Tag Archives: fitness

Future Success

Future success comes from the habit of pushing yourself beyond what you can do today. I can have goals, and I can make plans, and I can talk about what I want to do. I can ‘do’ all of these things, but it is actions and effort that make the difference.

Here I am failing to do handstand push-ups against the wall.


I scraped some skin off me knee on that last fall. However, that last fall came after 3 successful reps. That’s 3 more than I did on the first set. I’m getting there. That doesn’t mean the failures feel good. That doesn’t mean the next 3 will feel easy… yet. I have a lot of hard work and effort to get there.

Six weeks ago, if you told me that I could do something like this, I would have ‘No, waaay too hard!’:


But that’s only 32 days after trying to do just this:


After sharing my fail video above, Kelly Christopherson tweeted:


The reality is that Kelly and Jonathan Sclater have been inspiring me as well. We are sharing our efforts publicly and push each other: To keep improving; To appreciate effort and hard work; and, To recognize our incremental improvements;

My future includes being able to do a 30 second, unassisted handstand. I failed at reaching this goal on my original two timelines. My next timeline is aggressive and I might not make that either. But it will happen. The journey will include more failures, and false starts, and frustration.

I started by saying, ‘Future success comes from the habit of pushing yourself beyond what you can do today.’ If I’m going to push myself beyond my comfort zone, I’m going to reach failure points. But last months failed attempts got me where I am now, and tomorrow’s failures will bring me future success.

What’s your Walk-up music?

If you’ve ever watched a boxing match, a UFC fight, or even fake wrestling, you know that fighters come in to ‘Walk-out music’. They have a song that pumps them up and gets them ‘Ready to Rumble’. These Walk-out/Walk-up/Walk-in songs energize you and get you ready for ‘game time’. Almost everyone knows this one.

John Spencer asked on Twitter: “If teachers had walk-up music when they started class, what would you walk-up song be?”

The resulting thread of replies is fun to check out!

I went with a song that’s very new to me, but that I love to do workout sets to, Tujamo ‘s ‘Drop that Low (When I dip)’.


A former students reminded me in a response to my tweet that for last year’s grad my walk-up music to the stage was ‘Rock Lobster’ by the B-52’s. I responded, “That was old school me, this is new school me 🤣“.

I have a small playlist on my phone called ‘All On Repeat’. These are songs I like to listen to over and over again when I work out.

Just recently, I shared a video of myself working on my handstands listening to Kesha’s ‘Your Love is My Drug’. My plank music is Eminem’s ‘Lose Yourself’. And my chin-up music, along with other exercises, rotate between ‘Paper Planes’ by M.I.A., ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’ by The Verve, and again my new favourite, Tujamo ‘s ‘Drop that Low (When I dip)’.

I also have music that I listen to when I write. I always chose music either with no lyrics, or with lyrics that are easy to ignore. Enya is a favourite, especially songs from her album, ‘Memories of Trees’. My current go to is a bit more frenetic, Michael Denny’s ‘Nerve Centre’ available on the Calm (meditation) App. I’m listening to this as I write, now.

Music stimulates my mind, and it sets positive moods for me. When you look at my eclectic selection of songs above, they give no indication that I grew up loving Led Zeppelin (still my favourite band – and ‘No’, not a password recovery answer to retrieve any of my passwords), as well as Boston, AC/DC, and the Rolling Stones. But I also grew up on Bob Marley, Blondie, and Boney M. I’ve also grown to love musical theatre songs, thanks to a family that is obsessed with them.

My tastes vary considerably, and my workout songs are far from classic rock, but they really do ‘Pump me up‘ and motivate me to push myself. So what about you?

What’s your Walk-up music? If you had ‘game time’ music to put you into a mood to do your best, what would it be?

