Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Helena

Diane, Monica (foreground)

Here’s the workout for Wednesday, June 20, 2012:

A. Strength

1. DB bench

2. DB row

B. Metcon

For time:

5 muscle-ups

Three rounds of 12 power snatches (75/55) / 21 double-unders

5 muscle-ups

For this workout, the muscle-up substitution will be three dips per muscle-up, and the substitution for double-unders will be parallette hops.

Power snatch demo:

KEEPING IT REAL: A NOTE ON GROUP TRAINING

My weight wasn’t heavy enough. My time wasn’t fast enough. My score wasn’t high enough. Do you ever hear these messages in your mind? I know I do. And to be honest, they kind of suck.

Today, many of you took on Nancy for the first time. After one of the WODs, I told an athlete that she did great work, and she scoffed a little, saying, “Yeah, right.” I spent the next couple moments defending why I offered the honest encouragement: She had never done that many overhead squats before, and she did them perfectly. To me, the weight didn’t matter; her longer time didn’t matter; she executed great form with a difficult movement.

That’s not an isolated case. There are many times where I am writing scores on the board, and people will report, “But I only did 30 pounds,” or “But I had to modify or scale the workout,” as if they are disappointed with their performance.

As an observer, let me be clear. The way I see it is that you just got through a harder workout than 90 percent of the population, and you probably have a lot more that you have to do in that day. Or do you just lounge around after your WODs and sip champagne while someone waves palm branches to keep you cool?

I’m pretty sure you work hard. And life is hard. And challenge doesn’t avoid anyone.

I could try to call people out for having negative thoughts, but that’s not the point of this, because I experience those thoughts too. The point is that accomplishment in your training is completely relative. No one can step inside your body, experience your day, juggling family responsibilities, paying the mortgage on time, dealing with your boss freaking out, waking up at 3 a.m. to stare at the clock for a couple hours. It’s hard to avoid comparison on the whiteboard, or comparison in settings outside of the gym. But just like measuring apples to oranges, each person is unique, and therefore, he or she must train with their unique strengths and weaknesses in mind. The whiteboard doesn’t tell you who you are; it just keeps a record of your training for that day.

Focus on your progress, your consistency and your achievements — and tackle your goats with more fervor than you showcase your strengths. Find something to celebrate in each WOD — you did unbroken pull-ups when you usually have to drop it into sets; you got a strong hip drive on the kettlebell swings and they felt lighter than they did last time; you know you got full range-of-motion on the push ups, because you got dirt on your face from getting so low.

It’s easy to look at numbers, weights, times, scores, this person or that person. We are human; we all do it. Let’s strive, though, to be an encouragement for one another and for ourselves, and to fight those lame, ridiculous thoughts that tear us down. Life outside the gym is hard enough. Let’s keep our training uplifting — and it starts with what we tell ourselves. For those of you who know me well, this lesson goes for me especially! Proud of you all; keep up the great work…