Jelly Bean’s first attempt at tree climbing. What she lacks in technique, she makes up for in screaming!
“I DO IT!” has been Jelly Bean’s mantra of late. In classic two-year-old form she insists on doing everything herself, with varying degrees of success. Watching her attempt buttons, buckles and seatbelts is a lesson in tenacity. (Sometimes too much tenacity. Waiting for her to buckle her seatbelt before we can drive adds an extra ten minutes to our already complicated house-leaving routine. NASA space launches have nothing on the calculus it takes to get the Andersen family out the door with everyone wearing shoes and clean underwear.) Seeing her tiny legs trying to propel her tricycle is hilarious, mostly because for all her attempts to go forward at the moment she can only go backwards. And sometimes watching her I DO IT! moments is frustrating and heartbreaking because all I can do is stand to the side and watch while she can’t do it. For example, watching her try to run after her brothers to school every morning. In her mind she’s convinced she’s being left out of some great adventure. In her mind she’s just as capable as they are. In her mind she could do it if I’d just let her.
In her mind she can do anything, if I’d just stop holding her back.
The funny thing is that holding her back is one of the hardest things I do for her. It takes everything in me not to jump in and save her, to fix it, to do it for her. Watching my children attempt and fail at things is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done as a parent – of course because it’s hard to watch these little beloveds hurt but also because it so accurately mirrors my own struggles. The only difference is that she’s not afraid to try and fail over and over again. But I am.
Failure has been on my mind a lot lately. That’s what happens when I take a lot of tests. (I told you I’m not a natural optimist!) Yesterday I took the “cardio point assessment” from Lifetime Fitness as part of my Experiment Experiment this month. It’s the Darth Vader test where you run on a treadmill with a mask over your mouth and nose to find out where you burn fat most efficiently, your aerobic threshold and your estimated VO2 max. The night before I was up several times with anxious thoughts. “What if I’ve regressed?” “What if I’m not as good as they think I am?” and my personal fave “What if I fail??” Um, it’s a metabolic test. The only possible way to fail it would be to be dead.
And yet perversely I love taking tests. I seek them out. After I finished the Cardio Point test, I eagerly awaited my results while the man who administered the test,Thom Rieck* a metabolic specialist and holder of three world records, looked at the charts. I couldn’t read his face. “Did I do well?” I asked, trying to keep the pleading out of my voice. Thom looked slightly amused. “There’s not really any ‘good’ or ‘bad’, we’re just finding out where you are at so we know how to help you train to be a rockstar.” Rockstar: yes, please. “Well how do I compare to other people?” He shrugged, “What matters most is how you compare to yourself over time. From here we figure out your training goals and then design a plan to best help you achieve them.” At which point I realized that my subconscious goal is to please everybody so that everyone will like me all of the time. Pretty sure they haven’t invented the cardio machine that does that yet. (And yes, I made a note to talk to my therapist about that one.)
So when I got home I did what any neurotic would do and looked up my AT and VO2 max on the Internet. What I found was a frustratingly variable range of normal that depends on everything from lung capacity to genetics to past experience and even whether or not you’ve taken cold medicine that day. How well trained you are is only one piece of it. I’d taken what is supposed to be just information and read a value judgement into it. When will I learn that I am not my numbers?
After seeing my results, Steve Toms*, my personal trainer who has trained everyone from Kelly Clarkson to Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant (he currently trains the Vikings cheerleaders), laughed and said, “You’re going to hate this.” Why? Because my prescription is to slow down. Thom told me to stop running my Tabata intervals so much. Apparently I’ve neglected my base and so my body is not terribly efficient in the range where I spend most of my time. I may be good at sprinting but how often am I running at 12 miles per hour? Four minutes a day. Yeah. In addition, Steve told me I have a serious muscular imbalance – I blame childbirth and 10 years of always having a baby on my left hip – and so I have to relearn proper form before I’m allowed to add any weight. The funny thing about both training prescriptions is that if I can hold myself back and work on becoming more flexible at slower levels, it will end up helping me be better at the fast/heavy stuff too.
Story of my life.
