Advent, growth, Crossfit, self-improvement, and REO Speedwagon

I love Advent. This is the time of the year to take stock, to end the year strong, to prepare for the Birth of Our Savior.

Tonight was an interesting--and good night in the box. I come in a half-hour early and get in some overhead squats (a few sets at 140, a set of 3 at 160, and a set of 5 at 155) on my own, and then during the class we do heavy deadlifts and 4 sets of AMRAP HSPUs. I did 5x275, then 5X300, then 3X315 (almost twice my bodyweight).

Then I looked at my training logs from last year. I can overhead squat a lot more now. Now 155 feels to me as 135 did to me a year ago. I can OHS 155 for reps (not a whole lot but several), which is pretty good, as I barely weigh 160. I now have a strict muscle-up to my name, while a year ago I had no muscle-up. I can do 3 or 4 in a row strict deadhang, at least on a good day. But it's not all upward progress. When I started Crossfit I had a strict 135lb press to my name. In fact, it was my 5-rep max. Now I can't even strict-press 135 once. My shoulders have a subtle ache to them now. Today I did 11 HSPUs in a row. But 6 months ago I registered 14 in a set. Today's deadlifts felt stronger than they have in a while, but then again, I had workouts last spring where I was doing 5 sets of 5x300 deadlifts, with running in between. I did a 5X315 last fall and I remember it feeling like, well, like I had a little more left.

Maybe I'm overtraining. I'm prone to doing that. I'm just an intense person, and when something isn't working, I have a tough time stepping away. I just push harder. It's been a huge asset to me in some sense. But it has caused me some problems.

I keep thinking how this relates to becoming a better person. I feel I've matured in a lot of ways. I feel I have become a lot more secure and genuine. I never would able to write this blog 10 years ago. But how do my average moments now compare to my best moments in my past? I would say that while my average moments now beat my average moments in the past, I do have to admit that my best moments in the past definitely beat my average moments now. What do I even mean by "average" versus "best" anyway? That's the thing with self-improvement in my opinion, it's so vague in some sense, and what's more, our minds just tend to look for problems. We can end up spiraling downward as we find more things wrong with us. I do this myself and I've seen others do that.

I have seen moments of social awkwardness in people whom I really respect, people who have done some terrific things in their lives, who "should" feel nothing but pride in who they are. I've dated and known several women whom, even though they "should" feel all the pride in the world for how beautiful they are (inside and out), have had (still have?) major "body issues". (I'm not saying that anyone is perfect or anything. We all have a dark side. We're all a little vain glorious. We are all concerned with our status and we are all prone to feeling jealous. I want others to achieve but I don't want anyone to catch up to me. But there is a way to live where you are about connecting with the better part of your nature, as opposed to indulging your worse, and the people I mentioned connect with the better part of their nature most of the time.)

I've actually taken some comfort in that. The self-doubt I'm feeling, others have felt it too. So in a way, it vanishes. When I hear that someone else struggles as I do, I can relate to that. It makes me respect that person more.

That said, maybe that is the appeal of Crossfit. It IS about self-improvement in one sense, BUT there are numbers and times involved. It's MEASURABLE. And as we are with others--people who are pretty cool and striving to better themselves as we are, it feels less about self-improvement in just the physical sense, and more about self-improvement in a more holistic sense.

Anyway, typing this, that REO Speedwagon song "Keep Pushing On" is running through my head...