Catalyst Athletic and Crossfit

Density

You may have heard this parable before:

A science teacher held up a glass tumbler for his class. In the tumbler were several large rocks; they were stacked, randomly, to the top of the glass.

"Is this full?" he asked. As a unit, the class responded, "Yes!"

From under the counter, he hoisted a paper sack and set it on the counter beside the tumbler. He ripped a small hole in the top, and then poured a fine sand into the tumbler, filling the holes between the large rocks. Soon the glass was filled; the class couldn't see daylight through the tumbler.

"NOW is it full?" he asked. The students exchanged knowing looks. Point made, Teach.

He lowered the glass, and slid it forward on the counter....until it was over the sink. He opened the tap, and added water until the tumbler was filled to the brim. The class watched the sand dampen as the water disappeared into the glass; obviously, more than a cup had been absorbed.

"NOW is it full?" 

One of the greatest lessons I picked up from my CrossFit Level 1 Cert wasn't during class time. I'd been through years of University, and a handful of other Certifications, and a dozen other seminars...but never had I seen the Coaches train. On their lunch break, while we chatted and looked on, they actually worked out. Better, they hit up workouts with which we were all familiar. It was a great show, and more than I were drawn in, cheering and 'coaching' from the sidelines.

The WOD, for most, was a clean ladder. 1 clean the first minute, and then chatting. 2 cleans the second minute, resume chatter. 3 on the third, 5 on the fifth, 7 on the 7th, 9 on the ninth minute (chatter over...) continuing for as long as possible. It's not an easy workout, but they each lasted at least 12 rounds. We clapped. But wait.....

In the 13th minute, they started doing pushups....continuing as long as possible. 13 in the thirteenth minute, 14 in the fourteenth, until they were over 20. Wow. But wait....

They started squatting. Fast. 21 in the twenty-first minute, 22 in the twenty-second...until they were all over 30. Lunch break over, class in session. Lesson learned.

If you've been reading Blair Morrison's blog, you'll have noticed something similar in the last few weeks. Morrison's doing some lactate testing with OPT, and he's changed the way he approaches his Metabolic work: he doesn't stop. He scales down, but he keeps moving.

For instance, if Morrison was having trouble with 'Fran,' he'd simply grab a lighter bar and keep going, rather than stooping over the 95lbs bar, trying to breathe. Unlike the rest of us, his motor KEEPS running, keeps doing work. He won't let it idle.

Morrison trains differently than most; he's not scared to try new things. Maybe, though, he's onto something. Mathematically, it makes sense to train through constant wattage output, even if it lessens over time, rather than stopping and starting. This mirrors our own experience in The Enduro Project. 

For the next six weeks, if you're doing the posted WOD, try something: downgrade the weights mid-WOD, but keep going. No, you won't be finishing as Rx'd...but you'll be developing a bigger engine.

Our programming will change a bit, from now until mid-February. We'll start most workouts with high-repetition skills work: overhead squats, pullups, pushups, box jumps, double-unders, toes-to-bar.... and we'll build up our capacity by doing 50 before the real work starts. I'll post a suggested weight each day, but the goal is to KEEP GOING. If you can't do it with the Rx weight, then drop the weight at any point and continue as quickly as possible.

This is great output threshold training for the Open, for the more advanced. For the intermediate, it's reinforcing your skillset (which is the next step toward becoming advanced,) and for the beginner, it's a development tool for the new exercises you'll be learning. It will also help with the mental continuity problem that many of us need to stare down before February 22.

For the next six weeks, there's no killswitch. 

Compassion

At this time of year, we celebrate not only the apex of the Christian calendar, but the time of celebration for many others. As our global neighbourhood becomes more diverse, cultural traditions merge; some pieces of each are adopted by some others.

Yes, these religious traditions are different, and are contested to the point of war. But the commonalities - at least an the most general sense - outnumber the differences. Beginning with the ancient religions of the Egyptians, each of the major practices identify with the notion of a God, though his messengers and chain of command may differ. To the Romans, Zeus was on top, with a multitude of lesser 'gods;' to other cultures, the lesser 'gods' were replaced by a bureaucracy of angels, demons, saints or advocates (Mary.)

The notion of 'heaven' is different - for some, it's within; for some, it's above; for some, we're already treading on it - but the idea of a perfect, effortless state of 'flow' is the same for every major religion. Most agree that the esoteric would experience this state outside of the body, usually after physical death,  but some view transcendence as the point of illumination achieved while the body remains earthbound and functional. 

We're most familiar, in our culture, with the Christian faith, which is polarizing around us: some take the Word literally, and some take the Book as a parable, full of nuance and hidden meanings. That last sentence could be speaking the same of Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, or any other major religious culture. Each has its literalists, and its interpreters; each has its devout, its dogmatic, and its manipulators.

Many within our Northern Hemisphere  deride the season, now, for being too 'commercial.' Critics point to the incongruities: the calendar doesn't seem to match any real date of religious significance, other than being close to the Solstice; the tree is an obvious concession to the arboreal traditions, instead of being rooted in a more heavenly religion; the notion of gifts has changed from respect for a King into a more narcissistic celebration of purchase power. The recipe for joy, it seems, is no longer peaceful introspection, but  CH2=CHCl - the chemical description for plastic. This pessimistic view, though, misses a great window for the opportunity to understand one another - to practice Compassion.

 This is the time of year when we can celebrate commonality. None of us can prove, definitively and beyond  faith, that our spiritual pursuit is the 'right' one, or the 'wrong' one. Instead, we can choose to celebrate what we have in common; we can embrace the notion of 'god within,' recognizing that, at the very least, our neighbour was born at the top of the heap. His actions and capabilities would appear Godlike to his pets, his ancestors, and his children. We can recognize his basic humanity, which is the same as our own, and if not created in the image of God then at least created with the same molecules as you and I.

With that revelation, we can find the roots of compassion. In several of his more recent essays, the Dalai Lama (of Buddhist faith) suggests that, from his perspective, the differences between religions matter very little. Any action, he says, that alleviates suffering for yourself or others is worth pursuing. The ecstacies of the flesh, and the commercial short-term chemical reward system for greed, though, is not the way to alleviate suffering in the long-term, and is therefore not the route to God.

Buddhists, among other cultures, define Heaven not as a physical place, but as an ethereal state - we could call it 'flow' - that is achievable through rigorous practice, disengagement from the typical emotional pitfalls of our culture, and engagement in the practice of helping others. This is compassion, and it is one of the first few steps toward enlightenment in ANY spiritual tradition.

How do we practice compassion? It's not done by choosing a person you dislike, and attempting to become more patient with them. This typically builds MORE animosity, as you catalogue their shortcomings and count the number of times you've held your tongue.  Rather, it's important to start small: to choose a person to whom you're emotionally neutral; to consider their positive strengths; to be kind, friendly, and loving to that person. Slowly, over the months, you may consider testing your compassion by thinking upon the strengths and positives of more people, and even some that you mildly dislike.

This not a fast process, and it requires the long buildup of strength. It may be hard to feel compassion when you're harbouring resentment. My favourite tool for dealing with things that challenge me is one which writers call, "Morning Pages."  I use it daily as a journal; as a prayer; as a meditation; as a ramp for entering a state of 'flow.' Every morning, I write out all the things that come to mind - usually, something is bothering me; something else is making me joyful. When you write out the things that bother you, you're allowing them to rise to the surface like bubbles, and then dissipate. When you consider or meditate upon the things that you like, you become more calmly aware of them, and are able to hold them in your mind without building up excitement (and then crashing down later.) Compassion must be practiced, like a clean or deadlift, and progress made in both technique and strength comes more slowly as you progress toward proficiency. Be patient, and practice often with both heavy weights to challenge AND light weights to perform.

I appreciate that this post will likely raise more questions than answers. By now, the only question you may be asking is, "why am I even considering the advice of a gym owner when it comes to spirituality?"

I humbly submit three reasons:

1. Right or wrong, Creator or common consiousness, physical training is a part of nearly every major religion. Preparation of the body must precede preparation of the brain or spirit, because your mind is nested in a physical home - your brain. Chemistry, pain, distraction, weakness, depression - these all take us further from understanding, celebrating, and experiencing God or the simple, joyous state of 'flow.' Physical training can remove these obstacles.

2. In the words of Vance, a wise and spiritual man, our gym - to some - is as close as they'll get to a Church. The community here provides a support system; a closeness that is necessary for the foundation of self-fulfillment. If we can take care of the external, that helps with the internal, too.

3. I care. I want you to feel good while you're here. I want you to be fulfilled, and to share with others. I've shared the concept of 'Morning Pages' - a simple tool I mentioned earlier to achieve a temporary state of 'flow' - with a few of you over the last few months to help in times of stress or searching.

