Plunging Headfirst

There's this thing in my gym, I'm not sure what it's called, but it's basically a piece of equipment that you get on and press your calves against a pad, your feet on a platform, rest your lower abdomen against another pad, and bend at the waist, head first toward the ground and come back up. Over my time working out I've watched people do this on a routine basis. It's a popular piece of equipment and most every time I go to the gym I see people routinely getting on this "thing."  Some folks put their arms across their chests as they bring their upper body up and down, and some folks even hold weighted plates as they do their reps.   Either way looked scary to me,

There's not many things in that gym that I haven't touched, but this piece of equipment is one that I have avoided.  In my former state of being my balance was pretty much zilch.   I avoided stairs, platforms, ladders...pretty much anything that involved pitting my abilities against gravity, because gravity would always win, painfully.

One of the many things that the gym has cured me of is the fear of pain because at any given moment I have something that's sore from one thing or another and my husband has gotten used to seeing me walking strangely around the house at night when all my muscles decide to stiffen up on me from that day's workout.   Just comes with the territory.   Plunging headfirst onto the gym floor however is one thing that I'm not too keen on, so therefore I've avoided this "thing" that everyone seems so fond of.

In the spirit of trying something new and pushing myself past not only my physical barriers, but my psychological ones as well, I decided to try this new thing.  Making sure no one was watching me, I positioned myself on the equipment and after a few false attempts gripped my muscles in and lowered my head to the floor, thinking the entire time that I was certain to go flipping over my head, onto the floor and break my neck.  Fear tied itself into tight knot in my stomach as I saw the floor coming closer to my face. Then a funny thing happened: my core and leg muscles engaged themselves to bring me back up parallel, over and over until I'd done twenty reps.  

As I've said before, it's the little accomplishments that spur me forward and keep me going. That and the inner curiosity that says, "I wonder if I can do that?" I get so caught up with the numbers on the scale that I forget that I'm not just shedding pounds, I'm creating something really strong. I've been training these muscles hard for over a year and it's cool now to see what they can actually do.