Give it intense effort- like this!

Effort.

Do it.

Again.

Harder.

Focus.

Deeper.

Again.

Below are some links to an inspiring (to me)  video. The young athlete Kallista Pappas is 14 years old at the time the video was shot. She was competing in the 2008 Crossfit Games against adult women.

In the video the women are lifting 100 pounds in a way called the “Clean and Jerk”.  Kallista weighed just 103 at the time she was competing- lifting a barbell equal to your own body weight over your head like this is an admirable accomplishment for any human.

When the video opens, Kallista is not the featured athlete- a woman named Jolie is being filmed finishing her lifts. You can see Kallista, however, behind Jolie. Her back is to the camera and she is wearing a blue-green tank top and black gym shorts.

At the 9 second mark you can see Kallista lift her bar- this was her 22nd repetition. At 11-13 seconds you will see her lose control of the bar- it drops onto her left leg and she is lying in the sand, stunned, wondering what happened.

A terrifying moment for her, certainly, and a terrifying moment for all who saw it happen. Had the bar dropped slightly differently it could have, at a minimum, broken her leg or foot.

Here’s what Kallista said about that moment.

On repetition 22, I was getting ready to jerk it when I lost focus. I didn’t take my inhaling breath to lock my core and, as I got it up to a point near lockout, I lost it and fell down. The weight bounced off my knees and I lay there, stunned. “I was thinking, ‘Is this over?’ and then I heard this guy yell something that still sticks in my mind:

“Don’t give it up, you’ve come this far, you can’t give up!”

With a rush of adrenaline, I got up and did some air squats. I took a deep breath as I bent down for my next lift. As I locked the next one overhead, I heard the audience cheer. With every cheer I got an extra rush of adrenaline. This workout wouldn’t have been finished if I had been alone in my living room. The supportive yelling made the day complete.

Even today, I cannot believe what happened. If I hadn’t gotten up to finish those last reps, I wouldn’t be the person I am right now.

It was then that I came to realize the full meaning of what the alpinist Kelly Cordes once said: “You are really capable of twice as much as you think you are.” Knowing that I inspired people old and young, and that I inspired them to never give up, makes me feel proud of who I am inside. I did not know myself before.”

I was inspired by this video and by Kallista’s tenacity and courage. I hope you are, too.

Now, some of you will watch this and judge yourselves. Stop that. You aren’t an elite 14 year-old athlete and your probably are not a power lifter. Relax. This isn’t about evaluating you and your self image or your physical fitness.

The point of this video is to give you an example of a level of effort to shoot for. For some it takes this level of effort to leave the house and go to the store. For others it takes great effort to tell the truth about a long-kept secret that seems shameful. For others it takes this level of intensity to not eat or drink those things that have created health problems.  Others need this intensity to simply open and feel their feelings. We all have to start where we are at.

Some of us are not used to expending intense effort- it can be scary just to try harder. Like any other human skill, intensity takes practice. Kallista had been a seriously competitive gymnast for 3 years before this video. A few months after the video, she won her state gymnastics championship. She was used to giving intense effort because she had trained for it.

As should you.

Work hard.  Bring intensity like Kallista to your recovery, your growth. Bring focus and determination to your emotional work, to your therapy sessions.  Stretch your limits. Tolerate a little more emotional discomfort. Go a little longer, faster. Feel more intense feelings. Tell deeper truths. Give in to fear less. Break through your shame. Resist destructive urges longer.

Stretch it! Go for it, extend the limits of whatever it is  that challenges you.

You might make it, you might not. But, this is certain: If you make more and more intense efforts, change will happen.  You have nothing to lose except your limitations.

“Don’t give it up, you’ve come this far, you can’t give up!”

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The video: Please keep it to yourself. This is in my ‘client’s only’ area because it is copyrighted. I can show it to my clients but I request that you not repost it to a public website.

One or both of these media players are installed on most computers. If you cannot get it to play for you, let me know and we’ll figure it out eventually.

A Quicktime (Apple) version is here

A Windows media player version is here

And if you want a lot more detail and a PDF, click here