The link between prayer, meditation, flow and writing came from a blend of Buddhism, our own Ignite! research on the 'flow' state, and a few mass-market bestsellers that I won't name. It's not my idea, but my interpretation of knowledge demonstrated by others...just like the stuff I tell you about losing weight, jumping higher, and deadlifting. I'm a Coach; I share because I can't stop myself. As with fitness, you may take what you can use and discard the rest, but I'm fulfilled through the sharing of experience. Thanks for giving me that opportunity in 2011, in 1996, and again in 2012. Happy new year!

OnRamp starts Monday!

Almost every day, I'm lucky enough to get an email like this:

"I am a 41 year old mother of 2 that had given up on life, I had gained 105lbs. and did not care about anything. I lost my mother to lung cancer and my dad had a massive stroke and had to move into a nursing home. My whole life was turned upside down. I woke up one day and realized that while I was feeling sorry for myself and battling deep depression that I was killing myself androbbing my kids of a happy childhood with a healthy active mother and I was going to leave my kids in the same state that I was in - without a mother. I have lost 85# and crossfit 6 days a week, I am a whole new and different person. I am strong, healthy and happy and will be around for my kids for many years and I am setting the example of fitness and health for my kids. I eat, sleep, breathe, dream cross fit. My family now accuses me of being in the cross fit cult and being a fitness addict, but that's ok with me, I'd rather that than be the fat, lazy, unhealthy mom I was. I AM CROSSFIT! ~Stacey Jenkins"

...or a comment like this:

"My friends think I'm crazy. But really, this has done more for me in two weeks than I got at [other local gym] in years."

People love coming here for different reasons, and they're all good ones: the community is amazing and supportive. There are no mirrors; it's not a runway. The workouts are tough...but fun, and addictive. There's more knowledge per square inch than at the library. Learning curves excite us...

Put me down as one in the "learning new stuff all the time!" camp. And, as September showed, a LOT of people are bored with the same old "3 sets of 8 on the pec deck, 3 sets of 10 on the bench press...." bodypart split schedule. Jump into any CrossFit group, and you'll meet beginners, sharing bar space with elite. It's great. 

The best way to start? To get a solid foundation, and answer the question, "What IS CrossFit, really?" : OnRamp.

OnRamp is our introductory handshake to the CrossFit world. It's like bootcamp with brains: you learn new things every day, and then do a quick (but tough) workout. The Coaches are extemely well-educated, pleasant folks who smile big while they're killing you. They care: they want you to find the life that they've found (and millions of others around the world, too.) 

OnRamp sets you up for a life of exercise. It gets you in a regular habit (5 times per week, for 3 weeks.) It brings you into the community (you'll join our 'Team' and 'Partner' challenges on Saturday mornings.) You'll meet people. You'll sweat; they'll sweat. All good.

Want a refresher, a tune-up, or a change? Try OnRamp. 12 evenings, and three mornings. And then...the sky's the limit.

Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays at 6pm

Saturday Mornings at 9am

(can't make all the classes? We'll work something out: call Chris at 256-1344.)

You'll like it. I promise.

Register online here, or call to chat more about it: 256-1344.

Happy Birthday, Uncle Marv!

Happy Birthday, Uncle Marvin! The big 6-0 today! Oh....it's not? Sorry.

No, no,no...you don't look old. Just....older. You're aging, Marv, and fast: your birthday candles are coming in singles, but your health is passing in dog years.

Now, I don't mean to make you feel bad, Unc. But that hair you call 'salt-and-pepper'? It's ash, Marvy, as in the '....dust-to-dust' rhyme. You've tipped, and it's going to be a long battle to regain the summit. Backwards, uphill, in the snow. You know, the same way you used to walk to school every day.

I mean, I train with guys your age, Marv, and they regularly whip me. Take this guy, Ted Fryia - his hair is greying at the edges, too. But his roots: man, they're black. He's getting younger. He's reversed his medication regimen. He's OFF. You can do the cosmetic stuff, but we both know that it's like sticking your finger in the gun barrel, right Marv? It's barely even the illusion of control. At some point, that trigger's still going to be pulled. But if you can wrestle a bit, or dodge a bit, then you've got a bit more say in the way you go out.

I know, I sound like one of those Hippies to you, Marv. But those guys talking about 'live in the moment' and 'be in the now?' They're onto something here. They're telling you to be aware or be gone. But awareness means fear, anxiety, and hard texture. Contact with the world of solids and self-doubt. No more watching from your lawn chair. No more bearing witness from the safe stupor of the margins.

I love you, Marv. And that's why I'm coming to pick you up tomorrow. I'll clean the coffee cups out from my truck, just for you, and I'll take you for a ride. Not a dog-out-the-window ride, Marvin; a ride with purpose. A destination in mind. Tomorrow, you're going to put on those track pants that you keep aside for dripping paint onto. You're going to wear that "No Problem, Jamaica" tshirt that's usually reserved for barbecues, and you're going to sweat in it.  When you squeeze a barbell, you're going to feel every little crease in that knurling. It's going to pinch a little. You will not be comfortable, Marvin.

I'm not talking about "turning back the clock," or all the other grocery-line cliches that sell magazines. What I'm talking about is flicking the minute-hand with your finger. Maybe living a day that isn't centred on counting the digits to five o'clock. Measuring time differently. Blocking the second hand's swooping red arc. Maybe, Marvy, if we hold it there long enough, the gears will strip.

When I was a kid - you remember that, right? - I went to a lecture at school. There was this guy - grey hair, ponytail, probably a communist - who asked us how long we were going to live. We raised our hands in the air, and no one dropped their arm when he barked, "80?" Some lowered their hands when he said, "90?" and most stopped when he said, "100?" He kept his own in the air, though. "150?" Still up. And up and up, to 200 years old. Today, that guy is biking through Ethiopia, trying to plant some trees, Johnny Evergreen from Northern Ontario. He's in his 70s, Marv. Remember when you asked mom to open the lid on the mayo for you a few minutes ago? You're better than that.

It's not about 'whipping you into shape,' Marv. It's not about "helping your ticker" or "keeping you regular" or any other made-to-fail byline you'll slide away on. It's about that time, when I was four, and you picked me up at school because it was raining. It's about the time when you lent Mom a hundred bucks for groceries - thought I didn't know? - when I had to get braces. It's about that time when you let me try a sip of beer after I'd been piling wood with you all day in July. It's time for me to pay that back, Uncle Marv, and with interest.

Look at these guys, Marvin. REALLY look. No, I can't get you there. Auntie Mary would kill me if the thrusters don't first. Hell, I'm going to have to train really hard to get there myself. But I want you to see the REAL beanstalk, and I want you to see that it isn't Wilford Brimley and his magic beans at the top.

 It ain't over until YOU say it is, Uncle Marv.
Are you saying that now?

Put Me In

 
Every Tuesday night is 'Opening Night' around these parts. You have a role; you just don't know your lines yet.

Hovering over the F5 key, you scroll between facebook, the Games site, and CrossFit.com, racing to see which will pop up first. Already competing. Desiring that one-second edge...or just wanting the waiting to end, because if you've learned anything from CrossFit, it's that anticipation is worse than the event. "10,9,8...." is the end of the world. "1,2,3...": that's much better, because now you're feeling the bar instead of your lunch.

The Games WOD, each week, doesn't require perfection. No matter how much you train, prepare, and visualize, nothing ever works like the checklist in your brain. What it DOES demand is full engagement. Commitment, right down to your toes. That, friends, is the scary part.

When you go onstage, you're being watched. People will bear witness. They'll want you to succeed - their hands will hover in mid-clap, and they'll lean forward, straining their neck to catch your last burpee - but they'll know if you fail. Most people can't handle that. The vast majority of your friends won't ever take that risk.

You will.

'Comfortable with uncomfortable' is what we're all about. Just like a nineteen-year-old with red hair and pale Ontario skin, forced onto a Karaoke stage as part of a job initiation in another country. I wasn't prodded up there with the rest of the Interns to be embarrassed; I was ordered to "get over myself." I did.

Some see the WOD and tap out. They're not scared that they may drop the bar on their head, or bang their shins on the burpee rig. They're terrified that someone will know. They worry that maybe, tomorrow, they'll read a headline that says, "Amber:Not Good Enough?" with the byline: "Tries hard, can't do 30 burpees..." They dread the interview on Dr. Phil: "Tell us, Jasmine, how we can all learn to trust you again, after you dropped the bar on your sixth rep...."

They get halfway through the tunnel and despair. "I'll pace myself this week, and hope for a max deadlift next Tuesday."  "This is good enough, right here.  I'll just set up camp and wait for next week." Or next year. 

