Self-Perpetuating Pendulum

As we stretch through our lives, we will face adversity. Friends die. Allies disappear. Even our Kettlebell workouts can become rote, decayed, and fill us with dismay. We must learn to never accept defeat. We can change a loss into an advantage if we only understand which way the pendulum is swinging: against us, or with us.

There’s no such thing as a hard fail, but you can always create a soft success.

Failure is a part of life, and a part of each of our workouts. We may try our best, fail, appeal for favor, and lose, and then we keep on moving up the chain until we get the answer we want and the respect we deserve.

A friend of mine recently injured his wrist doing a Turkish Get Up. He was pushing himself to use a higher weight than was safe for his experience, and he sort of dislocated his wrist. He was in a lot of pain. His Kettlebell training stopped because he couldn’t grip a bell, do a Swing, or complete a Press. Sure, he could use his good hand, but he felt unbalanced and incapable. He was pretty down about it all.

Doctors and physical therapists did their best to help him. He didn’t need surgery. He needed one thing he didn’t want to spend: Time. He needed time to rest, and recover, and he didn’t want to rest. He wanted to push his wrist into feeling better, and he failed. His mind was willing, but his body was wilful.

So, my friend put himself in a self-perpetuating pendulum — swinging between pain, and a lot of pain — and never giving his wrist any chance at recovery. He was in complete dismay, and he didn’t realize the enemy within was calling from inside his wrist!

Finally, after going around in circles, my friend realized the only path forward was stasis. He had to stop pressing and just stay in one place. He changed up his workout routine. He added cardio. He did bodyweight leg work. He convinced himself to rest his wrist by telling himself it was in his own best interest to finally stop and do the right thing. He dropped the Kettlebell in order to be able to pick it up again.

Sometimes, the best fight we have left in us is to just stop fighting the inevitable, and let the life around us flow, and unfold, and then pick up the details of us again when the time is right for definition. The pendulum tolls, but the Kettlebell swings for thee.

When the pendulum crashes, swing it back into action again!