One afternoon my dad picks up my bag of resistance bands and asks me what they are. After I tell him, his reply was simple, true, and yet hilarious: “Oh, you do resistance training and I resist training!”
In that moment I realized something.
We have a choice.
We either train or we don’t.
There is no in-between.
We are either getting stronger or getting weaker.
In this season of my life God has led me to run a marathon. With this challenge comes another more difficult challenge – rather than my pace getting faster, it’s getting slower. Instead of running an easy 11:00 minute pace, I run anywhere from 12:00 – 15:00. That is a huge squash to my ego. I want to train to be fast and run longer. But the sad thing is our bodies can’t really handle the extra distance and the extra speed if it’s never done it before, it will crash and burn out.
My dad has always been a huge supporter of my dreams, particularly my running ones, and he likes to come up with these crazy ideas and challenges he tells me I should do. My favorites have been ones like:
- “Don’t track your runs till your next race,”
- “Just go out and run, when someone asks you what your pace is, simply tell them, ‘I don’t know, I just run such-and-such a distance.’,” and
- “Run a certain amount of time one way, like a half hour and then run back, don’t focus on your time.”
My Heavenly Father has technically told me the same thing,
- “Just run. Don’t compete. Better yourself and enjoy spending time with me.”
This causes me to want to bale on training because it is not yielding the results my flesh really wants – to be faster than everyone else. I want to resist training firstly because it hurts and secondly because it goes against what my flesh wants. But isn’t that how we grow? By going against the grain, against what feels good and what is comfortable?
The way a resistance band works is like pulling against the grain, making a certain exercise movement harder than it would have been otherwise. As time goes on, an easy band may become too easy, so you switch to a medium band. Overtime that medium band becomes too easy and you must go to the intermediate one. Before you know it, you will be using the extra-hard band and find that that too is becoming not enough.
In life circumstances come and go. Seasons come and go. Years come and go. Trials, situations, opportunities… what are we doing with all of these? Is it pulling us down, weakening us, throwing us into an internal prison? Or are we growing stronger by the minute, getting up and running forward when we get knocked down?
It is your choice! You can either resist the training that God brings your way or you can use these times to get stronger and grow closer to your Creator. Let’s choose to do Resistance Training rather than to resist it!
“Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.”
Galatians 6:7-9
I love being able to share my heart and all God teaches me with you all, and I pray for you as my reader often. If you ever have any specific prayer requests, please feel free to contact me, I would love to pray for you! Having support and prayer from others makes Resistance Training so much easier.
May God bless you, Happy Running Ya’ll!!
Be Still and Run 