As a personal coach, it is my job to push my clients into achieving the best they can in many aspects of their lives, and like them, I too need a good push every now an again.

I’ve been a long time advocate of early morning exercise as a great way to kick-start your day.

In my recent article, Breaking your own glass ceiling I mentioned pushing myself on my morning run last week and achieving my fastest 5km run in over 18 months.

This led me to wonder at why I was able to achieve this and why had I become so slow anyway!

We all know that as we get older, we get slower. So, at 50 years of age, it is easy for me to tell myself that I have reached my limit.

What really happened is that over time I had found a comfortable jogging pace that had become my own glass ceiling. I had convinced myself that when I was running fast, I was going as fast as I could and so I didn’t push past this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uz3ZLpCmKCM

I was held back by my own self-limiting beliefs’¦ something I’m often helping my clients overcome.

So how did I finally push through my glass ceiling? I used the same technique that Roger Bannister used to break the impossible four-minute mile glass ceiling. I ran with friends who were faster than me, they were my pace men.

For many years, the scientific and athletic communities thought that it was impossible to run a four-minute mile. Yet, in 1954 Roger Bannister finally broke this barrier in a time 3:59.4 and he did it by setting up a team of athletes to set the pace for him.

Once the 4-minute mile barrier had been broken, suddenly the world knew that it wasn’t impossible and within weeks athletes around the world began breaking the four-minute mile glass ceiling.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP_NzZP_LK0

Today, the four-minute mile barrier is a distant memory and the best times these great athletes achieved would place them a long way back in the field behind current record holder Hicham El Guerrouj who ran 3:43.13 in 1999.

No matter what field of endeavour you are competing in, you will have a glass ceiling ‘“ a barrier that you think you can’t break through.

What do you think your glass ceiling is and how much do you want to break through it?

See also:

Breaking your glass ceiling at the gym

Breaking your own glass ceiling

If you have a fitness goal, this can be an easy thing to do. The world is full of people who want to get fit, but for one reason or another, can’t stick to a regular fitness routine.

Regularly going to the gym is one of those activities I’ve struggled with over the years until, about five or six years ago, when I teamed up with a friend and together we’ve kept each other on track by setting gym appointments with each.

It is a lot harder to miss an exercise session when you know your training partner got out of bed at 5am and is standing there waiting for you.

The hidden downside of regular exercise

Making an appointment with your workout buddy really helps to keep you motivated. But simply turning up and doing your workout together is not the final solution.

If you aren’t constantly vigilant, complacency can easily sneak up on you. Sure, you are regularly doing some exercise, but the benefit you get from it can easily diminish.

When you first start doing regular exercise, it is hard. Then, over time it becomes easier and easier as your body adjusts to the routine, until it reaches a point where your body hardly notices the exercise at all.

What happened?

Your body reaches a point where lifting a certain weight becomes comfortable. You find yourself doing ten reps and you stop, because 10 reps is what you’ve told yourself you need to do. You have just created your very own glass ceiling and complacency sets in when you don’t push yourself much past it.

It is funny, but it sneaks up on you. This happened to Don and I a few weeks ago. I suddenly realised the exercise wasn’t really having much effect on us ‘“ it had become too easy and we had stopped improving.

We decided to change to drop sets, starting our workout with a weight that we could hardly lift and dropping down a bit in weight until we had achieved our goal for the set.

Continued… Breaking the glass ceiling when running

See also:

Breaking your glass ceiling at the gym

Breaking the glass on my morning run

It is just too easy to be mediocre. In fact, the world seems to conspire to make us fit somewhere in the middle… to be average. I’ve fallen into this trap many times myself, and what it means is that we create our own glass ceiling in each aspect of our lives.

A week ago, I decided to really push myself at the gym. Working with my personal trainer, I managed to lift much heavier weights in almost every exercise I’ve tried. Spotting me, my training partner Don, has been having similarly dramatic improvements.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O71LaA3zxds

Only 4 weeks ago (Jan 21) I tore my right calf muscle and was out of action for a few weeks.