Not me. Me, I'm going to go down on fire. Flags waving. Bells ringing. Arms swinging wildly. False grip. I'm going to channel Ray on the burpees; Josh on the overhead squats; and Mitch on the muscle-ups.

I may not get 10 muscle-ups today. But I'm going to beat 11.4 like a rented mule, and see just how far I can push that sucker. Not because I'm brave, but because it scares the hell out of me. My ego will be satisfied not at the finish, but at the start. If I can make it to the starting line, I've won the race.

Now get out there and sing.

100 Reasons To Do Murph 2011

 
Last year, before 2010 Sectionals, I had a decision to make: a trip to Toronto for Sectionals would be expensive. Staffing at the Park would be an issue if I was away; we'd have two kids to truck around, and I really didn't have a chance of finishing on the podium. Yes, the Team would be there, and yes, I'd love to coach, but.....

As usual, I first considered the worst-case scenario: what if I finished last? I put myself in that position mentally for a few minutes, just to 'try it on.' It felt okay - I'd still have competed. After THAT, the rest was a foregone conclusion, but I still wrote down 100 reasons to go and compete. I was shocked by how easy it was to come up with 100 (and now, a year later, to replace most of them to be relevant to Murph.) Maybe it will help you decide to do the event; maybe the 'worst-case scenario' exercise will be enough.

1.  Three words: "Go, daddy, go!"
2. Anxiety makes you a better athlete.
3. Fear makes you eat your broccoli.
4. You can probably finish in under 60 minutes.
5. If you can finish in under 60 minutes, you can probably get under 45 minutes next year.
6. If you can finish in under 45 minutes, the 30-minute mark is going to beckon.....
7. Gotta represent the "unnaturals" who didn't play sports their whole lives
8. Next year, you're trying the Open.
9. This is year One of your 15-year training plan for the Masters division
10. Ray Gowlett: "It's like unwrapping your Christmas presents!"
11. The worst-case scenario (last place?) really isn't bad at all.
12. It's less a fashion show than a gong show.
13. It's your sport.
14. This is your team. 
15. Carolle's being a sherpa for some of the Timids.
16. The Timids are awesome. Anxiety is our cardio.
17. Competing at CrossFit = winning at life.
18. The conversation with Philsy afterward. It's always good, and he always has beer in his gym bag.
19. My kids tend to try the stuff they see me doing.  Anyone else ever notice that?
20. I get to wear 3 of my favourite hats in the same day: cheerleader, coach, and athlete.
21. The next day, I'll wear my fourth favourite, when I write about it.
22. I get to watch a LOT of pullup newbies this year. Wow.
23. I'll do anything to get the big door open in March.
24. Feeling my lizard brain writhe during the last 10 seconds before the start.
25. Frequent exposure to physical stress makes me better at dealing with other stress.  It's a physiological fact.
26. If you weren't an athlete in high school....this is your new 'default' setting.
27. Participation is good for the sport.
28. 48 hours of post-Murph glee.  Almost like a refractory period.
29. The incredible photography that shows up afterward!
30. Watching the CrossFit community flex its collective muscle.
31. Watching the CrossFit philosophy flex its solid muscle.
32. You just don't get the opportunity to be amazed that often anymore.
33. You know how hard it's been to get to your current level, and if there are 50 who are even better, that's going to be incredible to watch.
34. If I keep meeting new people, I don't have to learn any new jokes.
35. This train only goes forward or backward.
36. Posting the event on your facebook wall get you 20 new friends and 50 "you're crazy!lol" comments afterward.
37. I think this is the 'right' carrot to hang in front of people.
38. You can look in the mirror every day, but you only get to see yourself under the microscope once or twice per year.
39. When the Green Army qualifies for Nationals, you can say, "I did pullups with that girl a month ago!"
40. You never know.
41. You're never going to be this young again.
42. SOMEBODY's going to have a ridiculous costume. Happens every year.
43. It's all about the story.
44. You get to see if the wiring and the plumbing work well together.
45. You'll spend a whole morning with people who know how to use a foam roller.
46. You'll get to see some of the coaches compete. Remember all those jokes about seeing THEM suffer? It happens on Saturday.
47. "The walk" from the car to the front door. Nervous jokes are double-funny!
48. 'Recovery' ice cream for lunch.
49. The second step on the staircase isn't visible until you're standing on the first.
50. Writing this list is really easy - that's reason enough!
51. Test, revise curriculum, repeat.
52. Your form will be checked against the highest standard.
53. How else would I know?
54. You're building an exercise habit.  You don't ever stop.
55. You've already got the calluses. That's one investment you've already made.
56. You can convince 2 of your friends to come next year. 
57. You're not going to come last. And if you did, no one would know.
58. Some of the most athletic physiques in the Sault....and not a single mirror.
59. Best seats in the house are on the stage. 
60. Gotta stop everyone else from eating the jar of pickles before the pickle-eating contest.
61. You know the rest of the Family's watching.
62. Last year, we had people doing it around the world with us.
63. You'll share a chalk dish with some of the best lifters,runners, and people in the city.
64. More people wearing Chucks in one room than anywhere else north of Westside Barbell!
65. "This is a truth derived through competition, not debate." - Greg Glassman
66. Brent's outfits are best experienced in person.
67. Exercise theory funneled down to a fine point.  Either it's true, or you lose.
68. Only the bullfighter really knows what it's like in the arena.
69. Tyler's "game face."
70. It's nice to be in an environment where "lockout" doesn't refer to picket lines.
71. The soundtrack is always excellent.
72. The sound of the pull bar a-rockin'.
73. Solidarity.
74. Charity smiling while she links pullup after pullup.
75. Pullups used to scare the hell out of you. You're getting comfortable with uncomfortable.
76. A glimpse of the next level, waiting for your footprint soon.
77. This essay.
78. It will keep you humble for another year.
79. Proud, but humble.
80. The competition IS the reward.
81. Not too many years ago, I would have chickened out too. And if you chicken out this year, you will next year.
82. Your spouse needs to SEE you to understand why you talk about this stuff all the time.
83. Six months until Catalyst Games 2011.
84. The three brand-new CrossFitters who signed up this week. They're coming. You'll seem untouchable to them; miles away. Just like the others did to you when YOU started.
85. It's Saturday morning. You'd be here anyway.
86. 40 first-timer, never-evers finished Murph last year!
87. The anticipation is always worse than the action.
88. There just aren't many sunsets left to ride off into.
89. We're collectively nudging the human genome back in the right direction.
90. The species didn't go through this whole evolutionary process to be better at watching Oprah.
91. EVERY time we've called, the Catalyst Family has answered. Let's keep paying it forward.
92. There will be at least one racer with only one foot that works.
93. WWPDD? (What would Pam Didonato Do?) She did it last year!

94. I get to live like a professional athlete for the whole weekend (thanks, Ray!)

95. You have a reason to train hard, eat right, and sleep.  Also, complain.

96. Gotta see if Cam's up to it.

97.There's no legitimate record on the Board. Who's going to go sub-30:00 and earn that spot?

98. Some of the Green Army Team is doing it - the day before their first Open WOD ever.

99. I know a couple who's cancelled their vacation to be there.

100.  You can.  Therefore, you must.

 

The Most Efficient Ape

 
If you're new to CrossFit - or you've been doing it for awhile, and just "don't want to compete," you're likely a bit surprised by this whole CrossFit Games thing. Maybe you're wondering, "why all the fuss?" maybe you're just hoping you won't have to try the WODs; or maybe, you've never even heard of the CrossFit Games.

It shouldn't surprise you - whether you've been a member of the Catalyst family for 1 day, or six years - to find out that we prefer the Carrot to the Stick. Even if you've never heard it iterated this way, we love the Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal - the near-impossible task that scares the living daylights out of you. We love the event that will keep you awake at night, and on the lifting platform at 6am.

We do these events all the time, and we've invited you. We want you to do stuff - and be something. We want you to face down these hurdles, and thereby sail over life's OTHER stresses with ease. We want you to be comfortable with uncomfortable. In short, we want to be your booster shot. 

The larger CrossFit community - worldwide, over 2700 affiliated gyms, and hundreds of thousands of practitioners - shares those values. They've put together this annual event called, "The CrossFit Games." We use them to help you reach upward. We want to hold you up high. And first, we want to show you just how high you can get.

A great history of the Games is here. You'll find all the how, where, when, and by whom. Today, though, we're talking about the why.

If you've been through OnRamp, you'll know that we prioritize quality over quantity. We choose basic human movements - the squat, the press, the jump - and we put them together in different ways, all the time. These exercises are not unique to a specific goal, but are common to everyone in our species: we all need to sit, stand, lift, carry, and avoid. The application of these exercises change, though, depending on the scale necessary to get better. 

