Go One More

A lesson on pushing your limits to extend your range

Jon Kalis
May 27, 2025 • Read Time: 8 minutes

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A verse:

I like this verse for two reasons.

The first is that it goes hard. I feel like the most popular verses in scripture are about love, grace, and kindness; rarely do we hear about verses like this.

It gives me a “never give up”, “you don’t lose if you never quit”, or a “can’t keep me down mentality”. It’s encouraging and a good reminder that, especially with God, the story isn’t over; our calling is still there, and it's time to stand back up and keep going.

Stand up and fight.

The other is that I think it speaks to anyone in a dark space, or who is going through something challenging, and thinks things have been ruined or changed forever.

Life often gives us things we can’t handle, and it can leave us hopeless. However, this verse is a reminder that the story isn’t over; no matter how dark the situation, God is always giving us a light to guide us forward.

Trust that God, even in the darkest hour, will give you guidance and a light forward.

A lesson: extend your range, go one more

This weekend, Nick Bare and BPN Supplements hosted an event called “Go One More”. It's a "last man standing" style race where runners compete on a 4.2-mile loop, attempting to complete one lap every hour for as long as possible.

132 runners took on the challenge that kicked off Saturday morning. As of Monday night, two runners remain - Kim Gottwald and Kendall Picado Fallas

They’ve run over 225 miles and are still going, heading into night three.

But here is the craziest part: they’ve run over 100 miles since the third-place contender dropped out!

It’s truly incredible, but while these two runners have done something truly remarkable, everyone who competed pushed themselves to their limits, and that’s what I want to talk about today.

Extending our range.

Improving your range

Your range, whether it's creative, physical, emotional, or mental, isn’t fixed. It’s elastic. And the only way to elongate it is to push the edges of what you’re capable of.

It isn’t easy, but it is necessary, because not only is it the source of growth, but staying comfortably within your range actually shortens it.

Have you ever stopped exercising for a while, only to go back and see you can’t run quite as fast? Or started a new job after coasting for months at a previous job only to find hard work really taxing and tiring?

These are the results of an atrophied range.

The way to combat it is to push our limits, get out of our comfort zone, and do this that challenge us in real, intense ways.

Stress + Recovery = Growth. This is the recipe for adaptation and improvement, but most people underestimate how much stress they really need to spark adaptation.

It’s not just being uncomfortable.

It’s not just taking a step into something a little challenging.

It’s moving into a space that is hard, challenging, taxing, and pushes you to the absolute brink of your limitations. It’s really, really stressful and hard, but the reward is great.

With repetition, your nervous system adapts. Your confidence grows. Your self-concept shifts. What once felt impossible becomes your new baseline.

This is how range expands.

Want to read a cool experiment that validates the growing range?

Here is a study about putting mice in water. How hopelessness leads them to almost immediate death. And how removing them from the water and putting them back in allows them to fight longer, harder, and live longer.

Why improving your range is important

I think few of us ever really find out what we are capable of.

Instead, we explore our passions and hobbies just to a point that we are comfortable with. We get a good job, we find a good partner, we start building a family. We get a “good” life, and we often stop trying to grow and improve.

But the problem with living in comfort is that whether you like it or not, life often forces us to grow. It pushes us outside of our range, whether we like it or not.

We deal with sadness, but we don’t know how to bear.

We face trials and hardships that put an unbearable weight on our shoulders.

Life forces us outside our range, whether we like it or not

How to extend your Range

Extending your range is the result of purposeful action.

Find the area you want to grow, maybe it’s physically, but maybe it’s emotionally, financially, or relationally. Maybe it’s packing that uncomfortable feeling or trauma you’ve gone through, or learning to work hard, to change your financial trajectory, or leaning into a relationship you don’t know how to fix.

Regardless, it’s consciously identifying an area you want to improve, grow, or be better equipped in for tougher seasons ahead and consciously leaning into really hard actions.

For fitness, maybe its scheduling a race that scares you

Mentally, maybe it’s sharing something that is weighing on your with a friend.

Or relationally, having an uncomfortable conversation and forgiving someone for things that have happened in the past.

All I know is that pushing into the uncomfortable and extending your range will only serve you well in the long run.

A Puzzle:

A rebus is a puzzle that uses pictures, symbols, and/or letters to represent words or parts of words. The challenge of the puzzle is to decipher the hidden meaning behind the symbols and solve the puzzle.

Here’s this week’s puzzle: