Stamina

Not that our workouts haven't  been challenging lately (because they have been) but it's been a while since I thought to myself, "I don't know if I can do this."  Today that changed.  We were doing a crazy "stair blaster" workout where we'd run up and down the two flights of stairs outside the gym, come back in the gym and immediately drop down into a set of burpees, run the stairs again, come back in for some push ups, run the stairs again and do some V-sit crunches, back to the stairs....well, you get the point.  In the midst of all of this craziness, I thought to myself, "I can't do this."  But as they always do, my awesome girls kept me going and I made it through.  Walking into the locker room I said to them, "That was tough.  I didn't think I was going to make it.  Let's do that again on Thursday."  Yep, I really have drank the Kool Aid.

What I've realized is that while exercise is composed of  three "S" words - strength, speed and stamina - the most challenging of those is stamina.   Some things I've learned about stamina:

• It's the first hurdle you have to overcome when you start out. You have to make it through the period of time where you're saying "How much longer must I endure this? How many minutes/reps/miles are left?" to the time when you find yourself saying "I wonder how much longer I can do this? Let me see how many more minutes/reps/miles I can last."
• No matter what you do when you're there, stamina is about showing up at the gym every day.
• Stamina is climbing up onto the scale even when you don't want to.
• It is getting back on the horse when you know you've done badly the day before, instead of throwing in the towel for the week, month, year and vowing to start later.
• It's those desperate seconds when you swear you're going to drop the weights in your hands but you make it through to the end of the set anyway.
• It is the determination to hold yourself in plank position until the time limit is up, even though your arms are shaking, the sweat is running down your nose, and your abs are on fire.
• Stamina is what happens when you take a piece of that cake, have full intentions of eating it, but throw it in the trash instead.
• It's the decision to pass up your favorite menu item and eat something healthy instead, no matter how mad you may be about it. 
• It is every day spent on a plateau working hard to get off of it.
• It is doggedly working at something that is uncomfortable, embarrassing, or frustrating until that very thing is no longer any of those adjectives.  

In order to be successful at anything, especially losing weight, you have to have stamina.  It is about making it over hurdles, celebrating successes, and then finding a way to make it over the next hurdles that are around the corner.  It is about being more stubborn and more determined than your inner quitter tells you that you are.