Plank Position 2: The Gruesome Sequel

Last Thursday I fulfilled an assignment from Physical Education 101 to attend an appointment with a trainer at my gym.  I had the genius idea to tell the trainer I wanted to work on my core strength.  This led to more of—you guessed it—the dreaded Plank Position, something I’ve made my feelings pretty clear about already.  In a nutshell, it’s something that I find to be a special kind of torture, but want to appreciate because I know its butt-kicking qualities make me stronger.

What’s harder than the plank position?  What’s harder is doing about 15 variants of the plank position—plank while moving side to side, plank while pushing a heavy bag, plank while reaching out and tapping the trainer’s hands, plank with feet on little slippy disks and bicycling the legs—all the while grunting and falling and shaking in the presence of a 23-year-old trainer named Adonis (okay, that’s not his real name). I heard myself tell him that I couldn’t do something he asked me to do, and then my mind flashed to Jillian Michaels yelling at one of the particularly whiny Biggest Loser contestants that they can’t friggin’ tell her that they can’t do something.  Ugh.  I’m the whiny contestant, the one that gets booted out during the first eviction because they just want to go home.

After that, I’m pretty sure the trainer intentionally stopped early because it was clear I was struggling.  Instead of relishing the challenge, I left feeling terrible about myself and defeated by the chasm between where my fitness level is and where I want it to be.  It was the first time I’ve felt that way since starting the project.  My Psychologist Brain wanted to figure out why I felt so lousy, and what to do about it.

The Fitness Superstar Herself (Image via rockymountainhigh on Flickr)

I thought about it.  I figured out why it sucked.  One reason was that it was clearly way above my current fitness level.  The bigger reason, though, was that I had to display my weakness publicly.  It made me think about my need to excel in everything I do.  I am one of those people to whom everything has always come pretty easy. As a kid, I breezed through academics.  I did well in the hobbies I picked, like gymnastics, ballet, and theatre, and I avoided things I didn’t do as well in, like team sports.  I hated reminders of my limitations practically from the womb, always insisting, “I can do it myself.” Most of all, I wanted to be the best.  My mom tells a story of me demanding that my Kindergarten teacher just cut the crap with the “yellow reading group” and “blue reading group” names and tell me if I was the best reader in her class.  Later, I learned to hide and eventually suppress this icky side of myself.

It’s my ego—the same one I’ve had since I was a Mini-Me.  My ego is making me feel bad for not being a fitness superstar already, for showing people that I am a human being with weaknesses, flaws, and inconsistencies.  It’s the same reason why opening up on this blog has been hard, without the protective shield of the image I try to project in my real life: the image of being smart, together, relaxed, and confident.  But appearing competent is not enough.  I have to feel competent deep down, and my need to be more honest with myself is what drove me to do this project in the first place.

A visual representation of a River of Emotional Poop for the imaginally-impaired (image via dominiccampbell at Flickr)

In order to do this project, I will have to be a teensy bit afraid at times and way out of my comfort zone.  I have fears that I don’t often think about, fears that overcoming my weaknesses are too hard, that I have too far to go, that I can’t expose the truth because then I’ll be vulnerable, that talking about the truth makes it too real to handle.  I think the nasty feeling of inadequacy with which I left the training session is the same fear that has kept me stuck in my current lifestyle up until this point.

One thing I tell my therapy clients is that bad feelings give us more information about ourselves.  So I have to be glad for the appointment, the plank position, and the river of emotional poop that came with it, because now I have a better sense of how my ego and my fear have been helping me to stay stuck where I was two weeks ago: a chubby couch potato who feels a bit off course.  I think in a couple of months I’ll set up another training appointment to see what that’s like.

Image via Mathew Knott at Flickr

The Japanese author D.T. Suzuki writes in his book, Zen Buddhism, “The ego-shell in which we live is the hardest thing to outgrow. We seem to carry it all the time from childhood up to the time we finally pass away… We are, however, given many chances to break through this shell.”

This project must be one of those chances to break through my Ego-Shell, just a little bit.  Maybe just enough to poke my head out and sniff the locally-grown, pesticide-free flowers.