Sometimes you just have to round your back....

I was going to make this just a CrossFit post but since I am feeling expansive, this is about a lot of other stuff...with CrossFit as a launching point.

--Sometimes you just have to round your back to deadlift the barbell.  By this I mean that sometimes you just have to put yourself out there, and you can't be worrying about good form. Sometimes you simply have to risk looking ridiculous, desperate, or being wrong, to get the job done. Sometimes you have to break the rules to get what you truly want.

I once drove 1000 miles to "go see about a girl". It didn't work out but I don't regret it. I took my best shot and lost. I had to see if something was there, and that is what did. I left everything I had on the court, gave 110%, all your favorite overplayed sports cliches. No what-ifs here.

--But if you're rounding your back all the time then you are doing something wrong.  Bad form should be the exception, not the rule. Most of the time you *shouldn't* be rounding your back on the deadlift. "Whatever it takes" form needs to be something you are doing in only those special cases. Otherwise you risk burning yourself out and being inefficient with your energy. Driving 1000 miles to see about a girl once or maybe twice in a lifetime is awesome. Driving 1000 miles to see about a girl every month is just stupid (unless it is the same one each time and you both are in a great relationship, in that case congratulations). If you're putting more into your job, your life, your friendships, your relationships, and even your workout than you are getting out of it then perhaps you need to reevaluate.

If you are doing CrossFit right, you will find yourself thinking about efficient movement patterns. Maybe we will also find yourself thinking about being smart about other things too. Life is just easier if we don't make too many dumb mistakes (although we all make dumb mistakes of course). There's a reason why they tell you to wear a suit to job interviews (in most fields), to not try too hard to impress on a first date, pay your bills on time to avoid late fees, drive a certain way to save gas, think before you say something inflammatory, and so on.

It's hard for me to do sometimes I admit. On the one hand, I can be quite analytical to a point where it doesn't serve me, being too cautious instead of taking chances.  On the other hand, I often push too hard too. I'm loyal, I'm stubborn, I hate to give up on someone or something I've put a lot of energy in. But I think I've gotten better at both--at knowing when the moment calls for bold action on the one hand, and when it calls for being rational and sober on the other. I've had to do things such as give up on projects that were going nowhere and end relationships that weren't working anymore. Painful for me to let things go but I learned that I had to do it.


--You're doing it right if you are growing in your weaknesses.  I learned this during the Open. CrossFit is really about effective movement patterns as much as anything else. If you come across something you struggle with and you work on it, you are improving in a way you truly need to improve.

When it comes to our life away from CF: I think of a great bit of advice I got: "Pick the journey for the way that it will change you at least as much for the final destination". Isn't that why we like certain workouts? I mean, getting under a heavy barbell isn't fun in itself except for what we know it is doing for us. I think that applies to life outside the box too. Don't just think about what you will get out of it but how it will enable you to grow and contribute. Will you finding yourself liking yourself better or will it blunt your soul working for a cause you don't really believe in to make money? I think about that was why I joined CrossFit, why I made the move to Maryland, why I decided to get my certification. I am looking forward to help others get stronger and fitter and lead more effective lives. I'm looking forward to helping someone get in touch with their inner athlete perhaps for the first time in their life so that they feel empowered and more confident. At the same time I also know that coaching will make me a better person and man--more empathetic, a better leader and communicator.

Letting things go...

It's been a while since I have written here. I have no reason except to say that life just got away from me. Anyway Happy New Year! (Do you realize that we are already 10% of the way through 2013?)

Last week we had a workout that I really wanted to nail RX'd, but I instead DNF'd. 5-4-3-2-1 275-pound deadlifts and muscle-ups. The deadlifts were actually quite easy for me--it was the muscle-ups I struggled with. I'm not positive why that is. Maybe the rope climbs and the ball slams we did the day before had taxed my arms and I was still sore/weakened. Maybe it was the heavy push presses we did earlier in the workout, just a few minutes before we started this delectable deadlift/muscle-up combo.

Overall it might have been all the time I have spent in Strength over the past 6 months. I put on a decent amount of mass in my lower body as my squat numbers went up (365-pound deadlift, 300-pound back squat ass-to-grass) but my upper body might not have been keeping up. I've been doing muscle-ups strict for the past year, which is actually a very different movement from doing them with a kip--which was how I got my first muscle-ups. A kip might require less pure strength, but it does require timing and coordination that wasn't there for me anymore.

Anyway I got the first 4 muscle-ups in one set, and then did the 5th. I got through the first 2 rounds of the workout and then as time was running out, I did the remaining 6 deadlifts touch-and-go.

I still couldn't leave well enough alone though. I stayed even while the Foundations class was coming in to finish the remaining muscle-ups. My forearms were aching and I was hardly getting anywhere--I think I got 1 muscle-up after several misses--and I haven't missed muscle-ups in a while. Finally I saw that this just wasn't working and all I was doing was risking hurting myself, and I gave up and went home.

One thing people might not know about me is that I can be very intense. It shows up occasionally in Strength class. For as hard as we work there,  the atmosphere is actually quite laid-back. When we are doing 10 sets of 3 squats, a lot of people will be laughing and joking between sets. I just can't do that. I stare at my bar like a psycho. And I am obsessed with getting full-depth each rep. I'm not sure if that is good or bad really--I mean it's just a workout and we're not professional athletes forcrissakes, but each set is tough for me. I need to focus.

I'm not like this in every area of my life, but I am in a few areas of my life that I deem really important to me at the moment.

It has served me well though. I can focus really really hard on a goal and achieve it against the odds. But I can also take things too personally. (I'm now talking life in general.) The thing is, I've gotten so much better  through the years in having my intensity serve me. I've gotten better in just giving it all that I have--and then accepting that there are things that I don't control, that the sun will come up tomorrow regardless, that it's not such a huge deal, and letting it go regardless.