The Mind is a Curious Thing

Lately I've been looking into various exercises so that I can increase my body's ability to do things like proper pushups and improve what I may be able to do in Kung Fu (eg. improved balance). Just doing more pushups, even wall pushups doesn't help, in fact it's getting worse, and I wonder if the clicking in my lumbar spine might be better served if I did different exercises other than situps in order to be able to stabilize my spine while doing hip opening movements such as side heal kicks.

Many of the exercises recommended have been static exercises, so I wasn't sure how to "count" them. Unfortunately, I couldn't seem to give myself permission to count these alternative exercises towards my pushups and situps, it somehow felt like "cheating", until the I Ho Chuan meeting the other night. When I asked about it they said to not injure yourself and that you can count the number of seconds you hold a static exercise for instead of counting repetitions.

It was such a relief to be given "permission" to make these changes. It seems so silly! I'm a grown adult, capable of making decisions for myself! I have a knowledge of physiology that I can apply to all of this to make informed decisions! Yet for some reason my mind wanted... NEEDED... permission from an outside source with some sort of "authority" (i.e. the IHC team and/or a Sifu).

The mind is a curious thing.

Numbers are starting to go up again, and faster... now that I have "permission".