who's a rebel now?

going further.

I know it's been some time since my last entry, and rather than make any more futile moves to complete the half-finished drafts (five at last count), I will just get down to it! So this is horribly unpolished. Also, I have just had a BIG COFFEE.

My brain rewiring hasn't yet become so automatic that I fail to be startled by positive attitudinal changes, and I've noticed the changes the most when it comes to how I approach the exercises solo. 

THEN: 
Grunts: You gotta be kidding!
Jack knives: Arrrrgh! I'm never coming back (apparently I said this on my first session. Also my first exposure to jack knives)
Sprinting: Hey Sarge, what do you mean I'm shuffling... oh... that's not sprinting?
Dirty dog push ups: ?!@@#*!

When I was younger at this strange business, I felt it was justifiable somehow to move slower, to wait the stopwatch out. I was doing all I could, right? I mean, I was pushing my body, hmm there's some nebulous pain there, I dunno... it's vaguely present - somewhere. Hem, haw. Oh look, was that the "Steady!" call? Anyway it's not like I'm naturally fit or anything. So I can slack off a bit. 

Some of you may recognise this kind of thinking. Zzzzzz. Let's move away from that stuff.

NOW: 

Grunts: No problem. 10 or 20? (When you've had to do hundreds, you have some perspective)
Jack knives: Bring them on. Really love them.
Sprinting: Way better now.  
Dirty dog push ups: ?!@@#*! (I'm not perfect)

I'm better now at the exercises and I watch my form. I still get exhausted, still feel nausea sometimes, but I don't take shortcuts. I can even watch out for other recruits and help out. I notice the body's aches and discomforts and know they are temporary. I appreciate what I can do and what I have yet to achieve. I am much less tolerant of my own excuses. It has become about how many extra reps I can get in *before* Senior's watch times out. What? Steady already?

getting up

I find people’s largest explicit wall of resistance to pre-dawn bootcamp is: "Why should I go? I can't get up."

Why do I go? I don't even ask myself that anymore. I just go, because it feels great and I can see all the goodness it has brought me.

The simplest thing I can do - and some may find this the hardest - is obey my phone alarm. When it goes off at 0420h, I just Get Up. This is so that by 0520h I Show Up at the field.

It's become simple because in 2010, I worked hard at Getting Up. It stopped being work when I learned, to my surprise, that I really love running around in a field with my fellow recruits.

Getting Up and just Showing Up are extremely underappreciated, both in what is needed and what is achieved.

At REBEL Boot Camp, Getting Up expresses itself not just as an actual exercise, but as the mental challenge you face every time you do a rep, every time you choose a positive thought over a negative one. It's the energy you use to keep yourself off the ground (like in planks), in taking the next step in your sprint, or in keeping motivated.

What I've found so valuable is that how you train yourself to behave at bootcamp is how you eventually end up behaving outside of it. The energy that you use to do that extra pushup, when you feel your muscles can't take it, becomes the energy you use to pull your head off your pillow in the morning, or the energy that drives you to treat those around you kindly, rather than otherwise.

It can only be a good thing then, when we become a positive, rather than negative force. So on the field, at work, at play, at home, in how we are with others, don't give up and say "I just can't."

Dust yourself off and Get Up.

 

revelations.

The biggest lesson I've learned so far in bootcamp is this:

I can suck at understanding parts of myself.

I think that I know what I'm doing, and why I'm doing things, but I get myself wrong some times. Of course, the very idea that I should understand myself completely, and all the time too, is ridiculous.

My trainers help me understand that my mental barriers get in my own way. Possibly, if I understood myself better, I would have learned these two things earlier:

1. That in exercise, I give myself up to a preconceived mental limit using an unknown physical limit as an excuse, and
2. Lack of being able to see an end result shouldn't be my cause for worry or hesitation.
   

In terms of the first, I learned this during a benchmark round, where one of the exercises is doing 8 laps of 200m in order to complete 1 mile. It was gruelling, and of course in my own mind, I can't run. Says me.

Corp. Sze kept me going along the way. After shuffling for most of the 8 laps, I managed to sprint out in a burst to finish the last 50m or so. On cooling down she came over and said to me "You can run... why are you holding back on yourself?" And indeed I was. But I had little idea that I had been doing that until she had said it, and after I had proved to myself that I could, in fact, run.

As for the second, this came when one of our exercises involved reaching cones in a distant part of the field. SJ Rebels rock it pre-dawn, so visibility is really low and the cones, while bright orange, are close to the ground.

Corp. Shamil's instructions were to run out there to the cones, do some exercises, and then run back. I couldn't see a thing, and said to him "But I can't see the cones...", to which he replied, "You'll see them on the way there."

That may sound like nothing - practical stuff really - but that really stuck with me, because it exemplified an approach about goals, about targets, and about having faith in a process. How many times have you not started things because you couldn't see the end? And how many times have you continued on with things not sure about the end, but seeing it getting closer the more effort you made?

What is the end you have in mind when you exercise?

 

 

hello december.

Five months ago, my life changed for the better.

Five months ago, if you told me I would enjoy waking up at 0430h, dragging myself to a big, muddy field and torturing myself willingly from 0545h-0645h, I would have looked at you funny. To say the least.

Now, I have so much more energy, I eat, breathe, sleep better and I laugh so much more. My clothes fit around me better. I smile more. I think healthier thoughts. And most importantly... now I have all these fabulous people I am honoured to call my friends, my bootcamp family.

They give me more funny looks than anyone else I know, while accepting me for being the misfit that I am. We cheer each other through the rain-drenched field, urge each other on to greater and better things and give each other kicks in the ass.

Out here in the dark, we prove to ourselves, over and over again, that within us there's more than we ever thought, and that together, that's multiplied tenfold.

We are REBEL Boot Camp.

Since I'm on a break from bootcamp right now, after five straight months of sweat, grass, mud and a heckuva lot of shouting - now it's time to get to writing. :)