First some good news for me! I maxed out on my deadlift, squat, and press on Monday. I set a huge PR (personal record) of 25lb with a 450lb lift. It really didn't feel heavy, and my next goal of 500 is in my sights. I hit a 10lb PR on squat with a 325lb with our coach Craig seeing the sight. It feels good after not being able to squat like a human being when I started. This again felt light. I'm still stalled on my press and can't get it going. I was told to work on handstand pushups and variations to improve that.
WOD
For time:
20 175lb overhead
40 burpees

time: 5:40
Scaled to 135 on recovery day, burpees still suck


There was a very interesting entry but one of my friends on our gym's blog (www.crossfithoboken.com) about trying to go RX (perscribed) on our workouts. For examble that would have been doing 175 today. He had a great point that to improve, you should challenge yourself even if it means not having the best score in the gym. It was excellently well written and I will repost it here hopefully. It was a very inspirational post and I agree with it mostly, except that most people especially beginners need to understand that there has to be a reasoning behind the workout. For example, we have a workout 21-15-9 of thrusters and pullups, called Fran. Fran is the most painful workout, and the record is around 2 minutes. So yes if you can complete the 95lb thrusters and real pullups in 20minutes you did it RX. You also completely missed the point of the workout, which is meant to be short and challenging. Whereas this same person could scale it to 55lb thrusters and pullups with a band, and do it in 7 minutes. Which is better? I say the second option in which you minimized breaks and maximized effort. So go for RX and if you can be in the realm of what the workout hopes to affect, go for it, but keep the WOD's goal in your mind.


I felt somewhat introspective tonight, and realized something. If you have true passions in life, true feelings, or true beleifs, that needs to be put ahead of what anybody else thinks. I have some passions, but I've realized that no matter what my reason is, I need to be into it for me and not for anything else. I love fitness and nutrition. I love to talk to people about it and if they ask me questions I'm totally game to go all night. I also realized that most people truly dont care. I'm never going to look like a calvin klein model (thank God) or a huge powerlifter, no matter how strong or fit I get, and I realized thats not at all my goal of working out, whereas that may have been the reason I started caring. My workouts are challenging mentally and physically. I get to challenge myself in strength, stamina, and power every day, and every day is different. Some days I only put in 80%. some days its the full effort. Here are some things I have learned in the past 10 months:


-It's ok to fail. Our coach Bennett just posted this about his failed attempt to climb Denali: When a critical part of your self is defined by competition, you begin to judge everything by the outcome, not the effort. I really don’t care about the preparation, the training, or anything else. I wanted the summit. Therefore, I failed. People have tried to console me on this very topic, calling it a “failed attempt” or saying “safe return” was the goal. This is simply not true…I FAILED. The question is whether it is bad to fail, and the answer is absolutely not. Through failure, you learn more about yourself, your ability to weather adversity, how strong you really are, and what you are truly made of? I like to think I am all guts, a tough guy, nothing phases me.

-You can work out on your own, but working out with others is almost always far better. If your a competitive person this can drive you way past any effort you can do on your own.

-The impressive feat is not going balls-to-the-wall in a single workout. It’s doing it the next day. And the next. And the next. Forever. It's not just workouts. It's everything you care about in life, everything you are passionate about. It's making sure every practice you coach and 8 yr old baseball team you help the worst player as much as the best. It means that at work you go out of your way to find out what will help the most and do it without being asked. Whatever it is for you, do it. And then do it again.

- Take a break. Some people are total A types, can go hard nonstop in everything and never need to slow down. I'm not like that at all. I need to rest and relax. I need to "shut off" with some relaxing at night. It's important for mental (and physical) health.

- Music makes it better. it makes your workouts go faster. And for me, it makes everything better. I love music and will hopefully adding some selections to this blog. I used to love to play music, and still play a little guitar, but have learned to really enjoy all sorts of music.

-Step outside your comfort zone. this is one of the biggest. doing 100 squats at body weight for time was really hard. I went through the entire emotional spectrum, from self doubt, to agression, to legit sadness, to actual anger. I was way out of my comfort zone and felt it. For the next couple of days i felt like i could do ANYTHING. It was awesome. Repeatedly taking yourself out of the comfort zone lets you do much better things. I have been doing well in the gym with it, and need to take it out to the rest of my life. Being out of your comfort zone is good in real life to, and I will start doing that more.

-Something unrelated. try and look in your own eyes in the mirror. you can't do it. maybe it takes looking at the people you surround yourself with to understand who you are. hopefully their eyes are what makes your happy.