Dear friends,

I would like to share this snippet from a book (which Ernest has kindly passed to me) where I read about my Idol, Bruce Lee. Really inspirational especially during times when we feel that "we can't" anymore. Use this little story to remind yourself and to push yourself, always.

Stirling Silliphant (a student of Lee's) relates an interesting story that perfectly embodies Lee's attitude toward progressive resistance in cardiovascular training,
as well as his refusal to let a person-in this case Silliphant -underestimate his own physical potential:

Bruce had me up to three miles a day, really at a good pace. We'd run the three miles in twenty, one or twenty, two minutes. Just under eight minutes a mile

[Note: when running on his own in 1968, Lee would get his time down to six,and,a,half minutes per mile].

So this morning he said to me "We're going to go five."

I said, "Bruce, I can't go five. I'm a helluva lot older than you are, and I can't do five."

He said, "When we get to three, we'll shift gears and it's only two more and you'll do it."
I said "Okay, hell, I'll go for it."

So we get to three, we go into the fourth mile and I'm okay for three or four minutes, and then I really begin to give out. I'm tired, my heart's pounding, I can't go any more and so I say to him, "Bruce if I run any more, "-and we're still
running-"if I run any more I'm liable to have a heart attack and die."

He said, "Then die." It made me so mad that I went the full five miles. Afterward I went to the shower and then I wanted to talk to him about it.

I said, you know, '''Why did you say that?"

He said, "Because you might as well be dead. Seriously, if you always put limits on what you can do, physical or any, thing else, it'll spread over into the rest of your life. It'll spread into your work, into your morality, into your entire being. There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level."

(Taken from "The Art Of Expressing The Human Body")

So, when things seem daunting, and times are bad. Or when you seem helpless or ready to give up...remember, it is just a Plateau. PUSH BEYOND THAT.

Cheers!