I may have mentioned this before, but I’m a cyclist. Specifically, an endurance cyclist. You can probably guess what that entails by the title alone, but in its simplest essence, it's riding a bike for a really long time over really long distances.
Over the past few years, I had gotten away from this passion project and fell entirely out of riding shape. But this is my year, and I am once again entering the arena of endurance sports. And the number one thing I’ve learned by coming back to this kind of punishment?
The body remembers.
In the Army, we called this phenomenon muscle memory. In basic training, drill sergeants threw the term around constantly. I used to think the concept was a giant crock of shit, just an excuse to give leadership a blank check to legally torture you. I can't even begin to calculate the number of push-ups, sit-ups, Iron Mikes, burpees, roll-lefts, roll-rights, up-downs, cherry pickers, overhead arm claps, and front-leaning rests I've done in my life, but I know it's a lot.
But here is the one thing I discovered in their absence, and my subsequent return to them: I can still do it.
It's not a matter of cranking out hundreds of these things like I used to. The average untrained adult male can do approximately 5 to 15 consecutive push-ups with proper form before reaching muscle failure. Well, just for kicks the other day, I felt the sudden urge to do some push-ups. I haven't done an actual push-up in years. I've been out of the Army for seven years this month, and frankly, it shows.
You know what? I knocked out twenty of those puppies and stopped simply because I didn't want to do any more. I'm a big boy now and I can make my own decisions. Could I have eked out a few more? Probably, but that's beside the point. I haven't trained on that specific exercise in seven years, but the body remembers.
I've found this principle applies to all kinds of things in life, increasingly so the older I get. As I mentioned, I haven't done any distance cycling in a few years, but it didn't take long to get back into form. My first ride of the season, after having not ridden a single mile for months, was challenging but respectable. Not because I'm some kind of stud, my wife and oldest daughter would gladly assure you that I am most definitely not, but because I put in the work earlier in life. Now, the body remembers.
That is the crux of it all. You can do hard things, and those things get easier the further you push yourself. If you're afraid of going out for a run because you haven't done it in years (CAUTION: avoid this if you have osteoporosis, you'll break your damned knees), just go do it. Try it out. I bet, on some level, your body will remember too, provided you've actually run in the past.
Because the key factor to this entire, stupid theory of mine is that in order to benefit from this miracle of human anatomy, you first have to establish a baseline. If you've never done something physically challenging, you have to literally train your body for the task. You can't expect to benefit from physical recollection if you've never established a physical memory to begin with.
One of my biggest rationales behind all of this is learning to get comfortable being uncomfortable. Being miserable is an art form. Most people want to skip the discomfort and teleport straight to the end result. Do you think all of those marathon runners crossing the finish line with smiles (or grimaces of unimaginable suffering) just woke up one morning and said, "Yeah bro, today's my day! Let's go run 26.2 miles for fun!"
Hell no. They put in constant, incremental hours of agonizing training.
Which reminds me of a guy from my previous unit. In his younger years, this dude was a fantastic distance runner. I think he ran track, cross-country, or one of those boring-ass sports in high school. Anyway, some guys from our unit were gearing up for the Columbus Marathon, and out of the blue, he decided he was going to run it with them. We were all shocked. He had recently recovered from an illness and hadn't been on any consistent running program whatsoever. Everyone was highly skeptical.
Well, we all ate shit.
Not only did our boy finish that bastard, but his average pace was somewhere in the 8-minute mile range. For those of you who don't know, that is insanely fast for someone who didn't explicitly train for a marathon. When his training failed, his body remembered all the work he had put in. Just another piece of anecdotal evidence.
All of these thoughts resurfaced recently because, by the time this is published, I will have completed another metric century (100 km) with my brother.
I know, I know. If any serious cyclists are reading this, they're probably thinking, "Ha! A metric? That's a warm-up ride for me!" And yes, it probably is. But for me, it will be a return to confidence. Am I in any real danger of not finishing this ride? I'd confidently guess not, but that isn't the point.
The point is, I've done all of this before, and I'm proving to myself that I can do it again, despite chronic disease and an infinite number of physical setbacks. I can do hard things because my body remembers. More importantly, I want to show my kids what a person can do when they put in the time and effort. Hopefully, one day, they too will do hard things that are worthwhile.
Thanks for reading, and let me know in the comments if your body remembers anything... besides staying in a seated position for hours on end. I already have that one on lock.
Dad out.