Grandma needs an aide to get off the toilet? Her scale is low; box squats. Jennifer "Jumptastic" Jones is on the SWAT team? Her scale is higher: box jumps. Whitney's trying to qualify for the CrossFit Games? Weighted thrusters and wall ball, after a max front squat.

We measure these things - ability, progress, skill -  because they're  important. We want to know that you're improving. We want to measure ourselves, top to bottom. We crave the identification of weak spots. We love the necessity of practice.

It's commonly-accepted practice in Canada to promote the LOWEST common denominator: take the stairs at work. Park far away from the mall and walk. Take up gardening, walk your dog. Die of a heart attack.

These things aren't good enough for our Family. No sir.

Instead of putting you in a box and saying, "This way is up." we'd rather show you the sky. Maybe, after you've seen Rich Froning and Graham Holmberg burn their hands doing pushups, you'll do a few extra at Murph next week. Maybe, after you've seen Tanya Wagner hit a PR in the power snatch, you'll practice more. Maybe, if you've seen that video of Mikko rowing 5k every day in his dark closet, you'll think twice about the 6am group.....

You have a Team representing you at the CrossFit Games this year. The Green Army has been training for three months, and in the next six weeks, they'll be tested. You can join them: cheer, email, practice, or compete with them. More details to follow. But in the meantime, mark the next six Thursdays off in your calendar: they're spoken for.

More info on the Games? This is the CrossFit Games site.

"That's MY Workout!"

Nick is eight years old.  Two weeks ago, he didn't like burpees. But today, he's belting them out, one after another. Rep. Rep. Rep. Drop. Kick out. Jump. Rep. Rep. Rep. Nonstop. Unbroken. Not smiling, but not grimacing, either.

When it's over, I get him a drink and a high-five. "Wow, Nick!" I say, "Where did THAT come from?  You HATE burpees!" And then Nick - under five feet tall, with his 'big-kid' haircut - said something that changed my entire coaching philosophy.

One of the keys to change is identifying Bright Spots - stuff you're already doing, or things at which you already excel. It's a trick we play on newbies: find something you're good at, right off the bat. Everyone's good at something, and if I can find it in that first precious 60-minute Assessment, then I've got my hooks into you. Tall guy? We're deadlifting next week. Deadlifting is YOUR workout. It's your badge. When a deadlift workout is on the schedule, you'll show up early.....I know you.

But someday, we're going to find something you're NOT great with, and you're going to make a sour face. And then we're going to do it anyway, because that's how you grow. And then we'll do something you like, and then revisit That Exercise Whose Name Cannot Be Spoken again.

When we saw Whit's workout lineup for OVERDOSE last weekend, my immediate thought was, "that one is MADE for Whit. Muscle-ups and front squats? Might as well call it 'Pagnucco.'" Things were not always this way.

This morning, reading the CrossFit SubZero's Intergalactic Throwdown menu, I see a rowing/front squat challenge and I think, "Carolle." But Carolle wasn't always our rowing superhero.

After training with the Green Army Sectionals Team for the last month, I post the CrossFit workout every day and think: "That doesn't seem bad at ALL." Sometimes, in fact, "that one's made for ME."

How many people do you know who can link 50 double-unders? What if you knew that, eighteen short months ago, none of us could do ANY? Would you be surprised? What if you knew that, a year ago, NO women at the Park had deadlifted 300lbs....and now there are SEVEN?

Lisbeth Darsh, in her essay "Doing More of What You Hate," made this timely observation last week. It reminded me of an eight-year-old's epiphany from three years ago. Looking up from the floor on his hands and knees, Nick said, "I take the one I hate the most and do it until it's my favourite."

Practice until it's YOUR workout.

The UnNatural

I wasn't an athletic kid.

Sure, I played sports.  In an elementary school class containing 17 boys - of which 16 were on the St. Joe hockey team - you didn't spend a lot of recesses reading in the library.  But I had close to zero hand-eye coordination.  I was weak.  I preferred to spend evenings playing computer games, rather than practicing hockey in the yard.  My parents weren't unsupportive; they dutifully drove me to hockey all winter, and baseball in the summer.  We had a driveway that was nearly a quarter-mile long, and I rode my bike all over the place.  But I was never a risk-taker.  I never tried out for elementary school volleyball or basketball teams.  I never pursued hockey past the point when making the team was an automatic.

In high school, I didn't play varsity sports.  I was done hockey after grade 9.  I was more interested in computers anyway.  Lucky for me, I went to CASS.

CASS has an unbelievable intramural program.  On your first day of high school, you're 'drafted' to one of four houses: Kings, Knights, Aces, and Panthers (I was a Panther.  So was Robin.)  After a quick tour of your classes, you were drug into the gym for a pep rally for your House; you were told the traditions; you were sold the Story.  Panthers, for instance, win by attrition: since Intramural points are accumulated by attendance, not just wins, we simply overwhelmed the other Houses with our attendance.  That meant peer pressure to show up, no matter your competitive showing.

Every morning in homeroom, a House rep would visit and post the day's Intramural events on the chalkboard.  They'd push you to sign up for next weeks' Intramural events.  They honestly CARED if you showed up or not.  Early on, I had a habit of signing up for everything and showing up for nothing; I was berated in homeroom for losing points for the Panther House.   So I showed up.  

Gradually, I overcame the fear of not winning: of losing in front of friends, girls.... I didn't train myself to lose, but I became adept at handing loss.  This is maybe the most important part of Intramurals: frequent exposure to stuff you're just bad at.  And I was more exposed than anyone, believe me.

There are a thousand years between here and there, spanning different athletic pursuits (racquetball in college, racing mountain bikes afterward, competing at Powerlifting for 4 years after that) but I never felt like an athlete.  The 'team' aspect aside, none of those sports produced the type of well-rounded athlete I desired to be: ready for anything.  Even while I was training on the mountain bike and THEN "working out" for up to 2 hours a day (doing a typical bodybuilding program - useless) I was never really "in shape."    Powerlifters are incredibly strong, and I may never be that strong again; but even at 205lbs, I couldn't run 400m.  Even though I had been a 'personal trainer' for twelve years, I had no appreciation for REAL fitness when I started CrossFit in 2008.

In 2009, we competed at the CrossFit Ontario Challenge.  This was before the 'Sectionals' qualifier for the CrossFit Games. It was NOT a normal athletic competition.  This is form, function, and fear tossed in a blender an set on 'chop.'  Equal parts ballet and bulldozing.  The precise art of the wrecking-ball.

These were honest-to-God athletes.  Kickboxers, rowers...all united by the commonality of CrossFit.  Fitness, stripped down to its rawest form, and pushed into the margins of "too much, too far, too fast." They were strong - a 255lbs deadlift, done 80 times in 10 minutes, is strong.  They were fast - we saw a 400m rip that took around 1:00 flat in a WOD, done in tennis shoes.  We weren't the first ones to ask about the puke bucket.  We weren't last place; thank heaven; we weren't even out of place.

If you've never been a competitive athlete before, you can.  That door is open again.  There's a new opportunity to develop, dream, strive, reach.  There's a whole new playing field.  Best part: we have intramurals three times per day.  Something different every day, but always an event; always an arena, not just a fitness centre.  Catalyst has built me as much as I've built it, and more.

If you could go back.... if you could start over, in a NEW sport, and become a force; would you do it?  Is it enough to push hard in the Mens' Beer League and relive old glory in the changerooms?  Ten years from now, will it be "okay" that you let your youth slip, when you could have maybe run a mile in 5:00, or deadlifted 400lbs, or learned to do a handstand?

Hey, I started late.  If I can do it, you can. I'll prove it to you: if you're doing CrossFit now - even if you've just begun - sign up to do the Intergalactic Throwdown or Defiance in February, and Murph in March. Chances are, you won't finish in first place. But chances are equally good that you won't finish in last place, either. And you'll be hooked.  You'll have cleared a bar that most don't dare approach, and THAT is successful. Showing up an athletic event MAKES you an athlete, not the other way around.

CrossFit Ontario Challenge 2009. The guy in front of me is Cris Cristini, who did 17 rounds of 5 deadlifts (255) and 5 burpees in 10 minutes to win the event.

By the way, our House still wins because we show up with the most people!

Why We Have Rules

There was a time, not so long ago, when we abhorred rules. We were the fitness counter-culture (still are!) and rules and regulations were for them. Not us.

We took for granted that people would know their way around a CrossFit gym; that they'd be sensitive to the same issues we were. In short, we made the mistake of projecting our values and background onto everyone, because we're all friends here.

Recently, we've had to crack down a bit. We've tried hinting, and surprise! that didn't work. You CAN'T read our minds, after all! We've tried being cute - the burpee penalties aren't working. So here it is: WHY we insist on things being done a certain way. After all, we're not just making up rules for their own sake.

