Part 2 – Estudiar Espanol y Hacer Dominadas
Translation – Studying Spanish and Doing Pull-ups.
Confession…I had to look that up on Google Translate so if my conjugations are off, call me out in the comments below. Learning Spanish was my second New Year’s resolution a year ago, and it has not gone quite as well as the guitar goal (see Part 1 on Page 2 below). But the best decision I made was signing up for classes at The Language Academy of the Carolinas.
Life lesson – figure out what you can do on your own and admit to yourself when you need a coach or group setting to succeed. For me on the guitar, I have been self-motivated, disciplined, and able to learn online through videos and tab sites. But I knew myself enough to know that for my Spanish goals, I needed a classroom setting with homework and accountability. Be honest with yourself and find the right path to get results.
The Language Academy was a great experience. Our teacher, Rosa, is from South America, and she taught with an energy that was infectious. I appreciate her and the classmates holding me accountable and I look forward to taking Level 2 at some point this year (putting it out there so you can hold me to it too).
One assignment was learning verbs with -ir, -er, and -ar endings. I decided to take my Spanish notebook to the playground and “Combine my to-do’s!”…
The plan was to not leave until I got 100 pull-ups. I knew that would be around 20 sets. I would start strong with a set of 8, then maybe 6, but would easily settle into sets of 4 or 5, then the last 20 or so were in sets of 2 or 3. But that was ok, because that gave me 20-ish opportunities to read my list of Spanish verbs and lock them into memory. Here’s one of the pages I was studying that day:
So, again, I would do some pull-ups and then have the English translation side covered up, and I would read the verbs and translate. Then I switched it on the next break…cover the English translation and say the verb and what it means. Thirty minutes later (I timed it for some extra incentive and so I could track it), I finished the 100th pull-up and felt confident with the verb assignment.
This is not the post to go into how the brain processes things and if you are struggling with learning then take a walk or add physical activity and see what happens. But there are tons of great articles and research about how exercise can help with brain activity. Yet another reason to combine your loves or to-do’s and get things done!
The goal of this series is to help you overcome excuses of not having enough time or creativity to get your workout done with all of the other things you want to accomplish. I have not broken down pull-up technique, but am always happy to address specific fitness questions if you have them. Next week, a cool prayer experience and kettlebell swings!
Live with Strength!
Jason