After struggling with the tree climbing for a while, Jelly Bean eventually turned to me with her arms open (and eyes full of tears) and said “Help you?” (Cutest thing ever about toddler-ese: they parrot back what you say to them so when I say “Do you want me to help you?” she answers “Help you!” Also entertaining: “Carry you!” and “You sorry!”). She’s not afraid of failure. She’s also not afraid to ask for help. Because that’s how she learns.
People like to say “failure is not an option” but the reality of the human experience is that not only is it always an option, it’s an inevitability. We learn nothing from perfection.
Have you ever had to slow down to get faster (at anything)? Anyone else have a hard time not defining themselves by their numbers, whatever they are?
*How insanely amazing is it that I got hooked up with these people?? Don’t worry, I’m picking their brains dry and will share with you guys everything they tell me from training secrets to whether Kelly Clarkson is as sweet in real life as she seems on TV!
Thank you for this thoughtful post! I needed to hear these thoughts today. Right now I had to back off my running training plan, forcing me to skip out on the half marathon I really really wanted to be in. I’m staving off small injuries before they become big ones, so I want to just run through it, but my brain is telling me it’s better to rest and get back into it slowly. It’s hard to be patient.
And thank you for this Emily! Sometimes it’s nice to know I’m not alone in my neuroses! Kudos to you for knowing when to rest!!
I suspect with her having three adventurous older brothers, your little girl will become quite accomplished at many things!
Failure is an interesting concept. Many of my greatest achievements began with a failure 🙂
First off, Jellybean is hilarious! T and B thought the pic was the cutest ever! Second, I would probably fail at the Vader test simply because I would freak about a mask on my face. You are amazing and I love you! The end
Aw thanks:) I love you too!
Oh Lord, could I relate to this. Of course at the same time I was nodding in agreement with the logic behind “we are not our numbers,” I was totally feeling envious of you getting to have the Darth Vader test and wondering how I could score one of my own to see how I measure up to other 51 year old women and hoping I could kick some post-menopausal ass.
And btw you can sprint at 12 mph!? Holy crap, that would send me flying off the back of the treadmill and splat across the floor. You ARE ALREADY A ROCKSTAR!
Aw thanks! Although 12mph sounds a lot faster than it really is.
Thank you for your post. I really never thought that working harder might not be the “best” way to get to my goal. It really is a lifestyle and not a “race”
So freakin’ cute. And I definitely have issues asking for help. I DO IT!!! Thank you very much! (except I forget sometimes that I don’t know everything…).
I would have been doing the same thing with all those tests, seeing how I compare (first thing I do with race results after determining if I did what I wanted to do that day personally is to try and figure out how many people came in ahead of me :D).
Haha – that is exactly what I do too! And I love the races that tell me how many people I passed vs how many passed me;)
Adults tend to see things in terms of success and failure–we set time limits on our learning (e.g., “I only have an hour to learn this”) and are afraid to do things badly. A friend once told me that she didn’t want to do Bikram yoga be she “didn’t want to deal with the learning curve.” Not doing well at something is particularly tough for me because, like you, I enjoy taking tests and scoring high. If age has taught me anything, it is that failure doesn’t necessarily mean much and, on the upside, it gives you a benchmark–if you completely tank at something, you can only improve, right? I try to keep a “child’s mind” about things and often think back to a crazy afternoon when I was about 10 and my siblings and I decided we were going to learn to roll logs (not entire tree-sized logs, just the stump-sized ones that you sit around a campfire on). It took us entire day and we fell off the logs about a million times, but it was fun, we kept at it, and by dinnertime we were good enough that we could probably have joined the circus!
The Jelly Bean rocks!!!!
Last weekend I watched a group of actors work with Shakespearean text. It may sound hoity-toity, but these folks dug so deep and were so brave, and they reminded me of why I once loved acting. It wasn’t about how well they performed, or how good they looked, or being perfect. In fact, it was what they perceived as their flaws and imperfections that made them so amazing and beautiful.
As for the idea that “failure is not an option,” well, that’s just horse pucky. As you pointed out, failure is inevitable at some point. We learn nothing if we don’t fail. It’s this mentality that, IMHO, leads to things like the suicide of football players. Because they’re forced to give EVERYTHING to the game, and they have nothing left for themselves. Not even their own minds.
I think a fear of failure is probably my greatest driving force in life. I will work until until I collapse from exhaustion just to avoid that feeling. And that applies to pretty much everything. School and working out/weight loss especially. That’s bad, right? But how do you change that?
