The Challenges We Embrace, It’s All Good

photo credit: Space­Potato

“The last three or four reps is what makes the mus­cle grow. This area of pain divides the cham­pion from some­one else who is not a cham­pion. That’s what most peo­ple lack, hav­ing the guts to go on and just say they’ll go through the pain no mat­ter what hap­pens.” — Arnold Schwarzenegger

Delayed Onset Mus­cle Sore­ness (DOMS) is the pain or dis­com­fort felt sev­eral hours (24 to 48 typ­i­cally) after exer­cis­ing. I’m cur­rently suf­fer­ing from this.

After a break from resis­tance train­ing, I got back at it this week. Today I am feel­ing the effects (DOMS) from the lower body exer­cises I did on Tues­day night. Some at my house think it’s funny as I strug­gle to sit down, stand up, or go up and down stairs.

But I’m ok with all of it. I’m ok because I see this as progress. Progress because I’m work­ing to improve my body. It’s adjust­ing to these changes, and that’s the mus­cle sore­ness I’m feeling.

This is not unlike how your head may hurt after absorb­ing a lot of new infor­ma­tion, or heart might be pound­ing after tak­ing on some chal­leng­ing project. In all these cases, we are grow­ing. Grow­ing stretches us and chal­lenges us. In the case of my resis­tance train­ing exer­cises, I have chal­lenged the mus­cles in my legs. In so doing this, they have responded by grow­ing, and in the grow­ing process the mus­cles that were stag­nant have been forced to change. In this change, I feel soreness.

As we grow and change in what­ever we are doing, this can cre­ate new chal­lenges (for me, it was chal­lenges to my mus­cles). But it is in this growth process that we change who we are. The key, then, would be that we make changes that are for the better.

I chal­lenge you to go out there and grow your­self in some new area of your life. And embrace the changes that this brings, even though it may not be easy along the way. In the end, if you are true to your self and goals you desire, the chal­lenges you face along the way will all be worth it. You’ll come out a changed per­son, and stronger because of the growth you went through.

It’s all good.

Lance writes sto­ries from his heart, aim­ing to inspire and moti­vate, as you align more fully with YOUR true peak. When he’s not here, you can find him hang­ing out with his fam­ily, rid­ing a bike, or just gen­er­ally act­ing goofy.   Sign up for the Thoughts from the Tree­house newslet­ter and get addi­tional inspi­ra­tion in your email inbox!

Lance Ekum

View all posts by Lance Ekum