“Bruce had me up to three miles a day, really at a good
pace. We’d run the three miles in twenty-one or twenty-two minutes. Just under
eight minutes a mile.
So this morning he said to me “We’re going to go five.” I
said, “Bruce, I can’t go five. I’m a helluva lot older than you are, and I
can’t do five.” He said, “When we get to three, we’ll shift gears and it’s
only two more and you’ll do it.”
Bruce Lee
I said “Okay, hell, I’ll go for it.” So we get to three, we
go into the fourth mile and I’m okay for three or four minutes, and then I
really begin to give out. I’m tired, my heart’s pounding, I can’t go any more
and so I say to him, “Bruce if I run any more,” –and we’re still running-” if I
run any more I’m liable to have a heart attack and die.”
He said, “Then die.” It made me so mad that I went the full
five miles.
Afterward I went to the shower and then I wanted to talk to
him about it. I said, you know, “Why did you say that?”
He said, “Because you might as well be dead. Seriously,
if you always put limits on what you can do, physical or anything else, it’ll
spread over into the rest of your life. It’ll spread into your work, into your
morality, into your entire being. There are no limits. There are plateaus, but
you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills
you. A man must constantly exceed his level.”
