Turkish Torture

In any sort of physical training program, there is always something just out of your reach to which you are aspiring.  But how far out of your reach?

Last week my physical therapist decided to have me do a Turkish getup, figuring it would fire up my gluts and abs and virtually every part of my body.  From the get-go, I could see that this maneuver was way harder than anything else I had ever attempted.  By the end of the session, I had managed to do one small piece of it and I was totally exhausted and a little discouraged.  I’m sure my attitude did not seem overly positive.

We had an email conversation afterwards about this and I hoped it would be put off for a while until the necessary body parts could be strengthened through exercises I could more easily do.  But that didn’t seem to happen.

Instead I showed up today for my hour with my trainer (who works for the PT) and he once again attempted to convince my body it could do the Turkish getup.  Despite his words of encouragement, it still seemed pretty hopeless.

I understand that to progress we need to be challenged.  But my question is how challenged should that be?  It seems like it might be better to move through a series of progressively harder exercises which would give me some positive feedback along the way if I could actually do them.

I consider that I usually have a fairly optimistic attitude toward new things, but every now and then I am reminded just how far I still have to go.