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Who loves working out?

Next To This Guy, Me Neither...

Nobody has all the time in the world to work out, so you gotta make good on the little bit of time you do have. As you work out you can try to keep in mind working on different muscle groups, focus on keeping your reps and weight in line with what you are training for, and of course making sure you have a workout buddy keep you motivated!

The most important thing of all as you are lifting though, as any good gym rat will tell you, is proper form while lifting.

It is critical to lift properly to effectively build strength and to keep you safe from injury. Without that, you can end up with some ugly consequences or just plain wreck yourself and negate your best efforts. People most often neglect proper form when, for one crazy reason or another, they try to lift with too much weight for where they are at.

An Extreme Example Of A Serious Problem

C'mon, you've seen this before! Usually its the guy in the overpriced underarmor gear who you will never see in that gym again, that guy who only works out only on the leg press machine to "impress" the people around him, or that guy who is gonna break his back doing ugly deadlifts. Good people... you don't want to be that guy.

My favorite gym has a sign as you walk in that says, "Check Your Ego at the Door!"
The same principle that is ever present in the weightroom is found in our everyday search to grow closer to our Heavenly Father and walk the path that Jesus Christ has shown. It is that mentality in life that leads us to truly grow. It is that maturity that puts us in a teachable attitude. It is an understanding that to truly get stronger, we must do things in the right way at the right time. From it stems the blessing of seeing imperfections and then being able to actually do something about them. Basically, you cannot fix a problem that you cannot see that you have. Ether 12:27 are words from the Lord about our spiritual growth in the everyday gym that life provides:

And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them.

Strength In The Savior

Proper form includes relying upon Him fully. We cannot do it alone. No matter where we are at this very second, we are NEVER above doing the little things like reading our scriptures or praying or going to church... check your ego at the door. In so doing, we can all become the spiritual giants our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ KNOW we can be.

I Need Some Sleep, It Can't Go On Like This

Who would have thought a simple reflex action could unveil so much to me? I realized something about myself last night as the clock struck 3:27am... that time of night had a pretty good thunderstorm directly overhead and it happened to wake all three of us Elders up with one particularly awesome roll of thunder.

As I woke up startled by the storm, I immediately slid out of bed onto my knees into the prayer position.

Now let me just say, some missionaries go their entire mission without effectively getting to the point where as soon as they wake up they automatically get into their morning prayer. Its a tough groove to get into! Last night though, just as soon as I woke up, BAM! onto the floor I went! I didn't recognize it at the time, but once I started to reflect upon it I realized what an accomplishment that was to wake up and hit the floor.

But still, the longer I pondered on last night and the more my mind started to penetrate the fog that shrouded the memory of it, the more profound I understood it to be. Unlike some mornings, I remember the actual prayer I offered last night. Where usually they can prove to be mundane or wrote or unimaginative, this time I had slid to my knees and prayed that we would be safe.

I had prayed that no harm or accident would befall any of my companions or people in the area who we knew. I prayed that I would be okay, and that everything would be okay. Shoot, I even got a little overdramatic at the time (we all know how crazy it is being between dreaming and waking) and asked to make sure no tornado's came and blew us all away!

Its good that I'm in the groove to get outta bed... but that's not what really caught me offguard. I'm one of those people who sometimes feels his prayers are bouncing off the ceiling, and plenty of times I look for guidance and feel as if I somehow come up short or didn't receive an answer in any measurable way. But last night as I kneeled somewhere between awake and dreaming, I knew without a doubt that every thing was going to be alright. I just felt warm all of a sudden, like somebody had thrown a fleece blanket straight from the dryer onto me. I recieved in a very real way the comfort that I had prayed for as I awoke like a little child scared of the big bad storm in the night.

It has surprised me as I started looking on how much I've come to rely on God and the Savior in just this short time ive been out here. My first response to being scared was turning to prayer, calling for my Shepherd. Now don't get me wrong... I still got a long way to go (im hard headed), but I would like to think im slowly gaining ground on, "becoming as a little child" as Jesus talks about in Matthew 18:3-4. Maybe its going to take a couple more storms for me to really get it, but im hoping sooner rather then later.