Tapping Out/Tapped Out/TapouT

Tapping out is defined by Wikipedia as "A submission;  a combat sports term for yielding to the opponent, and hence resulting in an immediate defeat."  Feeling defeated already?  Tired? In pain or discomfort?  Simply tap your hand on the floor and the fight comes to an end.  Done, over, finito...you lose.

For those of us who fight the battle of the bulge in the gym every day, there comes a point in your workout, no matter how dedicated you are, that you want to tap out.   Especially when trying something new or more challenging.   You get into the workout, you fumble the new moves, your body screams, your lungs seem to tighten up on you, your muscles lock down, time seems to crawl, sweat pours down, maybe your back hurts, maybe your feet hurt, maybe you're exhausted and you look at the clock and realize you're not even halfway through, maybe you're just not feeling it. Maybe everyone around you is moving with ease and you feel like a stiff, bumbling idiot who everyone is looking at and finding lacking.   No matter what stage of your journey you are on, from time to time we are faced with challenges that can embarrass us, take us to our limits, and which bring out the inner two year old who just wants to stomp their feet and yell, "I hate this." That two year old wants to take their toys and go home.  That two year old wants to take the easy route. That two year old wants to tap out.

This inner toddler is one of the very important reasons why I don't workout alone.  Left to my own devices, there are many times when I would "tap out" early or simply not try something challenging to begin with.   I can't tell you how many times, before I became dedicated to this journey, that I started a workout DVD at home and did it halfway.  I can't tell you how many times I shut the TV off early and chose the couch over finishing my workout.  

This is where a group of friends comes in handy.  Be it one person or six, there's always someone who needs some motivation and someone who pulls the others through when they would otherwise take their toys and go home.   Many times on this journey I've felt exhausted, sore, awkward and close to tapping out and my wonderful group of gym buddies have pulled me through.  Sometimes, like today  as we did the TapouT XT Muay Thai DVD and everyone in turns hollered "I hate this!", I'm get to be the one pulling others through.

Sometimes Mike Karpenko, the TapouT instructor, comes across cheesy and worthy of being knocked out with one of his signature punches, but as we sweated and grunted through today's killer routine, something he said got to me: you have to make yourself uncomfortable in order to get results.  It makes sense; doing the same old, same old will not push us or get us where we want to be.  Improvement and change don't happen in a vacuum.  Sometimes it hurts, sometimes it's awkward, sometimes I want to say "screw this, I'm done," but I've found if I just keep moving, modify as necessary, and do whatever I have to to finish, I always feel better. Tapping out leads to "yielding to the opponent [my lazy inner two year old], and hence resulting in an immediate defeat." And immediate defeat never got anyone anywhere.

De-Weanification

It has been a busy summer and I've had a hard time finding time to write.  It seems like I drag home at the end of each day worn out and collapse on the couch after dinner with just enough energy to press the "page forward" button on my Nook with the occasional painful, crampy limp into the kitchen for some water before collapsing in the bed for some quality time with my friend the pillow who I never get to visit for as long as I'd like.  I'm not complaining by no means and my pain and state of exhaustion is most definitely self inflicted, and when you've drank the Kool Aid like myself and my friends in the gym, you wear your pain around like a badge of honor for a job well done.

This concept is only about a year and a half old for me.  Before I began my journey, I was a weanie when it comes to pain.  I mean a life-long weanie.  Do you remember in old cartoons what it looked like when someone was trying to get a cat into a bathtub?  That was my mom trying to get my childhood self into the doctor's exam room in order to get a shot. It wasn't pretty. I'm glad to say I've changed my ways and that daily workouts have helped me push past the panic factor of pain and discomfort and taken my weanie level way way down.

For instance, on Monday we were going at our Stair Hell workout which consists of running some stairs then coming back into the gym to do 25 reps of something and then back to the stairs then back to the reps, so on and so forth until 13 rounds have been completed.  This workout works well for a group because the harder core people go all the way up to the top while the others do as many flights as they can and everyone gets finished about the same time.  As we got to the last round of stairs, my friends declared that we were all (with our Jello legs, drenched shirts, and fatigued everything) going to finish strong by going all the way to the top.  All of us.  Even me.  I groaned and fell to the back of the pack, thinking that I'd be able to go up to my usual level and evade them all. Oh no. This crowd leaves no weanie left behind and as they came down, each one told me that I was going to the top and they were coming with me. As I rounded each landing, legs screaming, lungs burning, there was another of my friends waiting to climb up with me. There was even a little bit of a touchdown dance at the top before we started our descent. I love this group!