1. Don't wear wet shoes in the gym. I don't want to sit in your mess. Do you want to sit in mine? I don't want to get out of a shower and step in dirt. Kinda defeats the purpose.

2. Don't drop an empty bar. A seven-foot drop of a finely-tuned, $800 instrument CAN'T end well.

3. Don't expect to train while there's a CrossFit group. We are, first and foremost, a coaching organization. We make our gym space available to our athletes for practice during our non-coaching hours. Participants in CrossFit groups - whether they number 1 or 20 - deserve (and have paid for) the exclusive use of the equipment and exclusive attention of the coach. Your gym membership is valid from 6-7am, from 8am-7pm, and from 8pm-9pm. That's twelve hours of availability, for about a buck a day. When a coach has to ask you to finish up at 7pm to make way for the group, it's incredibly awkward for everyone involved.

4. Don't leave your stuff around.  We don't want your shoes, or your water bottle. There simply isn't room to keep them here. If it were important to you, you'd remember to take it with you. Similarly, put equipment away properly. Bars fall over and make dents in equipment. A piece of dented rower costs $500 to replace; a bar costs $800. You'd have to be a member for 30 months to cover the cost of replacement, not including taxes and shipping and repair time. When you break equipment, you're taking it away from all members until we can fix it. 

5. Sign in.  We're tracking peak hours so that we can plan around them. We wouldn't ask if we didn't need the information. It's not hard, promise.

6. Take ownership. Stepping on skipping ropes is bad for them. Letting a three-year-old run around is bad for them. Leaving a piece of chalk on the floor is bad for everyone.

We hate being the 'bad guy.' We like everyone here. We're attempting to keep our community small and close; the atmosphere intense; and the floors clean enough to collapse upon. Rules aren't about being 'nice,' or 'in a good mood,' or 'mad' at anyone. There's a reason for every one. If you're unsure, just ask. Please, and thanks. Now let's all get back to training hard.

How To Change

 
This is the Eve of Resolution. We have goals, you and I, and 2011 looms like a great clean slate, doesn't it?

There are plenty of essays around here to motivate you. You WANT to improve, and good for you! You're just not sure how to do it....

In their new book, Switch: How To Change Things When Change Is Hard, Chip and Dan Heath call this Driving The Elephant. The Elephant is the emotional part of your brain; the Rider is the logical part. In this case, the Elephant is excited and ready; the Driver just doesn't have a map.

One of the greatest points made by the Heath brothers is that long-term goal setting is too vague. Goals like, "I'm going to lose twenty pounds" may appear to be measureable and clear-cut, but they're like seeing a mountaintop rise from the mist: a noble destination, but no clear view of the process.

In the same vein, large goals aren't solved by large solutions. Instead, you need a large number of small alterations to make long-term change happen. Your life is a freight train; a sudden right-hand turn will just derail your efforts. Let's start, then, with what you're already doing well.  Let's call these Bright Spots.

1. What's something you're already doing well? Most people focus too heavily on the negative, but EVERYONE does something right. Negative information, even if it's true, is useless.

Example: I'm walking my dog every morning.

2. Clone those Bright Spots.

Example: I'll retrace my dog-walking route at night, with or without my dog.

3. What's the first sign you'll have that your change is working?

Example: I'll know I'm doing better because I'll have more energy when I wake up in the morning. I'll know it's working because my spouse will comment that I'm looking better. I'll know it's working because I'll be able to go farther or faster on my walks.

4. Set your first milestone based on #3.

Example: I"ll have achieved the first part of my goal when I can walk the dog for 8 blocks instead of 6 blocks in the same amount of time every morning.

5. Try on success like you'd try on pants.

Example: How will I feel, knowing that I can do better? What will I look like? What will I be wearing that's different? Will I change my shoes? Will my dog like me more? Will I get a new leash?

6. Revisit the process every chance you get, and track your progress. Write it down. Here's a worksheet to help you get through it more easily:

Download BrightSpotsWorksheet

The process can apply to anything: giving up smoking, lifting more weight, running faster. We use it with our new clients, and it helps more than you'd ever believe.

Change is possible. Don't shoot for all-or-nothing; accept imperfection and roll with it. Happy 2011!

You Can Have It

Take a little kid who wants for nothing. Give that kid red hair, if you like, and take him to church. Tell him to pray, knowing that to a kid, prayer feels like a wishing well. What does that boy pray for?

Well, I know. It's a dump truck. Not because he needs one, or wants to drive one someday; or even because he has a big pile of sand. He prays for a dump truck because he can't think of anything else.

He doesn't get a dump truck. Doesn't matter.

 
Thirty years later, he's got plenty on his mind. He'd love a new truck, thanks, but the bills are paid and the lights are on. Rent? Check. Heat? Chalk? Internet connection? Check-check-check. Million-dollar salary? Not on the list, bub. Doesn't matter.

Anything you really want, you can have. You have all the tools: an alarm clock, a memory, and - somewhere - a pebble.

One catch: the goal has to be worthy. Worth waking up to, worth lying down with every night. Worth obsessing about, worth an ulcer, worth a cold truck ride at 5am.

You, my friend, are not a scratch-off ticket; not a millimetre of soft rubber with the answer pre-printed beneath. This is not about chance, or fate. It's about putting a speck in your eye: you can look at other stuff, but it's always there, a black blur at the front.

You want to lose a hundred pounds? You can have it. Start living it. Want to clean 250lbs? You can have it. Better get started. Want to run 5k nonstop? You can have it. We'll show you how. Want to leap across the gorge? Can't do it in two small jumps.....but you can do it. Just gotta build the wings.

There's always the matter of 'wanting it.' "We just WANTED IT more," says the winning quarterback. But it's not want: you are the child who wants for nothing. It's NEED. Wanting may mean a tantrum and tears - but nothing that can't be cured with a good nap. But if you NEED it, you'll hold your breath to get it. Your guts will burn. Your knuckles will go white. You'll be forced down on your knees.

But that's where you'll find the foundation.

Build up from there.

The Pebble

A few months ago, we had three nurses in serious disrepair. You know them all: faces, names, histories - and the end of this story won't be a surprise to you. But the path is still a shining one.

A broken foot, to one, meant kettlebell swings on her knees, straddling boxes. Cleans, snatches...all is possible with a little extra setup time. "Can you help me build a fort?" she'd ask, joking about putting boxes and mats together.  To the second Little Nursie, ACL surgery meant a hard-won capitulation by her surgeon. She carried his words down that gravel road, limping at first, starting from "you'll never run again" to "your progress is remarkable, but..." to "that's phenomenal. What's your marathon date again?" And the third, the smallest Nursie of them all...well, she couldn't run. Or walk, or stand without pain. So she rowed. Heck, they ALL rowed. One-legged, for awhile, one leg hovering outside the stirrups while the other leg shuttled over thousands of metres alone.

What do these three have in common? Eustress. It's a term from Hans Selye, and the non-clinical definition goes like this: they had something stuck in their craw. Something inside was wearing on them. It bounced like a bullet in their guts, tearing holes, trying to cut an exit wound. It chased their brains. They couldn't stop.

"It isn't the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it's the pebble in your shoe." Muhammad Ali said. But that pebble is a hell of a fulcrum, if you can just find the right lever....

These women were all desperate to succeed. They knew they'd have to get creative; crazy, even. But crazy beats tough. And they can still do good mornings, after all. And nobody posts, 'gained 3 degrees of knee flexion this week!' as their facebook status.

Irrationally, this is not the kind of behaviour we encourage in our keep-pushing-it-off culture. Knees hurt while running? Get big shocks (sorry, SHOX!) on your shoes. Back hurt? Curl up in bed! Got MS? Hold still!  Tiny pea keeping you up at night? Pile on more mattresses, Princess!

We do not have a chewy nougat centre. Strip us away, piece by piece, and you'll find bedrock. Stress, anxiety, injury, lightning....these aren't always a handicap. Sometimes, they're the firing pin on a very righteous bullet.

When things are going our way, there's not much reason to push for change, is there? The strongest magnet makes no spark. But put a pinch in our shoe, give us a reason to push back.....

The Personal Ten

"Man, you've got a real hate on for New Year's Resolutions!" he said, when I saw him yesterday. But that's not quite right. I don't dislike goal-setting. I dislike the cycle of failure set in motion by short-term promises without long-term vision.

Focusing on the "what," instead of the "how" is a big problem in the world of exercise. Part of the reason CrossFit is such an epiphany for many of us is its focus on a different Capital 'Q': Quality. THEN Quantity, the second brother. Practice the work, march toward Better. New Year's Resolutions that don't focus on improving the underlying mechanism - or the foundations of your beliefs and behaviour - can't possibly work in the long term.