Then yesterday, I went for my morning run and pushed myself, managing to achieve my fastest run over 5km for the year ‘“ even faster than I did the same distance last year’¦

This surprised me because I’m 50 years old, (so any improvement is a good one) plus I’m a bit heavier than I was for most of last year.

The glass ceiling

It is human nature, that when faced with a challenge so much greater than we have ever faced before, our first response is; ‘I can’t do that!’ And so we set ourselves a more achievable goal.

Whether it is a work challenge, a fitness challenge or a financial or lifestyle challenge, unconsciously we create our own glass ceiling for everything we do. Commonly, we set our expectations too low. This way, it becomes easier for us to achieve what we set out to do ‘“ and unfortunately, we rarely rise above the goals we set ourselves.

So how did I break my fitness ceiling this time?

In my experience, breaking your glass ceiling requires three steps; in this order:

1. Change your mindset about how you set your goals.
2. Set yourself up for change by doing something different.
3. Put it into action

Continued… Breaking your Glass Ceiling at the Gym

See also:

Breaking the glass ceiling on my morning run

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWVkkYQQg4s

Unfortunately, I’m still battling my injured foot so I’ll be taking it fairly easy again this week. But, at this stage of preparation, you should be feeling at your peak.

The idea it to use this last serious training week to focus on your endurance and speed with some short runs with effort and then one final long run at the end of the week.

Try lengthening your stride. By adding only a few centimetres per stride, you can take minutes from your 14km time.

Good luck.

Related Articles

View this training schedule on Google Calendars
or download it and add to your computer’s calendar.

City2Surf Training Plan – Lifting Your Game – Overview

• City2Surf Training Plan Stage One
• City2Surf training plan ‘“ Stage Two
• City2Surf training plan ‘“ Stage Three

• Week 11 – Introduction to a routine (Rest Day) (First gym day)
• Week 10 – Start off Nice and Easy
• Week 9 – Continue at an easy pace
• Week 8 -  Noticing changes in yourself
  Jogging and Running : what’s the difference?
• Week 7 – Step it up a notch
  Calculating your Ideal Training Level
• Week 6 – Focus on Breathing
• Week 5 – Arm Power
• Week 4 – High Effort
• Week 3 – Steady as She Goes
• Week 2 – Focus on Endurance
• Week 1 – How to Cut minutes of your City2Surf time with 24 Hours to go
• City to Surf 2009 – We are off

I find that it makes a big difference to my performance if I train with hills as opposed to training without them, but it doesn’t necessarily make a big difference whether I run all the way up or walk and jog up the hills.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1FJD-eS2X8

This interval style (fartlek) of hill training works quite well for me because it means that my muscles get used to the action and the strain, yet my overall heart rate isn’t pushed too hard.

So that when it comes to a big hill in an event, such as ‘Heartbreak Hill’ in the City2Surf, I can generally jog up it with minimal discomfort. In fact, one year I remember running along watching the ground and the people around me so intently that I didn’t realise that I was going uphill until I was rounding the bend half way up Heartbreak Hill.

Related Articles

View this training schedule on Google Calendars
or download it and add to your computer’s calendar.

City2Surf Training Plan – Lifting Your Game – Overview

• City2Surf Training Plan Stage One
• City2Surf training plan ‘“ Stage Two
• City2Surf training plan ‘“ Stage Three

• Week 11 – Introduction to a routine (Rest Day) (First gym day)
• Week 10 – Start off Nice and Easy
• Week 9 – Continue at an easy pace
• Week 8 -  Noticing changes in yourself
  Jogging and Running : what’s the difference?
• Week 7 – Step it up a notch
  Calculating your Ideal Training Level
• Week 6 – Focus on Breathing
• Week 5 – Arm Power
• Week 4 – High Effort
• Week 3 – Steady as She Goes
• Week 2 – Focus on Endurance
• Week 1 – How to Cut minutes of your City2Surf time with 24 Hours to go
• City to Surf 2009 – We are off