What's Your Exertion?

Last year I joined a health and training program called “RabbisCanRun.” Dozens of rabbis spend months training to run, pounding the pavement wherever they live in a build-up to the grand finale — a trip to Fort Lauderdale for a health conference and marathon. Some rabbis ran 10k, some 15k, and a lot more, but they generally had one thing in common — they started from nowhere. These are rabbis who are busy helping Yidden practically day and night, and for many of them, myself included, the longest walk of the week was going to shul on Shabbos. After that, it was the distance from the car to the house, from the house to the car, car to shul, shul to car, and so on.

So how do you train such a group? It starts with having a legendary coach. Coach Meir K. was the one who had to somehow motivate, encourage, discipline, and support dozens of rabbis who had never done anything like this and were on impossible schedules that didn’t suddenly clear up because they had a marathon to train for.

I was expecting Coach K. to spend those few months yelling at me to run harder and faster, to push myself to the limits again and again. How else would I get from huffing and puffing from a single flight of stairs to running 10k? I was very surprised, and then puzzled and confused, and then annoyed, to discover that he seemed to do the exact opposite.

Part of the way we were required to track our progress was to document each run — and an important column on that spreadsheet was: (what was your) Exertion? On a scale from 1-10, considering all factors of how hard it was to get yourself to do this run, to change your clothes, get there, run your

distance etc. — how much did you exert yourself?

If your exertion was less than 4, you were in a little trouble from Coach K. But if your exertion was more than an 8, you were in big trouble from Coach K. Now do you see why I was first surprised, then confused, then annoyed? Why shouldn’t I push myself as hard as I possibly can? What kind of coach tells you to work less hard?

The answer to that turned out to be: a wise coach.

It seemed counter-intuitive at first, but as my training continued, I started to understand the brilliance of it. Let me say that more honestly: the more I ignored this silly coach

who didn’t want me to work too hard, the more I started to understand the brilliance of it.

Each time I ignored the “What’s Your Exertion” rule, two things would happen (after the runner’s high and the Coach-K-doesn’t-know-what-he’s-talking-about high wore off). Firstly, I would naturally be more sore in the coming days, which may have made me unable to do my next scheduled run, throwing me off track. But maybe even worse, I would now see a “run” as this intense, level-10 exertion, run-your-brains-out activity. That’s a much harder mountain to climb, psychologically speaking. It’s much easier to get out and run a pleasant run that involves pushing yourself a bit than to say “OK now I’m going to go kill myself and probably be sore for a week.”

So yes, short term there is nothing like the runner’s high from a level-10 exertion. But after is all said and done, if you do that, you are ruining your long-term chances of success — dramatically.

That’s just the sur mei’ra. The asei tov is where Coach

K.’s utter brilliance really comes through. If you finish your run on a level 7, when you could pushed yourself harder, and wanted to go all in on a level 10, then you finish your run wanting more. You finish your run, and instead of feeling like you are dead and can’t do this again, you feel like you could have done more, and you want to do this again. There is an itch that you haven’t fully scratched.

The next time you have the opportunity to run, you are much more likely to not only do it — but anticipate it and even be excited for it. Because there is a part of you that was left wanting more, and that part is pushing you to get it. And then you do it all over again, do your run but don’t over exert yourself, and you end the next run wanting more too.

What does this have to do with the Nekuda Tova Sukkos magazine?

Well I can’t explain what this has to do with Sukkos, but the Nekuda Tova is where Yidden help Yidden get closer to Hashem, and this rule of Coach K. has absolutely transformed my relationship with Hashem, and so I share it with the hope that you can use it, too. {Ehheh, sorry Coach K, I meant with the hopes that you sign up to Olami’s RabbisCanRun training program, which is now open to all men, even if they are not a rabbi, and you can learn more and sign up at rabbiscanrun.org.}

I used to think that when it comes to avodas Hashem,

“the more the merrier.” I mean, push yourself a little for Yiddishkeit = good; push yourself a lot for Yiddishkeit = super good; level 10 exertion = best of the best, isn’t it?

