Resilience Part II

Below is a guest post from Rosemary, the lifter I mentioned as developing resilience from her consistency. She gives a bit too much credit to her injury recovery to training with me, since before she worked with me regularly she did a lot of work on her own. What I really did was what I do with so many others who are injured or have been weak for most of their lives, I gave her permission to be badarsed. 

For the trainers reading, an important observation is that people who've been injured, or those who are older, will often be afraid of pushing themselves significantly during physical training. They may only have 10% function, pushing themselves might get them more, but if done wrongly might injure them, and they'd rather have 10% function than 0%.

With most workout routines, we only ask, "is it effective?" But the injured or older client or athlete will ask, "is it safe?" It can take time to convince the person that what you're coaching them to do is both safe and effective. 

To get and keep personal training clients we must demonstrate competence, establish trust and rapport. When working with someone with injuries, obviously competence matters - but trust is very important, and part of the programme must be things which make them mentally stronger as well as physically, so that they come to trust in the work and themselves. 

What follows is her writing, she gave it as a speech to over 1,000 students and 100+ teachers at her school. 

Resilience

Today’s reflection concerns resilience, its application and the need to develop our strengths as we live our lives. Within it, I will refer to habits which can be sustained to develop a sense of self fulfilment. In so saying, I affirm that it is necessary to reinforce positive habits to develop the values which allow us to face those things which we feel we can truly not cope with.

The inspiration for my reflection comes from:

The 2^nd book of Timothy 1:7: “For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.”

The words within the verse have a broad application. They encourage us to take stock in ourselves and to develop a true understanding of our self worth. They require us to act on the positives we perceive within ourselves so that we can achieve our goals.

In the world of education, the concept reflects a need to understand the fundamentals of the way we approach our learning and our lives, to focus on the inadequacies that exist there and work steadily to improve, accepting responsibilities for any shortfalls which may exist. In a broader context we can make assessments concerning how we approach our lives.

To illustrate this, I would like to take you on a personal journey, one which I experienced early last year but which is continuing today. Imagine waking, on the first day of your holidays and merely trying to get out of bed. Strangely, as you attempt to place one foot on the floor, your leg and one side of your body is engulfed in excruciating pain, a pain that is so extreme you cannot achieve that simple task. Instead, all you can do is drag yourself to ask for help. Later, you are administered Pethidine as you are taken to hospital by ambulance, but even that does not diminish the intensity of your pain, neither does morphine. The process continues unremittingly through the day and increases as you are taken home by car. You face the prospect of an operation on the spine or of other intervention through a cortisone injection placed into the sciatic nerve root and into the offending disc, which is pressing on the already damaged and inflamed nerve, trapped in your spinal column.

Yes, this is an anecdote. Sadly, however, the anecdote concerns me, last year. You may remember me trying to move around the school with the aid of a walking stick. I was terrified that someone would bump me, rushing past. My fear was that I would fall and further damage an area of my back which I was told, by a specialist physiotherapist, would succumb to the same injury time and time again.

Self confidence, resilience and self belief can be a marvellous tool for us. We engender it through intelligent application. And while this concept is something we can refer to in terms of a physical context, it can be broadened to encompass other aspects of our lives.

After much work, swimming laps of the local pools, I improved enough to walk normally, and to cut out pain killers, such as Endone, (otherwise known as hillbilly heroin), which enabled me to meet my commitments reaching through the day. Increasingly, I adopted the belief that the key to developing any form of endurance and resilience at all was reliant on physical fitness

It was at this point that I met Kyle, my personal trainer. Distinguished by his four hundred meter stare, he has instilled fear yet equally, resilience in kids who were deemed at risk and were consequently recommended by the YMCA to bond by attacking the Kokoda trail. His approach was, and still does remain simple. As one of his trainees remembers - “it was cold, it was early, I had an ex-army officer staring me dead in the eyes and there was no escape.’ The trainee continued on recounting the first instruction given: “Hi guys I’m Kyle, I don’t care what your names are, get on the ground and do push ups.” 

Now this might not be something which reflects the way you have been introduced to subject matter in a particular area of study, but it does strike a chord with the urgent need to become physically conditioned to embark on the Kokoda trail in a relatively short period of time and does have relevance to the development of strength training.

Strength training....training with weights. After my injury this is what I do, once a week. Kyle is my trainer. After my training I will alternate days when I work out with weights with others when I will go for a 4 kilometre run, with my dog. This is a real treat, when you consider that15 months ago I could not walk. I took some photographs of my training recently. You will note that what I am doing is a considerable effort for me, but not beyond the bounds of my strength, concentration or the application of my intelligence

Since starting my weights training, I don’t think that I have physically changed a great deal, although I am certainly much stronger. I have now been working in this way for around eighteen weeks and for me it has been quite a journey to improving physical health. What I have found particularly interesting is the association of concentration and application of intelligence with achievement of my short term goals. There is a right and wrong technique which can be employed, and to persistently lift the wrong way can cause injury. If I were to do this, my back would be seriously damaged. As it is, it has been significantly strengthened. In this way, something which might be seen as an exercise has an application in terms of learning and intelligence.

Mark Rippetoe is an American trainer who has an interesting interpretation of this. A coach of some thirty years standing, he believes that:

"One of the lessons of barbell training is that you can in fact do what you intend to do 

if you just make yourself do it. 

It doesn't just make your body strong; it makes your mind strong as well."

This reflects that, as I have noted, actions which are employed in lifting are learnt with care so that different areas of the body are concentrated on to develop a focussed and fluid approach. Another reference we might consider is 

“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people and more useful in general." 

Here Rippetoe develops the argument that by increasing our strength and I infer this means resilience in the face of adversity that the results are beneficial to ourselves and to the community.

Yes, a concentrated approach yields results. This has much to do with the development of power, self love and self discipline as a journey from fear and timidity, from acknowledging your weaknesses and focusing on them to make them strengths. Or stating to yourself as Kyle has so often told me: “you can do it.” Or when I say I can’t attempt a weight: “Yes you can.” How many times have I heard Kyle say this to me as I progressed to the weights I am now lifting, 10 kilo pull overs, 25 kilo squats and 60 kilo dead lifts? 

Ultimately I use my example as a message to you. Identify your weaknesses, know them as part of yourselves but more importantly, defy them work on a program to improve yourself, physically and mentally. By doing so, you will become a much better person and achieve something which to be proud of.