After work that evening I headed out to a friend's farm to "play" with my new toy that my husband got for me as an early anniversary present:

My compound bow, in pink cammo

 Shooting a bow is a lot harder than Katniss makes it look out in the woods of District 12.  For instance, you have to have your stance perfect and use the push/pull method to position the bow before you fire, and in the case of my cutesy pink bow, you're working with 44 pounds of pressure that you must keep in just the right form. And what happened the first time I fired the thing?  I made the rookie mistake of having my left forearm too near the strings and received a stinging blow that nearly brought tears to my eyes.  It was a "fail" that I needed to do so that I learned that lesson, but it took all I had not to look like a weanie in front of the boys, to ignore the searing pain and fear of re-injury, and pull that bow back again and again.  It was the archery equivalent of getting back on the horse so to speak.

Bring on Tuesday and a brutal workout courtesy of my trainer Marisa.   Legs that were raw from Stair Hell were put through the wringer with "guerilla cardio" on the elliptical, squat walks across the gym, races on the rowing machine, and other sorts of grimace-inducing fun.

Today's butt-kicking was courtesy of TapouT XT, Cardio XT...forty-five minutes of non-stop, MMA-style cardio. The warm up was brutal...I was happy to have made it through to the end of a great workout, but I was none-the-less soaked in sweat, out of breathe, and feeling like I was going to pass out and/or vomit.

So tonight I sit on my couch like a bug someone stepped on, crunched up into a painful ball...but you know what?  I'm happy.  I feel strong.  This journey has brought with it many unexpected blessings, one of which is definitely the De-Weanification of Jenn Minter.

Bringing the Fun Back to A Workout

I love to workout. That is no mystery.  However, if I had to face 45 minutes alone on the elliptical or treadmill, I think I'd rather be beat with a stick.  I've tried music, my Nook, and any amount of celebrity gossip mags, and I'm bored to death every time.  So, I can see why a lot of people view working out as a chore. But as in anything in life, if you find a way to make it fun, it becomes like recess hour from elementary school...a break from the daily grind to make your workouts fun. Here are a few ways we find to distract ourselves with fun in the gym (and a lot of these you don't even need a gym to accomplish):

• First of all, we gather up a group of us.  Everything is more fun with friends and working out is no different.  And, the farther out you cast your net, the more of a chance that you always have a workout buddy or two or six or greater (as is our case).
• Second trick we use: Workout Poker. You just grab a deck of playing cards and assign a move to each suit (arms, legs, core) then make each of the face cards a cardio move for a certain amount of time.  Then you deal the deck and play through the whole thing.  For example: if you made hearts crunches and you dealt an eight of hearts, then you'd do eight crunches.  And if you made kings high knees, then every time a king is dealt, no matter the suit, you would do high knees for the agreed upon amount of time (we started with 30 seconds and worked our way up to a minute). An example of one of our first pokers is here. 
• Another thing we do to keep things fresh is a workout I created that has come to be known as Stair Hell.   The back stairs of our building are right outside of our gym.  So we run a set of stairs (whether it's one flight, two or three, according to the fitness level) and then come back into the gym to do 25 reps of a different exercise each time, each hitting different area of the body. Then it's back to running the stairs again and back and forth like that for thirteen rounds (which simulates going from the basement to the roof of our building).  We motivate ourselves by wiping tick marks off of  a dry erase board in the gym as each round of stairs is completed.  Also motivational: the different folks coming to and from the gym on the staircase who call encouragements and give high fives as we climb by. 
• Something else we are in the works of cooking up with are some different themed workouts.   We've dreamed up a 70's dance moves with weights workout, set to a disco soundtrack and brainstormed a recess/field day workout a la elementary school.
• When the weather is not scalding, we take our workout outside and use our surroundings as a gym whether it be on the Riverwalk next to the Cape Fear River or the dreaded street down from our work that is known as (using a Bella Lugosi voice) The Hill.
• And, when all else fails we use distraction.  For example, we were doing timed wall sits the other day in the group exercise room and someone started the wave. We laughed as we tried to coordinate our wave around the room and the time spent in that uncomfortable position went by in a no time. Also, in today's workout, one round consisted of timed planks. The timer's job was to come up with a topic and the rest of us would shout out answers.  Today's topic: good food that is bad for us. The responses were fast and numerous: Pizza Hut Pizza, Ben and Jerry's, french fries, donuts, ice cream,  brownies with ice cream, grilled cheese, nacho cheese, fried cheese, anything with cheese...

Like I said, I'd rather just about be beat than to spend my gym time on a machine zoning out. But, if you think outside the box and get a little creative with your friends, gym time is fun again!