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I’ll Never Forget My First Pull-Up

Never Forget

That pull-up was a goal of mine. It was a huge goal.

Because in my search for stress-relief I learned the magic of exercise. The more I exercised, the more I wanted to know.

I was especially fond of body-weight exercise because I didn’t hurt myself when I did it.

I eventually learned that there were just 4 core body-weight exercises and their variations.

The four are:

  • The squat
  • The leg lift
  • The push-up
  • The pull-up

I could do the other three. But I couldn’t do the pull-up. And that bugged me!

So, I started to work on it. I did all the easier variations of the pull-up that I could manage. The easiest one is to get under a low bar with your feet on the ground and pull up in what looks more like an inverted push-up. Sometimes you can find a crossbar on a swing set that is at the right height for this.

So the day I did a full pull up was special. I cherished it.

Read The Art of Focus to help you get focused on what matters to you the most.

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I got knocked out by a fat black belt wearing hockey gloves!

knocked out

I love martial arts. I know just enough to look stupid. But I love it.

All of my children have participated. Three of them are black belts.

Years ago, I enrolled my children in a Tae Kwon Do class. Great class in a garage. The instructor was a cranky yet fun overweight man who obviously knew his stuff.

After watching my children have all the fun for two months, I joined.

A few months later, the cranky one said, “It’s time to spar.”

We had a makeshift bunch of gear. But it was enough to make-do. None of us had head-gear.

Still, we were tough, so I thought that was fine.

The very first time, I stepped onto the mat to spar, I was feeling my oats. At one point, I got around behind the teacher and hit him a few times, but I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to take advantage of that. By the way, he never let that happen again.

But he took me more seriously all of a sudden.

I dropped my hands and wham…. He hit me with his hockey gloves in the side of the head and I went down. Greyed out for a second. Twisted my ankle badly as I fell.

See I thought I was focused on the right stuff. But I wasn’t.

It takes a lot of practice to keep those hands up. Especially when your opponent crunches a few into your ribs.

Always have to keep moving and take in everything he does. Adjust to every movement.

We all need help focusing sometimes.

I wrote The Art of Focus for when no matter what you do, you can’t seem to get the marbles in your head to all roll in the right direction. For when focusing takes everything and it still isn’t enough.

Read The Art of Focus.