Million Dollar Baby

Inspiration of how to become a stronger person every day

Very important question to ask yourself: Is your life challenging? If you said yes, great it should be, but if you said no, you need change. With that both answers can benefit from change through challenge. Better question; Do you think your life is as challenging than that of your parents or grandparents?

Here’s the continuous lifestyle shift and we are benefiting/victims of:

We will almost always have less physical duties then generations before as technology improves. Life has become easier. With less resistance comes less perseverance and less mental will. Just as if a muscle is not challenged to lift anything heavy it becomes weak, and our minds work the same. We need a challenge.

Not everyone falls into this but most do. Even myself. I guarantee that I have watched 10x more television than my father ever did. We NEED to challenge ourselves.

What do I mean by challenge? If you work out your challenging yourself every day, but are you goal setting, and committing to something over time? And, how could you?

Well for exercise starting anywhere is a start. It’s all over social media where you can see the ideas of a ‘plank challenge’ or a ‘squat challenge’, and basically just follows the premise start little by little and try and go for a month. Which is an awesome introduction into what it’s all about. Try and get better at something little by little every day you can. That’s how training works. Looking at those plank challenges people start with 30 seconds and by the end of the month attempt 5 minutes. That’s amazing progression and people can see how well it works.

Well then what.

I did all these squats, planks, and random challenges but then what? What else can I do? That’s a hard question to answer for anyone who doesn’t know what they want to improve on.

Two women I have the wonderful pleasure of training had this issue. They said they want a new challenge. They always would do extra things after our group training workout as side challenges and they wanted something new. Something fun and engaging. I didn’t know what to tell them.

They created the Million Dollar Baby.

A whole year to accomplish a MILLION challenge points of whatever they promised themselves within that year.

The challenges were fantastically designed. They made it total body, doing resistance training for legs, back, chest, shoulders, core, biceps and triceps, and challenging the conditioning with running, rowing, biking, skipping rope or stairs. Even into lifestyle choices and days with drinking green tea and not drinking alcohol (which we cannot underestimate the value and difficultly of that). The points were related to the pounds and reps, or conditioning in distance traveled. The amount that was require was needed was decided on an individual basis which makes it even better. If you know what you want to get good at something, put it a bit more, but if you know you’re not going want to be much for rowing, don’t ask yourself to row a ton. I should mention this is ON TOP of the strength and conditioning routine that we gave them 5-6 days of the week.

Most incredibly they barely told anyone about it. They were quiet and humble about it. Only myself and few others knew, even when they finished.

Wow. Who does this? Why do this?

No one gave them a metal, or an award. They weren’t in any fitness competition, or training for an event. So what’s the point?

Do you remember the last time you recorded yourself doing a million of anything? Especially, a million things towards your health. That makes someone so much stronger of a person, not just physically but mentally.

It’s because you set out a goal, you have the courage to say you will accomplish it, and you physically go out of your way to do it. In the end, when you write down what you did, no one can take that from you. That is the true feeling of fulfillment and accomplishment which is so hard to get in the fitness world and in life.

People get fueled by aesthetics in fitness, which is a huge part of it, but it’s really just surface, shouldn’t be the whole driving force.  It’s fueled by passion, will, and the determination of wanting to be a better person.

It’s so hard to find yourself on the good side of the spectrum of health when there is so many extremes. You see an Instagram model and you think “Well I’m a joke compared to them.” We forget they have a significantly different lifestyle, career and very importantly genetics that help them get there (not to mention Photoshop). However, these ladies didn’t post anything, brag, or take photos on the way for progress shots. They just did what they set out to do. Awesome!

I’d also like to mention these ladies are frequently overworked air traffic controllers, and they don’t do this for their job. They did it to just be challenged. That’s incredible. It takes a tremendous amount of courage and will do place the stress on yourself that doesn’t need to be there but you can choose to do it because you believe in yourself.

This inspire me. Once I decided to so my own challenge to prepare me to go to Mexico. I created Miles to minutes for Mexico. I ended up doing 2107 minutes of cardio work to help me feel like I earned my vacation. Also on top of my own resistance training, work, and school, I would find time to add up that time over 41 days. So many times, I didn’t need to but I did it. I now feel just stronger as a person and ready to take on another challenge.

This ability to challenge myself later gave me the courage to do my first body building contest show. It was the hardest thing I have ever done, but I learnt that committing to a longer term goal for bettering your character, even if you’re not 100% confident you can do it, will change you and benefit you as a person. To this day I seek out more challenges to create a new version of myself. What new habits can I create? What bad habits can I get rid of?

Now think to yourself; When is the last time I committed to challenging myself?

The new generation needs to be keep challenging, otherwise we can waste away our bodies to sloth ourselves through life without and limit our character and purpose. Or worse, life does hit and you are not ready for it because you haven’t had your will tested.

Have the Courage to Commit, and watch your Character Change.

I dare you now to challenge yourself. No one else will.

I always leave people with this quote and it’s my philosophy to live by; “Ask not for an easy life, but rather pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.” – Bruce Lee