Listen to your body

If there is a skill I have learned better then any other:  it is to ignore my body, quite unfortunately really. I didn't realize how disconnected I was with my body until a major injury made me face this reality.As a rower, I am constantly telling myself to push it and overcome the pain. I wake up before the butt crack of dawn, practice past a comfortable level, sit on the most painful carbon seats, fight the need to pee all practice, and suffer through hunger, thirst, and lactic acid burn for hours. Why? Because rowing is my life, my passion - what I live for. There are some things in life you just have to deal with and lactic acid is one of them.However, this ability to push though the pain in the boat is great for practice but not necessary for all of life. I will find myself sitting on the couch reading and needing to pee and I won't get up until I realize, “Wait, I am not in the boat - I can just get up and go.” I have also found that I can't tell when I am hungry or full, because I am so disconnected to when my body wants to eat. I will get so hungry that I will eat past the point when my stomach tells me I am full because I felt so hungry.Rowing is all about forcing the self to break out of what is comfortable to create the perfect stroke. It is always the path of least resistance that the body wants to take, but with enough practice we can make changes to tilt the arms or drive the legs in effort to get a stronger stroke. Before my injury, I thought the key to practice was to tune out my body so that I could just go and not think about all of the discomfort. Now I see this is another bad habit to break. Instead, champions are the ones that harness strength from their weaknesses, and are intimately aware of their discomfort. Tuning into my body gives me a direct route to success. The new challenge is to recognize when fatigue means “Stop!” and when it means “Go harder!”