Getting out of your comfort zone.

Today marks the final day of the 75 Hard Challenge!!!!! :-) It's been tough at times and it's tested my mental strength but I have definitely enjoyed the whole process. I have a much stronger sense of self-efficacy; I feel physically stronger and more resilient and I have a real feeling of accomplishment. I'm not in a rush to do it again but there are some habits that I am definitely keeping and others that I am definitely not going to get back into!

I listened to a really inspiring podcast a couple of weeks ago with Eliud Kipchoge. He spoke so may wise words, but here is the one thing that really struck a chord with me:

"Pain is a good thing. It teaches you to respect the success that you have earned".

(Eliud Kipchoge - Marathon World Record holder).

I often say to people in the gym "if it was easy everyone would be doing it". But actually is that really true? What reward is there from doing things that are easy? What sense of accomplishment do you feel from something being easy?

Get out of warm up mode

There is reward from something feeling easy, that used to feel hard. Moving from your maximum squat weight now being your warm up weight. But in order to progress to that, you need to work on things that feel challenging and difficult. Your warm up is your comfort zone. If you stay in warm up mode all the time, how will you ever get stronger? What stimulus are you creating for your body to adapt to? It's the same in life outside of the gym. If you're always in warm up mode, how are you going to learn, develop and grow?

That's why getting out of your comfort zone in the gym is so much more than getting stronger or bigger muscles.

Lean into pain

If you can push through a tough session in the gym, it teaches you to get out of your comfort zone and push through challenges in other areas of your life too. Leaning into pain, rather than running away from it teaches us so much more. If you've never practised being in pain and out of your comfort zone, then how would learn how to handle it? In the gym, many of the sessions you do will (should!) feel uncomfortable if you want to get better. But you need to trust the process - that is when success happens!