Resistance Is How You Improve Your Hustle

A lesson from SoulCycle

When you’re on a bike at SoulCycle two things are on your mind:

(1) the question of how 45 minutes could be such a long time

And

(2)what resistance looks like for you

The knob at the front of the bike determines how hard your legs are going to have to push to pedal your way through Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You.” You set the resistance based on where your body is in that moment. Not where it’s been before and not where you want it to be, that single present moment is the only one that matters.

The time on that bike teaches you that self-awareness is the most important weapon in your arsenal. You feel muscles in your body wake up for the first time in a while, reminding you that you’re there, you take up space, and this is your time.

Self-awareness in that moment comforts because it helps you know your limits, but it also challenges because it’s a reminder that you can add a quarter or half turn more on the bike. You can push.

I may still be a little out of it from my last SoulCycle class but I see a direct line between how the class is structured to how life should be lived.

You don’t want to phone it in on life. You don’t want to sit on the bike and leave the knob’s resistance at zero just so that it can seem like 45-minutes of pedaling was the easiest thing you did all day.

Because it wouldn’t be. It’d be a reminder of a time that you copped out of giving yourself something you deserve.

Growth doesn’t happen in a day and even when it does happen it doesn’t always feel comfortable. I’ve been known to need deep breathing exercises immediately following a moment that I’ve bet on myself or let myself be vulnerable. But for all the deep breathing that’s happened on subway rides home, I’ve never once regretted giving myself the time and space it took to be brave.

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I’m the founder of toodamnyoung.com. You can find me talking about mental health, grief and work-life on Living Vulnerably: https://medium.com/living-vulnerably

I also host Creating Espacios, podcast for the next generation of Latina trailblazers.

Follow along as I condense essays into 140 characters: https://twitter.com/vivnunez