BELIEVE!!! Show Someone Else The Way

I was out in Colorado on business.  I love traveling out there because there are so many cool outdoor things to do.   I go out to Red Rocks (an outdoor amphitheater built into the rocks) and workout.  The views are amazing and you can get a great workout by going up and down about 100 rows of seats.

I was getting my workout in and it was a really nice day.  I had started out with a run.    I started at the top and went across each row and when I would get to the end I would drop down a row and run across that one.  I did this until I got to the bottom.  Next I did some bounding up and down the seats.

There was a group of kids from one of the local YMCA’s.  They were all sitting at the top of the amphitheater, checking out the view and watching people workout.  Some people come up with some cool things here.  If you watch them you can definitely pick some good stuff up.  When I passed these kids I heard a couple of them making some comment about having a lot of muscle.  The next time I passed, this one kid asks me my name.  I said, “Eric.  What’s yours?”.  He said, “I’m Arnold.  Arnold Schwarzenegger.”  I left and kept going.  I was about to go onto my next exercise.  I stopped and went back over to “Arnold”.  I said, “hey, do you want to finish my workout with me.”  The kid gets this big grin on his face and he says, “Yeah, that would be awesome.”  Some other kids jumped up and asked if they could jump in also.  I told them that they could.  These kids are all between 8 and 12.  They asked what we were going to do.  “First thing that we will do is dips.  3 dips on each row all the way down.”  We would put our hands on the seats of one row and feet on the seats below us.  Knock out 3 dips and crawl down to the next level.  These kids all lined up and went down the entire thing with me.

As we went I could hear a couple of them saying how hard it was, but they kept going.  It wasn’t like they were really complaining, just saying what they felt.  We get to the bottom and “Arnold” says, “How are we getting back up?” I said, “push-ups.  3 push ups for every row and then crawl to the next.”  He says, “Ok, can we rest first?”  I said, “Sure…Ready, let’s go.”  I guess he needed more time than that.  I gave them a couple of minutes and then we got back to work.  We go within 20 seats from the top and I added 2 more push-ups per seat.  When we got 10 rows out, I said, “Alright we now have 10 push-ups per row until we finish.”  At this point there were at least 50 people at the top of amphitheater watching us.  When we got to the top, all these people started to cheer for the kids.  We are all high fiving each other.  I said, “Do you guys know how many push-ups you just did?”  They all said, “No”.   My response was, “Over 300”.  They all were a little freaked out and excited about that.    More than likely they had never come close to that number in a day.

There were probably 20 kids that jumped in and out during the whole workout.  3 of them were there the whole time.  These kids jumped into my workout, because it was different and because I invited them into it.  It’s amazing what someone can do when they don’t look at as a hurdle.  The old me would have ignored these kids.  Don’t be a spectator.