Right: how would you possibly measure success in the 'Spreading of Joy' resolution?

It's time to star in your own Christmas Pageant. In this variation, you star as Moses [yes, I know: he's not in the Christmas story. Neither were decorated spruce trees. Play along.] You're up on the mountaintop, looking over your flock, and here comes The Voice: "Moooooses...."

But this time, you're told to turn around. Look within, Bearded One. Instead of "Thou shalt not...," I'd like you to carve your own Commandments.

I'm not talking about goal-setting. These aren't destinations; they're paths. These are rules by which you'll vow to live your life in 2011. Carve them into granite, and aim for 80% compliance (as any good Catholic would.) These are the roads that lead to Damascus.

For instance: "I will follow the Zone eating style for 90% of my meals in 2011."

I'm not asking for specific goals, like a 250lbs clean, but rather specific rules by which you'll play your own game next year. On the other hand, though, don't be ambiguous:

"I'll be a better person." Nah. Instead, vow to quit swearing, if you think you should (not me. I really, really like swearing. It's like the coconut oil in my coffee: it makes the WODs better, and greases the wheels on everything else.)

 "I'll donate more to charity" sounds a lot like, "thou should probably not kill." Be definite.

"I'll practice cleans once per week, at a minimum." That's one of mine.

Another: "I will write at least 750 words every day." I'll use 750words.com to help remind me.

It's better to have 5 really solid Life Rules than 10 weaker ones. Don't add, "Call Mom Every Sunday" just to round out the list. Make five or six good rules, and stick to them.

"I will complete 80% of the workouts posted on the CrossFit main site."

"I will read one book per month."

"I will save one hundred dollars per month."

This year: no resolutions. Instead, self-Commandments. Autoregulation. Rules by which you promise to abide.

And call your mom.

2011: Year of The Student

I'd like you to do something for me.

I'd like you to give yourself permission to Practice in 2011. No, more than that; if you're going to 'Resolve' anything let it be this: I resolve to try, and fail, and try again, a different way. I will give myself permission to do things poorly for as long as necessary, until I start doing them better. I promise to practice.

Sixteen hours into Keith Richards' autobiography, Life, one fact rings clearer than any other: the man practices. He plays. He tries things. "Let's move the guitar amp over here," he says, "let's try it like that." "Okay, now let's turn the drum amp around, record it on cassette tape, and play it back over the guitar." While the Stones are famous for recording Brown Sugar in two takes, it would be easy to make the argument that they succeeded on their first try, after ten thousand 'practice' attempts. At one stretch, while using a particularly high-grade cocaine, Richards played nonstop - without sleep - for nine straight days (his 'record.') Keith was a massive drug abuser- the book revolves around his heroin problem - but every time he shot up, he was with other musicians, playing. Take a typical twelve-year-old; replace their game controller, television, hockey stick, cell phone, and girlfriend with a single guitar. Give them four hours of sleep per night. Multiply over sixty years. THAT'S practice.

Implementing this idea called Ignite! over the last several months with Tyler, we've had plenty of epiphanies. We've been forced, by necessity, to break down the learning process into its component parts, and that's messy. We break through walls in the Education System, and we're often left with a sticky grey dust. But occasionally, we see things through the holes that we've made. And one of them is a lack of practice.

Take math: "It goes like this," says the teacher. "Here are some homework questions that duplicate the theme without context. Do this by rote, in this narrow window of time, every day."  Ask a teenager what they dread most in a math exam? "Word problems." In other words, broad application of what they've learned. They fear anything taken out of the controlled environment of the textbook, because they haven't had the opportunity to PLAY with the numbers. They haven't done math on THEIR terms. No one has shown them that math, for all its authoritarian appearance, is really their puppet. What if their task was to find problems to which the processes they've learned in school could be applied? How much 'test anxiety' could be relieved if the kids realized it was all JUST practice, after all?

Now, another example: public speaking. It's hard to imagine a skill more important than the ability to project confidence to others. In a world where the computer has turned inside out, and 'social media' now means MORE time alone, our passive-aggressive Lizard Brains are nourished. Hide in this cave, it's warm. Don't go outside. Thar be monsters.

Once per year, each child is placed, full of anxiety, in front of all their friends. They're told to memorize - perfectly! Or else! - their script; to speak for precisely two to five minutes; to do it for a grade; and smile, smile, smile, dear! Frankly, it's traumatic. Put that child into an interactive environment every day, however.....and you've got a citizen, instead of a terminal-operator.

 
I spent over a decade being coached to play hockey. I went to practice twice per week, took my turn in the rotation in games, and learned how to stickhandle. "It goes like this," said the coach. I tried it, and we moved on to something else. Years later, as a farm-community teenager, hemmed in by distance and heavy snow, I had nowhere to go but the rink. Three hours, every night. Five or six guys, shoveling and flooding the ice between games. I wore out a set of blades that year. But I learned HOW. TO. DEKE. Stickhandling? That's in the textbook. Dangling? That's not. "When did you get good at that?" a much-admired friend asked in a game the next year. "Oh, it's easy," I said. "It goes like this...."

It's never too late to be a student. Practice is light, airy, and fun. Yes, it's frustrating....but if you consider it practice, you'll be more likely to enjoy it. In 2011, please play around more. Try to do things differently. When we say, "It goes like this...." try it. Get it down. Then fool around. Play with your clean; tease out a heavier front squat. Move your feet. Try it with louder music. Try it at 8pm. Try it with people watching, and then alone.

"The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses - behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights." - Muhammad Ali

How To Talk To Your Friends About CrossFit

It's Resolution season. It's also a time for gatherings - workplaces, family.... and there's going to come a time when you're asked about that crazy CrossFit thing you're doing.

One of the toughest things about CrossFit is defining it. Ask any Affiliate owner: "what's your 'elevator pitch?'" What do you say to a stranger in 30 seconds that makes them want to push away a lifetime of hesitation and anxiety and just show up?

1. Start the conversation on the right foot.
- the right way -
Hey, want some candy? Yeah, it's all for you. Just get in the van....
- the wrong way -
Hey....want some gluten-free, no-corn-syrup, no-lactose vegetable lumps that I made myself? Yeah, they're kinda crumbly....oh, you don't? Um, okay, I guess...
2. Stick to the basics
- the right way -

Well, we do a lot of free weights, and some basic gymnastics stuff, and kettlebells, running, rowing...basically, we combine it all differently every day to make it more of a daily 'challenge.'

- the wrong way -

CrossFit is awesome, man! It just IS! It's, like, super rad! And sooooo hard! Bench press? No, we don't really do that....No, no 'chest day' at all....well, we train, like, movements, not muscles, and - no! You're wrong! That's wrong! I don't care what you read on T-Nation! Bad! You're all bad! P90X makes you a bad person! Give me back that Christmas present! And stop dating my sister!

3. Don't forget about eating!
- the right way -
Well, we eat a lot of protein, and healthy fats, and fruits and vegetables. Why don't we eat grains - even the 'whole grain' type? Well, I like the 'brothers' analogy: one brother puts you down, and makes you feel like garbage. He beats you up. He put that girl into a coma, once. He cut off that other guy's leg. He blinded that old guy. His brother, though, isn't as bad; sure, he does all that other stuff, but he sure gives a good enema.

- the wrong way -
Grains are bad. I read it on this guy - Mark? - yeah, his website. So it's true. You shouldn't be drinking that milk, eating that bread, buying that low-fat 'Nog, or wearing that tie. Yeah, THAT one. It sucks. I thought so last Christmas too.

 
4. Emphasize fun and community
- the right way -
When you join, you won't know anyone. But pretty soon, everyone's high-fiving you like you're old Army buddies, and you're cheering for them, too. Heck, people I had never met two years ago are now some of my closest friends, and it's all because of CrossFit....(adopt a starry-eyed, distant look here.)
- the wrong way -
Oh man, you've gotta see how far this guy Eric can puke! He can hit the ditch from the side door! And, and...you get a free hat if you puke on your first day! And this guy Mitch...he's awesome. You'll never be as good as him at anything. Hey, Tim! This guy thinks he can beat Mitch at 'Fran!'  Go in there and try Fran.  It will kill you, and....hey! Come back! You just WENT to the washroom a minute ago!....

5. Tell them how to get started
- the right way -
Yeah, we do this great program called 'OnRamp.' You learn how to do everything properly. If you're already good at something, you'll get better. Then you'll be totally ready for the workouts. You'll still want coaching - you can never learn too much - but at least you'll know the lifts. We have this great coach, Whitney. Go to this website and sign up as soon as you get home.