But the truth is that we are in it for the long term. More specifically, Hashem wants to be in it for the long term. If a level-10 exertion leaves you feeling wasted inside, and that means you are likely to burn out in the long term, you’ve over-exerted yourself.

Operating within your personal realm of possibility (nekudas habechira / threshold of choice [SEE SIDEBAR]) means that the mission of a Yid is to constantly push yourself out of your comfort zone, to run ‘harder and faster’ towards Hashem than you did last time. If you aren’t genuinely pushing yourself out of your comfort zone, you aren’t growing. And if you aren’t growing, you’re likely regressing. So if your exertion in Yiddishkeit is less than 4, you may find yourself in a little trouble from the Coach (Coach H’).

But if your exertion is over an 8, you might find yourself in BIG trouble. Because the last thing you want is for your over-exertion to lead to drop out of the race…

That’s just the Sur Mei’ra. The asei tov is what happens when you hold yourself back in that sweet spot where you are pushing yourself out of your comfort zone, but stopping short of your threshold of over-exertion. This leaves your neshamah yearning for more. This leaves you in a state of being perfectly primed, charged, and ready for more. This means you finish a

for a quick “Shema,” you may be at your level 7 already, and trying to daven the whole Shacharis might put you over the top. You don’t want to “price yourself out” of a mitzvah through over-exertion. Nobody gains from that. Hashem wants you for the long term!

On the other end of the spectrum, if you can learn Torah with a fiery passion and deveykus for hours upon hours without straining yourself, you may only be clocking in at a level-4 exertion, and that means that you are operating below your threshold of choice. Somewhat ironically, the Yid putting on tefillin in the morning for 5 minutes might

mitzvah and you are ready for the next one, without burning out, without needing breaks to recover.

That is truly living the dream. מי יעלה בהר השם ומי יקום במקום קדשו, who will climb the mountain of Hashem, and who will remain standing in His holy place. That’s how we grow, step by step, to climb the mountain of Hashem, getting closer and closer to Him. This is how we “remain in His holy place,” constantly in a state of yearning for more and excited for the next mitzvah. That’s how we prevent ourselves from dropping out of the race, and that’s how we rejoin the climb if we’ve overexerted ourselves and fallen.

And that’s what I want to share in the hopes that it will help other Yidden.

Thank you, Coach K.

THRESHOLD OF CHOICE

Based on the Torah of Rav Dessler zt’l

Hashem doesn’t hold every Jew to the same bar, and doesn’t ask any individual to do something that is impossible for him or her in their unique circumstances. It is Hashem that puts us into our unique environment in the first place after all. Nobody chooses which parents they are born to, how they are raised, where they grow up, where their parents send them to school, how religious or inspired their family is, and so on. But He asks us to push ourselves out of our spiritual comfort zone, and continue to take one step at a time in our spiritual growth.

So Hashem chooses your starting line, and He wants to see how far along you can get. He takes all factors into consideration when evaluating your exertion. Your background and education, your nature, family, environment, and every single obstacle that makes it difficult.

If it took you enormous internal effort to put on tefillin in the morning due to your unique circumstances, and you manage to put them on

for a quick “Shema,” you may be at your level 7 already, and trying to daven the whole Shacharis might put you over the top. You don’t want to “price yourself out” of a mitzvah through over-exertion. Nobody gains from that. Hashem wants you for the long term!

On the other end of the spectrum, if you can learn Torah with a fiery passion and deveykus for hours upon hours without straining yourself, you may only be clocking in at a level-4 exertion, and that means that you are operating below your threshold of choice. Somewhat ironically, the Yid putting on tefillin in the morning for 5 minutes might  be the higher tzadik in Hashem’s eyes.

The concept of threshold of choice teaches us that, in Hashem’s eyes, the most important way to measure our growth is: starting from our starting point — which is the exact circumstances you find yourself in right now — how often are you pushing yourself out of your spiritual comfort zone? Not how much you are pushing yourself, because the “more” is not “merrier”, because over-exertion can drop you out of the race. Rather, how often are you pushing yourself out of your comfort zone?