Sunday, July 5, 2009

Some unexpected PR's in Miami Beach

I don't know what superpower came over me this weekend but... Saturday, the 4th of July I was in South Beach, Miami with my wife. If you've ever been to South Beach then you can envision the ambiance; the beautiful cars, hotels, people, great food, drinks, luscious landscape and the list goes on.

Probably, right now (and it has been for some time) Miami is my favorite place on earth. This day, on our way to the beach, after we walked a mile from our hotel on the other side (bayside) of the island, as usual we saw some guys (and gals) on the parkour fitness bars on the beach. There's four stations, a set of 3 pull-up bars of varying height, parallel bars, push-up bars and I believe a sit-up bench. There was one impressive black guy there who was in phenomenal shape and was doing some very basic but good, strong, and functional exercises. The others', were just kind of there. Some were REALLY TRYING TO LOOK COOL and showoff for the onlookers.

Now, I passed on going over to this area on Friday because, "I'm not that kind of guy." But, on day two, after walking to South Beach to have breakfast and watching some of these guys not go to full extension on their pull-ups and my wife constantly asking for me to "assist" her on some pull-ups (so she could better fit into her too-small-for-her dress later in the day) I figured "what the hell" and on our next walk, after walking another mile back to the hotel and then another mile back to the beach, I decided to try some stuff!

So, with that I somehow managed to hold a back lever (RATHER EASILY) hold a front lever (FOR ABOUT A SECOND, BUT IT DOESN'T MATTER), perform a right arm one-arm chin-up, and hold the FLAG with my left arm on the bottom for a really long tim!. I seriously have no idea where this strength came from. I told my wife that when under pressure, (I guess you could call a lot of people watching pressure), I seem to be able to bust stuff out that even makes my mind boggle. Now, I could go on and on how great this was for me and I've tried to describe to my wife the high that I got from doing this. But, it's no use. It's no use trying to tell anybody. This is one of the those things that is so personally gratifying that I simply can not put it into words. It makes me want to continue to just keep doing any and all things that I otherwise thought were impossible, from exercise, to school, to profession, to life.

There was a good bit of a crowd there on one of the world's most famous beaches and I received a bunch of cheers, praise and disbelief and... yeah, it felt pretty cool. But, if I would have done this in the wee hours of the morning without a soul in sight and no one there to witness it, rest assure that I would be just has thrilled, amazed and happy. Needless to say, I'm not necessarily happy to have left Miami, (I love it there and hate coming home sometimes), but I am looking forward to getting back to hitting some more moves and hitting the academics, two things that I have learned are completely in my control. Setting goals isn't always fun and can seem like a daunting task at times trying to achieve them (especially why you have multiple ones) but, when you do achieve them, DAMN, what a neat feeling!

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