Missing the target

Today was to be the day. The last day of my 30 Day challenge to do a 30 second unsupported handstand. But I’m not there yet. I’ve already written about the challenge of making Incremental Improvements:

“We are often enamoured by the quick fix, the easy answer, fast and obvious results. But these quick rewards are not always available. Sometimes it’s the slow incremental changes that make us better, stronger, and more resilient. Sometimes we need to work through things slowly and properly in order to see the results we really want.”

The fact is that I’m getting stronger and closer to my goal. However I also have to be honest and say that I haven’t given it 100% of my effort. If I’m even more honest, this is something I tried and failed to do a year ago. A few days ago my Facebook memory from last year was a video of me doing a handstand against the wall and sharing that I wanted to do a one-minute handstand by the end of June ’19. I obviously failed or I wouldn’t have been doing a similar challenge again.

I’m on a good path and I’ll get there. I’ll set another goal. I’ll – share – my – progress, and I’ve got my buddy, Kelly, working – alongside me. I’ve missed my target, but my goal is within sight, and I’ll get there. I will continue to work on my strength, but I haven’t focussed enough on my balance. Working on strength has more tangible and rewarding results, so I’m not surprised that I put my focus there. Now it’s time to focus on the less glamorous aspects, where falling again and again are part of the learning.

The next time I share my road to a handstand here, it will be to show that I’ve achieved my goal… and I’m putting a note on my calendar that I want to reach that goal 30 days from today.

https://twitter.com/datruss/status/1252973978118844427?s=21

It’s not a failure if it leads to success

I love this video:

https://youtu.be/0cF2LyYGDWA

It reminds me that the path to success isn’t always easy, and failure isn’t failure when it leads to success.

On a personal note, I started a 30 Day Challenge to do a 30 second freestanding handstand.

Progress until last night was pretty good:

https://twitter.com/datruss/status/1243331006767210497

https://twitter.com/datruss/status/1245227496930340864

But last night didn’t go as well as I hoped:

But here’s the thing, I’m pushing myself pretty hard. Also, I just want to handstand for 30 seconds but I’m actually doing the training to walk on my hands. On top of that, I’m trying to do a 5 step plan in 30 days, and 1/3 the way through I’m on step 3.

I need to slow down. The videos show me that my core is a weak spot. My shoulder no longer hurts, but it isn’t fully recovered from an injury. I’m going to hit my goal if I’m smart, and don’t rush, and if I do every step really well before moving on. Back to step 2 I go.

Meanwhile at work, I see similar things happening. With Covid-19 shutting down schools, we have educators scrambling to figure out how to teach students online and from a distance. All around me I see teachers trying to do too much, too fast, and getting frustrated. I shared this on Twitter recently:

When everything is so new and so challenging, mistakes will be made. Those mistakes will not be seen as failures in the long run if we learn, grow, and improve ourselves along the way.

Change of plans

Starting today I was going to write a 7-day series on 7 Virtues, like I did on the 7 Sins. I totally don’t feel like doing that right now. Also, I thought I was going to give myself a social media break… but I kinda want to stay connected now, so I’m not doing that either. What I am doing is leaving my phone behind on family walks… but I’m not going dark now when Social Distancing for Coronavirus is making feel disconnected enough.

So what now? I’m going to experiment with getting connected with people online and doing some video chats and podcasts. I might put out some quick videos. I’m going to share my #SDFitnessChallenge progress.

What I’m not going to do is lock myself into 7 days of writing on specific topics. And while I’ll put my phone away for parts of the day, I’m not locking myself away from digital connections. This is a time to experiment, do some new things, stay connected… and learn.

The time for regular routines will be back soon enough, for now I’ll keep things open, and try something new on a regular basis. Tonight, it will be handstand push-ups, inspired by Kelly Christopherson (@kellywchris).

If you’ve been letting ‘Social Distancing’ isolate you, it’s time for a change of plans… reach out to someone, reach out to me… connect, learn something new, get fitter… enjoy the time you never thought you would have. Be great.

