My youngest son is ten-years-old and has recently become obsessed with sloths. He has befriended a tiny stuffed sloth, a gift from my mother, that he takes everywhere with him, including the dinner table. He has his own little placemat and we make him his own tiny sloth plate. My son feeds him tiny morsels of food. It’s adorable.
What is not adorable is my son’s new habit of moving like a sloth. At all times. Crawling, on the ground, like a sloth. Doesn’t matter if we are in a rush to get out the front door on time or if he is just playing with his legos on the floor. Sloth like speed.
“Mom, why do sloths move so slowly?”
I did like every other mother does when asked questions about dinosaurs or space or human organs or time warps or pop culture that I don’t understand. I googled it.
From Wikipedia: “The sloth is so named because of its very low metabolism and deliberate movements, sloth being related to the word slow.”
Slow and deliberate movements. The sloth moves the way it does on purpose and with deliberate intention.
What if we were more like sloths in the gym?
Yesterday, a girlfriend texted me how frustrated she was after her WOD becuase it was “just” weighted pull-ups. And I replied that I would scream. “Pull-ups! My nemesis. Give me a heavy barbell and let me rip through that over weighted pull-ups any day,” I wrote back.
Do you know what was on Wodify for me today? Pull-ups, specifically 10 rounds of Cindy after 35 calories on the rower and 30 power snatches. Pull-ups and push-ups dang it.
And then I considered the sloth, and my son, moving with deliberate intention. And so I channeled my inner sloth, and my time this morning showed that, but I walked away super proud of those dang pull-ups and push-ups and I entered my score with intentional and deliberate pride. And, with a cool story to tell my kid after school.
To the sloth,
Jessica Danger
Managing Editor
|