My training at the moment is all about proper form since my right hip/glute/ITB is insanely tight and out of whack. I spend entire session WORKING UP TO doing one set of squats. It’s frustrating but I know it’s worth it because my body will be happier in the long run.
And the Jelly Bean rocks! I remember that stage from my niece and it’s adorable (if not frustrating when they can’t do it). Remind her how she wanted to join her brothers at school when she gets there and starts complaining about it!
As a scientist, I constantly fail. It has taken me a long LONG time to come to terms with that in my academic life and I am only just now allowing it to seep into my personal life too. And why shouldn’t it.
I made myself take the slow down approach several months ago – right around the holidays. I was training way too hard, way too much and for what? Fun. So, now the only cardio I do is the stationary bike (while reading! bonus!) and I lift weights, whatever I feel like that particular day without a “plan” and I am feeling healthier, happier, and lighter (mentally, not physically; though I haven’t gained/lost any weight in the last 5 months which means something).
Good luck, and I can’t wait to hear more!
Kids teach us a lot – I’m learning this everyday.
Love that photo of Jelly Bean. 🙂
Bah! Charlotte, slow is a four letter word.
Wait, so is fest………hmmmmmmm.
As they say in mountain bike racing, those who can speed up and slow down the fastest win the race.
LOVE!!! Love that pic & love what you wrote about Jelly Bean!
This: People like to say “failure is not an option” but the reality of the human experience is that not only is it always an option, it’s an inevitability. We learn nothing from perfection.
Nothing is failure if we learn from it & get back up – that is the saying I like about that word.. and we will all fall down but we have to LEARN and get back up! 🙂
I so need what you did – I got some imbalance right now & not good – my dang bad feet are causing other issues!!!
You know, I read so much about intervals, HIIT & Tabata. BUT, way back when I read about how doing steady state, intervals & HIIT is best cause you work all parts of the cardio system & that is what I do. I am not just a HIIT or Tabata person. I mix it all up.
I loved this post Charlotte! OH – thank you so much for your comment at Carla’s place today!
I just love the photo of the lovely lady.. Actually I have also tried taking something slowly so that I can get something fast.. Its quite weird but yeah, its effective to me..
Jelly Bean is all kinds of adorbs!! I’m pretty sure all of your readers just love her (how could they not?).
Also, I basically live my life by numbers, like all the time. I track my time at work (in 6m increments- the billable hour is actually the billable 6m), I’m pretty obsessive about budgeting (thanks mint.com from enabling me!), and I’ve also returned to counting calories for a while, because when I’m stressed about work, I basically lose the ability to feel hunger at all (so I either eat absolutely nothing all day, or gorge terribly all day- both are bad).
I feel like I need numbers to keep my on track, otherwise, how will I know if I’m doing okay?
Jelly Bean is the cutest!!!
I’m glad you got hooked up with these people. I thought you might be overtraining when you sent me your workout schedule. I’m curious how we’re you imbalanced? I have some imbalances to in my shoulders and hamstrings. I want to go to an FMS person but don’t have the $$$.
I no longer a hard time not defining myself by “health” numbers but I cannot (as you know) look at my blog stats. Those can send me on a roller coaster I want to stay off. 🙁
Yeah… unfortunately sprinting has VERY little in common with running. People don’t seem to realize that–sprinting is essentially high-speed weight-lifting; it’s anaerobic. Running, on the other hand, over any distance beyond 400m, is primarily aerobic and requires much less leg strength.
And even if you really want to maximize your sprints, never mind real running, you gotta get off the treadmill. 12 mph isn’t fast ENOUGH for real sprinting. I imagine you could (you really should be able to given your fitness) hit 15 mph if you tried on a track.
oh and yes, Jelly Bean is incredibly cute. I love the attitude and I think using the word ‘you’ for self-reference is pretty common in toddlers. When I was a kid I used to say “Pick you up!” when I wanted my dad to pick me up.
Ah, the muscular imbalances. I can totally relate.
When I had to admit to myself that my bench press – one of those seemingly truly upper body exercises – was lacking because of a weak left hip? I finally understood how the whole body is truly connected.
Since it took 2 years to get completely out of balance, I figure it will take about a year to rebalance again. I am not that patient.
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