Push past the finish line

This is a phrase I picked up from my “trainer” (aka the website I subscribe too 🙂 but she’s really great, check it out). Not sure if she’s said it in more than one class or if I just watch that class a lot but it feels like I’ve heard it a number of times and each time it “chimes” internally.  The context is she’s encouraging us to give that last burst, to finish hard/strong for our round of burpees or whatever current torture she’s putting us through – ha!

That got me starting to think about execution in general. For example, there’s a similar concept I have to apply in my riding. If I want to go over a jump well, with purpose, I need to act as if I’m headed for the jump after it. I can’t think “finish this and we’re done” or I coast into the landing of the jump and it’s too “floppy” (totally a technical riding term, I swear 😛 wait, you know it’s not, right?) which means if I did have another jump to do, I’d crash. Or because I’ve let go of the energy that was keeping me propelled if my horse spooked or I just wanted to look “crisp” – the necessary “pop” is not there.

When I think beyond exercise and into other goals I see same inertia there too. For my career I’d been driven by a specific monetary target for most of my life, when I the target the “invisible hand” that had been pushing me just went “pfffft” and that was it. Now granted there are other contributing factors to my slowed career growth, that’s for another post(s), blog, lifetime… but similar enough to fit this topic. Same with saving for retirement too – there was a number, a goal, a destination – when those things fell pretty much into place the drive to get over the final hump downshifted.

I’ve been thinking about this since yesterday’s workout. I need to start looking past/ pushing past the finish line in my life in general. So many things we want to accomplish require momentum, physical, mental, emotional – often all 3. Keeping something in motion is so much easier than starting from zero.

What can we do? How can we plan to avoid the “Peter Principle” as in petering out – not being promoted beyond our skill level. I’m thinking it’s planning from the start to push past the finish line, focus on the next jump, stick the landing. I’m going to try it, we’ll see how it goes 🙂