YOU ARE TIED TO A CHAIR AND YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW IT….
This is the secret of breaking your 4-minute mile goal
It gets me antsy if I stay indoor for long, so I always consider myself an outdoor guy. I played soccer, then when I started working, I can’t play soccer with friends anymore, I switched to running and stumbled with triathlon.
I even studied exercise physiology at the University of Central Florida in Orlando because I love to exercise.
Nowadays though, I walk and jog but not compete, but let me tell you a story how I discovered my “4-minute mile.”
But first of all, what is the 4-minute mile?
On May six 1954 Roger Bannister became the first man ever to run the mile in under four minutes his time, three minutes, 59.4 seconds. You may not know this, but back in the early 1950s doctors and exercise experts and physiologist said that this was unequivocally impossible for the human body to run this fast.
Yet one man with one idea cemented deeply in his head, shattered that belief and the experts reality, with just one race.
In the 1940s the mile record was pushed to four minutes and one second where it stood for nine years. But this also means that for all of the time before that hundreds of thousands of years since man has been on earth walking, no man or woman has broken this elusive four minute mile barrier.
Was it a mental barrier? Was it an emotional barrier or wasn’t really a physical barrier? As the experts suggested, it could be a physical barrier, so let’s look at how Roger Bannister shocked the world and made everyone revise their beliefs about what is possible.
Just two years ago, earlier at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics Bannister set a British record in the 1500 meters, yet that wasn’t enough to win the race. He finished in fourth place on May 2nd, 1953 a year before he broke the mile record.
He made an attempt to break that four minute mile record and he failed. He ran the mile fast in four minutes, 0.36 seconds and here’s what he said. After he tried so hard and failed to break the record, he said, this race made me realize that the four minute mile was not out of reach and he said he wasn’t going to quit.
He said that not achieving his goal strengthened his resolve to be the world’s first four minute miler, and he kept training and focusing on this goal, that vision and the prize.
Most people don’t know this, but in 1946 Roger banister began medical school in Oxford where he had won a scholarship and everyday, during his lunch hour, he goes to Paddington Park near the hospital where he worked just so he could practice some running.
At that time. Bannister was not a talented runner (that’s why if you are not talented you practice!). People say he has an ungainly walk and barely made the Oxford third team on track.
On March 22nd, 1947 however, he was running as a pacer for members of the first team at Oxford in the mile race against Cambridge and instead of stopping as a pacer, just keeping the other runners on pace like he was supposed to, he kept on running, not only completing the course, but winning by 20 yards with a time of four minutes and 30 seconds.
Now, once he discovered that he enjoyed running and that he was good at it, he practiced and competed and got better and better until seven years later, he broke the longtime record.
Now here’s where it gets interesting. His record lasted just 46 days.
The four minute mile barrier has been broken so many times by male athletes and now it’s the standard for all male professional middle distance runners and even more impressively, there are over 4,500 people who have run a mile in under four minutes.
The new record by the way, stands at three minutes, 43 seconds, which is set by Hicham El Gurus of Morocco. And he did that in 1999 55 years after Bannister reset the bar of possibility.
So here are a few things Roger banister said.
He said there was no logic in his mind that if you can run a mile in four minutes and one second that you can’t run it in three minutes and 59 seconds.
He knew enough about medicine and physiology to know that it wasn’t a physical barrier, but it was a psychological barrier.
He said, here’s my question to you.
Is there something in your mind right now, that seems and feels real to you about something you cannot do or achieve yet, with careful review, you’ll notice that it’s just a psychological mindset issue or an emotional barrier versus a real problem.
Roger Bannister went on to say, as it became clear that somebody was going to do it, he decided that he would prefer it to be him.
What would this type of thinking do to you? Why not dig deep and rise to your fullest potential?
Why not challenge your beliefs, challenge your habits, challenge your assumptions, and release the stories and excuses that are holding you back from winning your gold medal?
Another thing that Roger had going for him was on the Australian man by the name of John Landy, who was also a middle distance runner. John Landy, by the way, was the second man to accomplish the mile in under four minutes, and it was their rivalry and their competition that caused both of them to rise to greater levels of success than if they had not had someone else to push them, to motivate them and to drive them forward.
Roger said the competition and the goal that he had of breaking that elusive four minute mile barrier caused him to drive on.
He was compelled by a combination of fear, he said, and the pride he would feel once he broke the record, he turned his fear into his fuel for success.
He relentlessly practiced and he said he visualize the achievement he was seeking in order to create a sense of certainty in his mind and in his body.
Today, he has being remembered as a trailblazer who made the impossible possible.
So what’s your four-minute mile barrier?
Getting that pay raise? Starting that business? Starting a family? Saying “hi” to that girl that you have a crush on?
Here’s my 4-minute mile before:
I always wanted to go to graduate school to study. But my belief was that my grades weren’t good enough for higher learning.
But, I studied hard in the GRE (Graduate Records Exam), wrote my essay well, and asked my former professors to write me the recommendation letters.
On August 13, 2002, I arrived in Orlando (University of Central Florida) to study. And mind you, I came from the Philippines. With not enough money I survived graduate school and 2 years later, graduated.
Now it’s your turn to make your life into the masterpiece it is meant to be.
I’m asking you, what’s your 4-minute mile goal?