30 Day Social Distancing Fitness Challenge #SDFitnessChallenge

Ok, here we go! I’m proposing that we all do our own 30 Day Social Distancing Fitness Challenge #SDfitnesschallenge

Social Distancing has taken away our gyms, but not our desire to be healthy and to make positive goals for ourselves. This was inspired by my buddy Ross Macdonald, whose goal is a 5 minute plank within 30 days. He started yesterday with 20 seconds. Thanks for the inspiration Ross! He was inspired by #PlankTheCurve – a literal interpretation of Canada’s Chief Medical Officer’s quote that we don’t just need to flatten the curve (of COVID-19 infections), we need to plank it!

(#PlankTheCurve Source)

Since I’ve been building my plank up for over a year, 5 minutes is already something I can do. I did one for a time lapse video yesterday before dinner.

So, rather than plank, my goal will be something I originally hoped to accomplish by last June but failed to do: My goal is to do an unsupported 30 second handstand. The actual goal was a full minute, but if I’m going to try to do this in just 30 days, I’ll be happy with 30 seconds.

What about you? What is a #SDFitnessChallenge that you would like to make for yourself?

  1. Make it challenging and also attainable.
  2. Share it publicly. Be it on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or even a comment on this blog.
  3. Add a hashtag: #SDFitnessChallenge

Whose in with Ross and I?

Breaking the streak… and starting a new one.

I’ve been meditating daily since January 5th, 2019, but yesterday I broke the streak. I’m aware from my use of an app that there might have been a few times I missed my meditation, but I count a meditation after midnight as being on the day before, because it’s still part of my day, and I’ve done that a few times in the past year. Yesterday was an unusually low day for me, and I completely forgot to meditate.

I woke up tired and went to join a friend for breakfast rather than starting my day with my regular routine. After a wonderful breakfast I came home and did nothing other than talk to my dad, eat lunch with my family, and sleep until dinner. I changed to go work out, but never made it. I wrote my Daily-Ink just before dinner sitting on the couch, and after dinner I flaked out on the same couch.

It’s the first Saturday (or any day) in a while that I’ve done so little. I give myself permission to have a low energy day. But I also need to get back to my routines. Yesterday was the first time ever that I didn’t earn a single sticker on my healthy living motivation chart. But as I shared in my year-end reflection of my healthy living goals:

The best time to start a new streak is RIGHT NOW.

Yesterday, I missed my meditation. I skipped my workout for the second day in a row (for the first time this year). And although I did my writing, I didn’t do my reading (audiobook), and this was missed for the first time this year. I also missed my time restricted eating window with my breakfast meeting, but I don’t usually try to do this on weekends anyway.

Today, after hitting publish on this post, I’m headed to meditate and work out, while listening to an audiobook. I might get a second workout and meditation in today as well. I’m not going to overdo it, but I might start my new streak with a bit of an exclamation point.

Permitting myself to have a day like yesterday doesn’t mean I have a new low point to measure myself against. It doesn’t have to give me permission to fall to this kind of low again anytime soon. It was simply a low day, and the inspiration to start a new, long streak. And that streak begins right now!

Incremental Improvements

For about 5 weeks now, I’ve been recovering from a shoulder injury. It’s nothing too serious, and I think it was brought on by hours of shovelling snow then doing some wide-arm chin ups for my workout the next day… I put together two activities I seldom do, and I overdid it. I recently wrote about how my physiotherapist stopped weeks of pain in one session. I saw him a second time last week and he put me through a regimen of exercises that I’m to do over the next 3 weeks until I see him again. Although he was able to quickly stop the pain I was dealing with, he thinks that it will be another 6 weeks before I’m able to do everything that I could do before the injury.

This is the hard part of injury recovery. Progress is slow and nothing comes easily. But if I don’t put the time and effort in, I delay the recovery time. Day-to-day the results are not visible. Yesterday felt less strong than the day before, today will hopefully be different. When this is the experience, it doesn’t feel like I’m getting better. I have to put that aside, focus, and keep my regular routine up, including pushing myself to work my shoulder, while also not overdoing it.

