Last year, I made one small change in my life. I took up running. Well actually, what I started with couldn’t even really be called “running”, more like walking/running. I decided I wanted to give running a try for cardio as well as weight loss to slim down a bit to match an actress for stunt doubling work. I realized, however, that I needed to build up my body’s tolerance to pounding the pavement, so I started with walking with a bit of running, following the slow ramp-up process I described in my post, Running Workouts for Martial Arts Practitioners.

Running has always been something I’ve been less inclined towards. I used to find it tedious and repetitive. But I found ways to make it more fun. I downloaded Zombies, Run! an app for the iPhone that turns running into a zombie video game of sorts. I eventually started running with a partner who was a better runner than me once a week. I just kept going over the long term, developing the running habit, making small incremental improvements as I continued. When I first started, I stuck to 30-minute walk-run interval training 2-3 times a week. Now I run 45-60 minutes interval runs during which I maintain a running pace constantly with minute-long sprints interspersed throughout. Last week, I ran 10km in less than one hour for the first time ever.

I now have the best cardio I’ve ever had in my entire life, which has opened new doors for me, which I’ve eagerly walked through. Last weekend, I snowshoed up to the peak of Mt. Seymour in North Vancouver with some friends. I had always had an interest in trying snowshoeing, but probably made excuses for myself when I was invited in the past. I knew that I had the fitness level to do it, but somewhere in the back of my mind, I also knew that the experience would have shown me some of the limitations of my fitness because the friends who invited me were all really fit runners. This year was different. I was eager to go and do it, and in doing so, I found that my current cardio made the experience quite smooth. Frankly, it’s easier to appreciate the beauty of nature around you when your legs aren’t burning and you’re not gasping for breath. A stunt woman I was chatting with at a party asked me if I had any interest in trying some of the different races that are offered locally, as she was interested herself. I had never considered doing them in the past, but I readily agreed to join her and now have plans to enter a number of different running and run/obstacle races throughout 2013 with her and other friends that I have united through my Facebook running group, Run for Your Lives.

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” -Lao Tzu

I never had any grandiose plans for entering races, snowshoeing up mountains, or even beating a particular running time when I first took my first step by doing walk-runs. I just started and took each logical next step as it presented itself. This is similar to my humble beginnings in the martial arts. I was a 16-year-old who was impressed with tough, confident chicks who could fight in movies, and wanted to try something that would make me more like them. One step after another, I kept on that journey, and now, 20 years later, I hold a 5th Degree Black Belt, run my own dojo, travel and teach seminars, and have a book being published with Tuttle Publishing (a reputable martial arts publisher). I most certainly hadn’t planned on doing that in my awkward teenage years. That’s just where I ended up simply taking one step after another.

I like having goals, but most of the things I have “accomplished” in my life didn’t come from some sort of set plan. This transfers into more mundane day-to-day lifestyle related goals too. When New Year’s rolls around, many people think about their lives and the changes they want to make, often using New Year’s resolutions to spur themselves on. More often than not, these resolutions fail. This is often because the goals are just so lofty that people get disheartened by their long-term nature and the feeling that it’s just too hard for them to make real progress. I believe that change and progress are more likely to come to the person who almost goes about it accidentally. They start doing something often out of convenience or simply by falling into it. They get some rudimentary rewards for doing so, perhaps not even realizing it at the time. So they keep doing it. Then one day, they’ve made so much progress they’re actually a little startled by it, like in my case with my running.

If you’re gentle with yourself and take the one small step needed to get you started, you’re more likely to continue on down the road. I see more students do well in the martial arts with this mentality, certainly far more than those who flagellate themselves with expectations for themselves that are so high that they never enjoy where they’re at. If you beat yourself up mentally in order to progress at something, you’re more likely to burn out or worse, come to hate the thing you had endeavoured to do in the first place.

Have you ever taken up something that has taken you father than you ever expected or considered just because you kept doing it? I would like to hear about other people’s success stories with this sort of thing in the comments, so please feel free to share. 🙂