmanuel.

Impossible?

Perhaps nothing is impossible.  Perhaps impossible is nothing.

Lane 8 is a simple website and blog.  Even the first Lane 8 business card was handmade, in five minutes. And  5,000 were printed and taken to Finland.

August, 2009, in Lahti, Finland, the Master’s Track & Field World Championships drew 5,300 athletes from 80 Countries, with the same Olympic spirit as the official Olympic Games.

Many of the Master’s athletes celebrate Christmas, and that little boy everyone calls Emmanuel.

Lane 8 is simply a humble beginning. Not at all unlike a child born in a stable.

Lane 8, Finland, 2009

Merry Christmas from Lane 8.

Handmade t-shirt, Finland

Peace on Earth, good will toward men.

Masters Track

Yes, Masters Track.

What do you do to stay motivated to reach and maintain your health goals?

Master’s athletes are defined as people over 30 years old.

There are other sports that have Masters competitions too.  The thought of trying something completely out of my comfort zone actually seems possible – at a future time, of course.

Why?

Because the whole point of the competition, to me, is simply to find ways to stay motivated.  When things get boring, I get less motivated.

This is a deadly place to be, literally.

Someday. maybe swimming.  Or perhaps I’ll try Filed events, like the Discus, Shot Put, or, heaven forbid, the Pole Vault.

Whatever it takes.  That’s one of the secrets to staying healthier.  I figure everybody knows this, but it never hurts to say important things over and over.

Does it?

When you look in the mirror, do you see what others see?

And I’m not talking about looks.  I’m talking about effort.

And attitude.

Let’s throw in beliefs, values, and habits too.

Yeah, that’s the one, habits.

Do you think when people look at your health habits, they see you as an example or as a warning?

Age old question isn’t it? Why exercise?

What’s your answer?

There will never be a better time than right now to do it. I realize many reading this will disagree that there’s a better day than today.

If so, may I ask this, “Then if it’s not today, when?”

How many more days, weeks, months, years can your answer be, “Not today?”

Have a great day. “Here’s to your health, your goals, your dreams, and, to today!”

Skipping a day of exercise is an easy thing to do.  In fact, it’s actually one of the easiest things to do.  How do I know? Because I did it yesterday.

It was easy.

Just don’t go to the gym.  How hard is that?  It’s not.

However, the intent was to pick up our son at school and head to Gold’s Gym like we commonly do.  The reason I really wanted to go is because I hadn’t been in four days.

Too much time in between workouts does several things:

• Too much rest negates previous efforts
• Too much rest makes us lazy
• Too much rest makes it easier to skip

Skipping a day of exercise is an easy thing to do.  When it comes to taking care of yourself, are you an example or a warning?

Confused?  Yes.

In pain?  Yes.

Why?

That’s what is confusing.  Why is the left foot pain returning?

It’s always something isn’t it?  There’s always something that is in front of us that tempts us to want to stop doing what we know we can’t stop doing.

Always has been.  Always will be. Getting so impatient with this that a cortisone shot is looking very tempting – cortisone is something I swore I wouldn’t do.

Yet my podiatrist and I agreed, in March, that we should try one shot.

Now I’m seriously thinking about a second.  Remember, I swore I’d never do a single shot.  Now I’m thinking about a second. Good luck with your temptations today.