We are often enamoured by the quick fix, the easy answer, fast and obvious results. But these quick rewards are not always available. Sometimes it’s the slow incremental changes that make us better, stronger, and more resilient. Sometimes we need to work through things slowly and properly in order to see the results we really want.

It doesn’t always seem glamorous, but the day to day grind of doing things well, with positive intention, and dedication can be the key to success. Sometimes it’s not about what we can do to quickly fix a problem, instead it’s about what we can do consistently over time that brings results. Staying positive and keeping the end goal in sight is important. This isn’t always easy to remember when the results we want come from incremental improvements.

Spicing it up

My sister is visiting and she is a foodie. I can’t believe how much I’ve eaten this long weekend, and she is preparing pork chops for a late dinner tonight. I’m actually about to get on the treadmill before dinner… I need to burn some calories!

She also brought me 3 versions of a family pepper sauce that I love and I’ve already had a meal where I portioned Spanish rice into three sections to try each sauce. This made me think about how different people spice their meals. Growing up, I had a friend who added salt to everything he ate. He wouldn’t even taste the food before giving the salt and pepper shakers a shake over his plate. I do this with black pepper into any cream soup. And certain meals I add pepper sauce to without tasting it first. For example, pasta with a meat sauce always tastes better with some of our family recipe pepper sauce. I don’t need to taste first before adding spice.

How often do we do this, we add a spice before even tasting what we are about to eat? We layer on the sauce or the gravy, or we add salsa or cream cheese to a meal. We get accustomed to what we like and we spice things up out of habit. This time with my sister has made me appreciate what it means to enjoy food and eating, and to think a bit about how to spice up my diet. It has also made me question my portion sizes when I enjoy a meal. Spicing something up and enjoying it shouldn’t mean that I also consume much more… but this weekend I really overdid the volume of food consumed.

I think I need to spice up my workout too!

Speed bumps are not road block

For over a week now, I’ve been dealing with a minor shoulder injury. I’m not sure how I got it, but I think shovelling snow and wide grip chin-ups were a bad combination, and I’ve pinched a nerve. Mentally it has been tough because I can’t help but think that this would have been an injury that would have lingered for 3 days if I were in my 20’s, but it has bugged me now for over a week. This “I’m no spring chicken anymore” attitude isn’t great, but I can’t help but think it when even trying to put my coat on makes me feel old.

However, in previous years, this injury would have brought my workouts to a standstill. I would have taken a break from my routine. Instead, I’m sticking to my Healthy Living Goals. In this 2019 year-end post, is a tip that I shared which I’m sticking to. This tip is to ‘reduce friction’, and a key point is:

Don’t exercise at your maximum every day. Some days I push really hard, and some days I go at 75%. A day when you are feeling low, give yourself an effort break, but don’t give yourself a break from actually doing exercise.

I haven’t been able to get on the treadmill because the bouncing causes my shoulder to ache, so I’m getting on the exercise bike. While I love mountain biking, I’ve never loved riding on a stationary bike, and so this isn’t my favourite thing to do. Still, today will be my 8th time on the bike in 9 days. I’m not winning any speed records, I am getting my heart rate up, and getting my minimum 20 minute cardio workout in.

I’ve also stopped weights and chin-ups, but I still stretch and work on my core. My workouts are a bit shorter, but they haven’t stopped.

The simple fact is that an injury like this used to become a major roadblock to my regular routine. It used to break the pattern and I’d stop working out. Instead, I’ve looked at this as a minor speed bump. Yes, it has slowed me down. No, I’m not improving my strength and conditioning. I am maintaining my healthy living routines and my streaks (another important tip from my year-end post).

I’m also trying to stay positive and stop myself from experiencing the “I’m getting old” self-pity party, but it’s easier for me to go through the positive physical motions than the mental ones… And on that note, it’s almost 5:30am, time to meditate and then get in that exercise bike. Remember, we are going to hit speed bumps on our healthy living journey, and while we need to listen to our body and slow down, we don’t need to stop.