- the wrong way -
Come with me! We'll do this awesome workout called Filthy Fifty! And then, we'll do Fran! Oh, man...you'll be KILLED! You won't walk for days! Your kids will be born with sore abs! People will think you have rickets! Your mom will call you to tell you HER quads hurt!  Oh, we'll take a picture of  you when you're collapsed on the ground, and thousands of people will see it tomorrow! Awesome! Hey, how come you're not answering anymore? Is this headlock too tight?

6. Let them find their own way to CrossFit.

 - the right way -

Look, you're an intelligent person, and CrossFit is a thinking man's workout. Go to this site. Check out the workouts. If you're intrigued, try one. Come with me sometime; they won't mind. I'll do it with you. Friday good?

 - the wrong way -

Hey, you've gotta come. Seriously. I'll tell my sister to dump you if you don't, you wuss. I have serious doubts about your character already...hey! You know, I barely feel you punching me. Maybe if you ate better.....

Enjoy your holidays. When you go to your Monday group, bring a friend.

The Pinch

 
Tomorrow is the Day of Darkness. With less than eight hours of light in these parts, the natural animal instinct is to burrow. Hibernate. Cover up, duck down. Create a womblike space, and wait for the water to break.....

Fewer babies are born on December 21 than any other day. It's not that the day is actually shorter, of course; there's just less light.  Suicides peak on the 21st. Depression, anxiety - the narrower window of daylight changes the perspective of everyone.

Consider this, though: on December 21, you have a unique opportunity to evaluate and act. Less daylight? Prioritize your activities. Do only the things that are MOST important (hint: that list doesn't include shopping. IMPORTANT does not equal stuff that you've left until the last minute.) Push everything else to the margins.

Important: protein at every meal.

Not important: A Charlie Brown Christmas.

Important: Train hard. 60 minutes, including your drive to and from the Park.

Not important: finding the perfect wrapping paper.

Important: interacting with the right people.

Not important: Uncle Billy's NogFest 2010.

When attempting to isolate dietary allergies, it's common practice to cut back to the basics: the most hypoallergenic foods available. Eat those only for two weeks. Slowly add more foods back into your diet. Identify friction when it happens. Avoid the foods that cause discord.

December 21st - the Solstice - is the perfect opportunity to apply that same philosophy in a broader sense. Cut out everything but the pure. Strip away the glossy paper. Succeed today? Add more tomorrow, or not. Maintain the core. Practice makes permanent. Let the smaller frame bring your life into sharper focus.

If you can do it today, you can do it tomorrow. If you can do it tomorrow, you can do it forever.

Industry

If you're here at 6am, you may get a glimpse into what happens at Catalyst in the 'off-hours.' The floor may still be wet; the WOD may not yet be written on the chalkboard. "How do you make yourself get up at 4am to mop?" is a question I get all the time.

In these margins - the predawn, prenoise, predistraction - that's where the art really happens. And it's borne of work.  Wander into the dark pocket that is Industrial Court 'B' at 5:30am, and you'll hear Springsteen, Strait, and the Stones. Blue-collar stuff. At these hours, my title shifts, very slightly, from President to Janitor (there's more overlap than you may think.)

The NY Times posted an essay on November 16 called, "When The Mind Wanders, Happiness Also Strays." They're talking about the joy that comes when the brain flashes the neon "No Vacancy" sign. The notion is especially true when you're attention-hyperactive.

I'm no stranger to a hayfield. For over a decade, I'd spend summers burning my neck under the dry sun, and my palms on baler twine. My grandfather, on the tractor, never wore gloves; and so his protege, way back on the sled, went without also. For long hours we'd circle, with the noise of the tractor and the smell of the diesel filling the space. It was hard, and sweaty, and hot. But the repetitive work made for a free mind. To this day, most stress in my life is resolved with my hands on a shovel, or a deadlift bar. Frankly, I'd rather wear a new callus on my fingers than on my marriage (and I'm sure that, if putting up with a stressful partner is a skill, Robin's achieved her 10,000 hours of practice loooooong ago.)

In 'Thinking Body, Dancing Mind," Chungliang Al Huang muses on the happiness found through work. As it turns out, labour is the liberator, not the jailer, of the masses. Hard work isn't the enemy; it's boredom. The pen may be mightier than the sword, but the work boot gives you a shell unmatched by Kevlar. Yes, it's hard to wave a flag while you're shuttling a mop around the floor at 5am, but the idea - the art, the music, the spark that lights the gunpowder - that's where it comes from.

CrossFit helps. Look at the outpouring of creativity we get from our Catalyst Family: photos. Sketches. Essays. Songs, in one case. You think anyone's writing poetry about Vibro-Gym? If so, it starts with, "Dear Penthouse...," and the workout is really just a footnote.

Work is freedom. Go get sweaty.

Trickle-Down Fitness

When I was a kid, the most delicious treat in the wintertime wasn't hot chocolate, but a snack I could prepare myself: icicles. Crack one off a roof, hold a piece in your mouth, and cool down after hard play in the snow. Simple. Clear and pure.

Right?

Until Acid Rain became a buzzword in the 1980s, no one gave a thought about the toxic burden carried by those clouds. Rainwater was from....God, or something, and purified....well, by sunlight, or maybe ultraviolet unicorn horns. It was good,  until we knew better.

A friend on facebook posted this: "Heard at the gym last night: 'I do an hour and a half of cardio a day and I still can't lose weight?'" The replies were plentiful and varied, with a common theme: they put the blame on the complainer. Without any context whatsoever, responders accused the struggling gent of eating at McDonald's, lying about his 'cardio' time....and no one questioned the information that got him to that point.

The problem is, "knowledge" doesn't fall straight down. It starts out that way - in the form of scientific data, sometimes, or empirical evidence, or sometimes just gross experience. But then, it slopes. It's deflected.

No one wants to read Journal abstracts all day. Nah, they want Jimmy The Bartender to tell them to do more cardio, match their tie to their pants, and tip their postman. A white coat has become less validating than a solid six-pack, because - well, it worked for her, right?

And so, the truth takes on a bit of an angle. Just like rain hitting a tin roof, still coming at you...but not quite head-on. We are a culture of lower-back weakness....we just need more core work! We're storing too much fat? Calorie-counting is the answer! OR take this new! improved! chocolatey! supplement!  The magazine - heck, the HEALTH industry - is one big, rusty roof, with a slope low enough to prevent even the most slow-footed burglar from falling off.

Not downright, stop-in-your-tracks LIES...but not an untainted source anymore, either. Yes, some of the water in your icicle is fresh and straight from the source. But which one? They all look alike, and frankly, most of them taste like squirrel piss.

After fourteen years in the industry, I can assure you: everyone has a slope. It's a necessity. It's a hard rain out there. But here's to steep rooftops anyway.

16 Punches

 
Sorry, Tom Petty, but you were wrong: Sonny Liston did not go down swingin'. Frustrated after trying, for six rounds, and failing to catch Cassius Clay, he threw in the towel. He didn't rise from his chair. He didn't answer the bell. He bowed his head instead.

Clay went on, of course, to become Muhammad Ali, and travel much further down the road. I don't know what happened to Liston: did he rise and stalk back to the dressing room? Did he stay there until the lights had gone out, alone with his own echoes? True fans know, I'm sure. But for the rest of us, the Sonny Liston Story ended with his butt in his seat.

Liston couldn't take any more punches. I, however, can.

One month ago, I left the bus running; climbed down the steps, beneath the driver's seat, and dove beneath. I committed myself to perfect practice. In our CrossFit box - The Park - you can pay monthly to come every day. Or you can buy a punch card - 4, 8, or 16 CrossFit sessions - and just check 'em off as you show up. I bought a 16-punch card. For the first time, I was paying to be coached.

On the other side of the whistle, things change. Though the competition is still only me against me, my heart rate rises beyond the Life Fitness Treadmill "Fat Burning Zone" (patented) long before the coach starts his countdown. Anxiety is my 'cardio' now.

What am I - a 'personal trainer' with a degree, fourteen years in the industry, lifting competitions under my belt - doing with a coach? How the heck can I still benefit from turning up to these groups? I'll tell you.

Picture: me, gasping hard enough to suck the dust off the floor below. Sweat coating the face of a black leather medicine ball. Triceps experiencing fear.  "Coop! Get your elbows under that ball!" - punch.

Picture: third round, out of five. Me, tasting the olive oil from lunch. Hands on my knees. 'It's too hard,' whispers the amygdala, playing Defense. "Hands on the bar, Cooper! Just get the first one!" - punch.

Picture: hook grip on a 28mm bar. Me, hamstrings tight. A coach over my shoulder. Individual attention. A magnifying glass on my triple-extension. 5 more pounds, down and up. - punch.

Picture: me, off the pace. 6 pullups behind Eddie. He's not dropping from the bar. Me neither. - punch.

