• A Lesson On Pacing Yourself

    in Self-Improvement

    So my wife, Sarah, is part of this exercising group called “Stroller Strides.”

    It’s a group of moms who workout with their young children in strollers. After researching the company, they have about 1200 franchises around the world.

    Three times a week, she meets up at the park down the street and the moms work out for about an hour doing cardio and strength training. Since Jadyn is in school and Brendan (our 3-month old) is still too young, Layla, our 1 year old, gets to enjoy the experience with just her and mommy.

    On a workout day, I’ll usually tease Sarah by saying, “How cute… you and Layla are going to get your little workout on! Don’t break a sweat!” She’ll reply, “You don’t know how hard they work us moms!”

    “Ummm… right!” I say.

    Until the monthly “Family Day” came around. This is my first time attending.

    Here I go thinking I’m going to dust everyone. “I’ll take it easy on em’ ok dear!” That was my attitude.

    So we get there last Saturday morning and after stretching and doing all that stuff, the trainer says “Ok, let’s sprint but don’t give it your all because we’re just getting started.”

    Sarah is running with Layla. I have the double stroller with Jadyn and Brendan.

    I pass one stroller… then another… then another. Before you know it, I’m only trailing one stroller.

    I touch the target, make my u-turn, and head back to the finish line thinking I’m done.

    The trainer says, “lap two.”

    “Huh? Lap two?”

    Mind you, between Jadyn, Brendan, the stroller, and my own 215 lbs, I’m probably at 275 lbs total.

    So I turn around to sprint the second lap. This one ain’t so easy.

    In fact, I’m nearly out of juice.

    That first lap running uphill took so much out of me, I hadn’t saved any juice for anything else. I tried to show out and it bit me in the rear!

    Then we took resistance bands and started doing strength exercises against the fence. I was out of it.

    Then, the trainer said to grab your strollers and head up hill through the trail to another nearby park… a mile away! (Where we live, there’s a lot of nature and like 17 parks in a 3-mile radius.)

    Everyone else is gung-ho. I’m still recovering from the first exercises.

    Here I am probably the second or third stroller… from the end!

    I finally get to the park and it’s another sprint up an even STEEPER hill.

    At this point, the trainer asks me if I want to leave my stroller with her and just run up the hill without one. Of course, my ego wouldn’t let me do that so I kept the stroller! “Ok, only go halfway up though,” she says.

    At this point, I was on my way up when Sarah and the rest of the gang were on their way DOWN! She looks at me and says, “Baby, just turn around and head back.” I went halfway and turned around to head back down.

    We rested for about 45 seconds.

    Another sprint up the same hill, this time without the strollers. 45 seconds of rest and one final sprint up and down the hill.

    Then some more strength training with the resistance bands.

    Oh yeah, I forgot to mention while we’re resting, we have to sing songs like “The Itsy-Bitsy Spider” and “The Wheels On The Bus” to our children. So there’s no real rest.

    After some more resistance training, we run back to our original starting point, another mile! Luckily, this time it’s downhill.

    We do some pushups, some cool-down stretching, and end by letting our children play on the playground at the park we started at.

    I learned my lesson.

    Actually a few lessons.

    1) Never underestimate someone else’s efforts… in anything! You may think what they do is easy but think again before presuming.

    I once heard this comedian say: “Golf ain’t nothing. Take away the stick and you just be walkin’!” I thought that too.

    Come to find out it’s one of the hardest sports to master… yes, “SPORT!”

    2) Pace yourself! Don’t show off

    Actually, I see this a lot in music. People start off playing a song with every trick, bell, and whistle they have! By the second or third time around, they’re out of stuff to play.

    Others call this “keeping your powder dry.”

    I started off running with almost everything I had (or at least I didn’t know it was almost everything I had… I thought I’d be alright but I soon realized I had overdone it). The same goes for music.

    There is pace and balance in everything: fitness, music, reading, studying, singing, life.

    3) Quality over quantity

    Some people can stay at the gym 2-3 hours. Others get everything they need out of 30 minutes.

    With this group of mommies, they go for an hour but they go HARD!

    When you sit down to the piano, whether you have 3 hours allotted or 30 minutes, if you go HARD (meaning, you pick a focus and really go for it, without interruptions or distractions), you’ll walk away having accomplished a lot. Do it regularly and there’s no way you can’t see dramatic change in your playing.

    4) Use dead time

    Those moms don’t waste a beat. Instead of sitting around talking during the breaks (which are only a minute anyway), they use that time to sing to the kids in the strollers. The kids are being entertained not only by the running (it’s like a nice carnival ride to them) but by the singing in between and the play time at the end.

    What are you doing in the car on the way to work? On the train? While waiting in the grocery line?

    I don’t know about you but I’m listening to something informative. It may be a motivation program like Anthony Robbins… it may be a sermon by Bishop Noel Jones or T.D. Jakes, it may be a business program by Brian Tracy, or one of my own music programs. But I’m listening to something informative.

    Of course, I then have my days where I listen to music. After all, I’m a musician but I make sure to have a good balance of information in there. For you, that can be any of the aforementioned or one of our audio programs like “Piano By Ear For Starters (702)” or “Finding The Key To Any Song (705)“, etc.

    5) There are no excuses

    There were pregnant ladies ahead of me. The trainer, who owns this “Stroller Strides” franchise in our area, is pregnant. She does all the same stuff while she leads the group.

    She also switches with other trainers she brings in and I hear the one that comes on Fridays is no joke!

    A “paradigm shift” is when something so different from what you’re used to happens to cause you to change your thinking. Seeing pregnant ladies workout caused one of those for me (even though I’ve heard of Marion Jones running on treadmill at speed 7 when pregnant).

    Most of us would think that is unsafe for their unborn children right? Well, they have scientific proof that it’s not. Of course, within reason.

    Here’s another paradigm shifter. A guy with no fingers playing guitar.

    So you better believe by the next family day, I would have learned from my very first experience and will do things a bit differently. “Pace” was my biggest lesson and much needed reminder.

    Until next time –

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    Hi, I'm Jermaine Griggs, founder of this site. We teach people how to express themselves through the language of music. Just as you talk and listen freely, music can be enjoyed and played in the same way... if you know the rules of the "language!" I started this site at 17 years old in August 2000 and more than a decade later, we've helped literally millions of musicians along the way. Enjoy!




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