More often than not, I'll wake up in the mornings feeling rested and motivated to start a new day. If it's a training day (three days out of the week), I might have a little edge of the can't-be-bothereds but usually by the time I eat some fruit and jump into the car I'm ready to go and looking forward to whatever sadistic task my trainer's thought of for me that day. I've been soldiering on for about a month and a half with my training and last week I felt my first real setback.
It was floating about the back of my mind ever since I read the information booklet for boot camp. However, after getting such great results over my first month of training, I'd forgotten how much work I've got to put in to get where I want to be before boot camp, let alone to make it through boot camp in one piece. I was looking good, feeling good, waking up strong... After checking out the details for the run I have to do for boot camp (13 minutes to get to 2.4km, totally doable), and finding to my relief that I only have to do thirty sit-ups (medicine-ball training will get me there easily), I rediscovered my old nemesis: the flexed arm hang.
Imagine a chin up but without the action of pulling yourself up over the bar. Just holding yourself there, poised with muscles frozen in the upper position, in one of the most killer isometric contractions ever. No rest for the muscles that are working, it's just work work work until you drop yourself off the bar. I remember trying to do flexed arm hangs in high school, back when I probably had bugger all upper body strength, but I also weighed a lot less as well, and I could only manage three, maybe five seconds. There were freaks who could just hang there all day if they really felt like it, but that was never me.
My trainer figured it was time to start working on the hang, seeing as I'd tried and failed to hold myself up on the bar of the Smith Machine at the studio. Moving the bar down far enough so I could still support some of my weight with my feet/legs, I did some assisted hangs, if you will, which still killed me. I also did some holds on the lateral pulldown machine, struggling with the equivalent of less than half my body weight.
It was the first time since my interview that I've honestly felt like chucking the whole thing in. I felt so ridiculously far from the physical level I needed to be at to get through boot camp, it just seemed pointless to keep pouring money into training that would take well until next year. It was pathetic just hanging there, not even holding my whole weight, with tears springing to my eyes, and that stupid voice in the back of my head saying I can't do it, I can't do it.
I can't even remember a time when I wanted something so badly, that the thought that I might not be able to get it, almost crushed me. I'm still not feeling particularly positive about this whole hanging business, although I'm sure I can get the run and the sit-ups down pat. I know that I'll be fit enough for pre-enlistment requirements, but there's not much point if it's near-impossible for me to do the hang.
I've already come a long way in a month and a half, further than I thought I would when I first started training. I've got faith in my ability to get there, but it's just hard to think of the bigger picture when this little frame of the movie of my life seems so damning. I'm going to see where I'm at in another month and a half, and then maybe review my chances.
