By: Brad Hankins
It’s a new year! Hope, a new start at new things as well as the opportunity to revisit old things in new ways, gives meaning to this time of year. This annual reset also gives us pause to consider different approaches to past struggles, be they emotional, behavioral or physical. We hope you will consider your local South Sound YMCA branch as a partner in planning and implementing your wishes and goals.
Let’s start the year with a rarely discussed part of overall fitness, stamina. The duo of Merriam and Webster define stamina as, “the bodily or mental capacity to sustain a prolonged stressful effort or activity”. However, stamina is more than that, it is not endurance – it is that place past endurance. It is having the mental and physical reserves to meet and exceed not just challenges but blatant adversity. Stamina is the fuel of courage and resolve.
Over years of emergency room Nursing, I found two main things helped people survive the worst day of their life, an uncommon will to live and stamina. Stamina in form of deep physical and mental reserves, in other words both gas tanks were full and available to fuel the next 48 to 72 hours of incredible need. Granted this is worst case scenario, but it gives you an idea we are not talking about something superficial. Instead, this is something that it is part of our being.
Stamina is developed over time, with awareness and purpose. It is a combination of routinely overcoming physical limits and learning to navigate complex emotional and mental challenges, all the while remaining grateful. Time is the key; stamina does not weave its way through us over weeks or months, but years. The time-bound process of imbedding stamina is one of many ways age is in our favor.
In another time stamina would be defined as toughness, grit, guts. Those of us raised by depression era parents and whose mothers and fathers won World War Two understand these terms. So, in this age of AI and same day Amazon Prime deliveries how do we connect to our parent’s strength, fortitude and willpower? Discipline. We do it through discipline, the same way they did
Discipline is doing the right thing, for the right reason regardless the obstacles. You find discipline going for your daily walk on a cold, windy, rainy morning because of the weather challenge, not staying in bed because the weather is challenging. You embrace discipline when you give grace to the person who beat you to a parking space, and not succumb to self-defeating anger. And like many things, discipline weakens if not regularly exercised.
By exercising discipline you can, in turn, build stamina. You build physical stamina by going a minute more on the treadmill than last time, pushing out an extra rep on the chest machine, or swimming a half lap more than yesterday. Mental stamina can be incrementally improved by focusing, read a book (a whole book) and begin by keeping your reading focused for 15 minutes at a time. Develop your emotional stamina by learning to take a breath before negative feelings overwhelm you, then learn to let one breath become two then three.
Building stamina, in any of these three areas, is not easy. That’s the point, and the reason stamina is becoming rare in both individuals and societies. This year challenge yourself, improve yourself emotionally, physically and mentally. And you need no other reason than a simple desire to be a better person.
I would enjoy hearing about your fitness journey, please feel free to email me at hankinsb@ssymca.net.
Brad Hankins RN, CPT
