Tag Archive for: sprints

My Secret Motivation: Older Women

I’m currently in LA so I’ve been hitting workouts in my hotel gym.

Now I don’t know about you, but I need my space when I work out. No, I don’t need the whole gym to myself, but I just need to not feel like someone else is on top of me (besides, I spent enough years wrestling, grappling, and living with roommates).

So I’m busy running sprints on the treadmill this morning and a woman of a certain age — ok let’s just face it, an old lady — bypasses all of the open treadmills not next to me and settles on the treadmill right next to me. I can’t tell you why this bothers me, but it does.

But then something AWESOME happens.

This little old lady locks onto my intervals and starts doing them with me!

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If that’s not a $hit ton of awesome right there, I don’t know what is. Inspired, I end up going extra rounds and really pushing myself thinking, I’m bringing some inspiration & motivation into her fitness routine. I went from pissed to honored in minutes.

After I finished and cooled down, she introduced herself — of course her name was Ruthie! — asked about my Halevy Life t-shirt (always shamelessly promoting!), and said she loved seeing someone work hard in the gym.

So…what’s the moral of the story? I think there are probably a solid 20, but my immediate takeaways:

1) You never know how you will affect other people, so always think like a leader.

2) Whether you want to be or not, you ARE a leader to someone at some point. Take this responsibility seriously.

3) Always choose the treadmill next to the little old lady. :)

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