These days, I'm listening to Keith Richards' autobiography, Life. Sometimes, I have to skip back a few seconds to catch what he's just said, but six hours in, it's been well worth the time. Listening to his thick voice in the 5am darkness on my drive to work, I absorb it all. This morning, he was talking about touring through Texas, where rock 'n roll was truly born, and discovering amazing bands in every tiny town through which their station wagon rolled. "They were bloody amazing," he says. "Some were better than us. They were never going to make it. And most didn't want to. That's what made them so great."

I'm not going to win CrossFit Games 2011. Of equal certainty: I will never stop trying to be great.

The Only Way Out Is Through

In a recent study, 83% of Americans reported that they'd like to write a book. Eighty-three percent.  But the interviewers asked the wrong question.

Would YOU like to write a book? Would you like to sit, for the next two years, struggling to wrestle your language into something cohesive? To organize and reorganize; to amend and edit? To put forward your text for critical review? To risk time, attention, and your sleep in order to put pen to paper? To risk the discovery that you can't do it?  To potentially begin, never to finish, occasionally throwing good prose after bad, for the rest of your life?

 - or -

...at a cocktail party, one year from today, would you like to have written a book?  Would you like to be able to claim that you've been published? Would you just like to be able to say that you're an author?

The difference between an 'author' and the rest of us isn't talent. The creativity gene is a lie. The difference is work.

"You know, I think I'm going to run a marathon / climb a mountain / jump out of a plane before I die."  Good notion. Most won't ever follow through, though. Because the hard part isn't making the decision; it's moving your feet. And then doing it twice.  And then, a third time. Every morning, you'll have to convince yourself - again - to keep going.

Doing hard stuff isn't like an elevator. It's like a staircase high enough to obscure the top.  Experience helps...but that's hard to get, too, isn't it? It's also very specific: despite being a father of two awesome kids, I don't consider myself qualified to give much in the way of birthing advice.

I think you know what's coming next. What's the most common sentiment among spectators at big events like FranFest, Murph, and the Catalyst Games? "I wish I'd done it."  Because the finishers are the only ones who get to wear that badge afterward. They're the ones who will be telling the story tomorrow, and it's theirs to tell. Achievement ain't comfortable, but it beats the hell out of a book with no chapters.

Purposeful Practice

By now, you've likely heard of the 10,000 hours effect.

Posited by Malcolm Gladwell in his terrific book, Outliers, the 10,000-hour-rule suggests that mastery isn't an inherited trait, or a surprise. It's practice. Chess masters, Mozart, Mike Tyson....they've all achieved over 10,000 hours of practice before they became great.

Watching Mitch and Brent roll at King Of The Cage on Saturday, I was struck by the finesse of fight.  I was especially lucky to have their dad - Ted Fryia - sitting in the row ahead of us, our own bearded Sun Tzu, explaining the Art of War while his heirs lived it out loud. Post-fight, he received more blows than they did - to the back and shoulders, in congratulations. People were talking, yelling, drinking, clapping.....and I started thinking about ping-pong.

Reading Matthew Syed's new book, Bounce, I'm becoming more convinced that it's not just the quantity of practice that matters, but the quality. Syed was a world Table Tennis champion, and points out that hard work and extraordinary circumstances got him to the top, not an innate ability. He was continually challenged to reach another level for his whole life, accumulating over 10,000 hours of quality playing and coached time by the age of eighteen.  Our brains are so elastic that we can overcome the steepest of learning curves...but we'll stagnate when we reach the top.

This, then, is the real plateau: an abate in progress, caused by an easement in learning.

One of the biggest debates in the fitness industry is the concept of overtraining vs. overreaching.  Overreaching, loosely defined, is trying to hard to achieve goals too soon. But in my opinion, the real problem in most gyms, weight-loss centres, fitness 'studios,' and health agencies in general is underreaching. 

It's not uncommon to hear, "I'm just maintaining." at these places, and for years, I've ranted about lack of forward progress among most gym-goers. It's not enough just to go through the motions; to follow the workouts, and be satisfied with finishing. There's a reason we track times and weights and say stuff like, "AMRAP." We've never prescribed a workout with the heading, "AMRA...YFL." That's because goals matter.

Starting CrossFit, it's perfectly acceptable to follow along, building strength and speed and metabolic conditioning until you can do the workouts As Rx'd. When you finish a heavy WOD for the first time Rx'd, it's a damn fine day. And when, six months later, you crush your previous best time, well....

There will come I time, I promise, when you're no longer progressing by showing up and trying hard.  Every workout, every rep, every silent tick of the digital clock has to count. Your workouts must have a goal.  'General' fitness will only be enhanced by short-term specific improvement. Get one thing better. Then the next. Build a ramp.

I received a nice, complimentary email this morning (thanks, Fergie!) about some of my more 'philosophical' posts.  I love getting emails like that.  Truth is, though, I haven't been reaching. I've been training hard, but not looking forward and upward.  I profess to know a lot about jumping and building wings, in that order, though, so here's my plan: I'm going to join CrossFit groups.

Though I've done CrossFit for two and a half years, and done personal training sessions with all our coaches, it's time to immerse myself into the cauldron.  Today, I bought my first punch card. Tomorrow night, I start participating in groups.  I'll still coach, but with the four best coaches in town working under my roof, I'd be crazy NOT to take regular advantage of what they can offer.  In the Spring, I'll do Frat Level II, and then Enduro.  But for now, instead of leaning on equipment and watching Mitch's awesome Teens groups, I'll be otherwise occupied. Tuesday and Wednesday nights, I'll be out of the frying pan.

Practice makes Permanent.

Cognitive Dissonance: Why Home Workouts Aren't For Everyone

In 2000, I landed my 'dream job': managing a fitness equipment store. After years of working from 6am-10pm, driving through all weather conditions, shuttling members of the 'Team' around like a parent, here was my chance. I could be IN the fitness industry from 9-5, making an actual salary, and still helping people. All I had to do was learn to sell stuff. How hard could THAT be?

I found out quickly. No matter how many books I read, or speakers I attended, I never once made my sales quota for the month. Two years in, I could vomit data about treadmills to anyone who came into the store...but I couldn't tell a story, and so couldn't convince anyone to buy. This is because I don't know any stories about elliptical trainers.  Somewhere, I'm sure there IS a good story or two that doesn't involve a hilarious mishap...but I've never heard it.

 
The irony didn't strike me for years afterward: at 9am, I'd dutifully dust off the machines, and spend the next eight hours extolling their virtues to anyone who came through the door. I'd tell them that a treadmill that cost $3000 was better value because it would outlast all the miles they'd be sure to put on it. I'd push the $4000 home gym because it had more workout options...just follow the chart printed on the weight stack over here, see? Mindless. Simple. You can't help but exercise on this baby!  This exercise bike will even track the miniscule amount of calories you'll burn on it!

At 5pm, though, I'd head through the back doors to the parking lot. There, an athlete would wait for his personal training session. We'd push sleds, sprint, swing plates, carry heavy stuff...but not use any of the equipment from the store. Not once. Not even a little pair of spring collars.

It's probably obvious by now: I couldn't sell the stuff because I didn't believe in it.

I don't like treadmills. That's no secret. I own two giants, worth nearly $7000 each, and I treat them like rented mules. I resent their very necessity. I DO, however, like barbells and boxes and pullup bars, and I have them at home. So why, then, is it so hard to train when I'm home?

Other folks, facing this problem, will blame themself: I have no willpower. I'm too easily distracted. There's just so much to do here! I'm too comfy to get out of my pajamas right now.... but these aren't the problems. They're just the symptoms.

Creationist or evolutionist, anthrophile or agnostic, you've got a thing for caves. Caves, for our species, have pulled us out of a scrape or two. They're shelter, they're warmth...they're safety. They're for hunkering down and waiting.  They're reserved exclusively for flight, not fight.

What is a home, then, but an extension of the cave with heavy influences by Martha Stewart? It's for resting. Hiding. Recovering from out there. That front door is just one more threshold between you and The Wolf.

And where do most folks put their new workout gear? In their bedroom, or in the basement - out of sight. Out of mind. And in the places reserved for rest.

This is called 'Cognitive Dissonance': when your actions disagree with your core belief system, it creates anxiety. Cognitive dissonance is why people do things that sometimes aren't logical. It's also why hypnosis can help you quit smoking, IF you believe that smoking is wrong, and you're already trying to quit.  Unfortunately, it can sabotage your efforts to exercise at home.

Selling treadmills for two years, I can't say who was still using their equipment after January 31 with any kind of science to back me up. My empirical observation, though - and thousands of local "For Sale" ads - hint that the "expensive clothesline" joke rings true.

It's not the phone. It's not Y&R. Your physiology demands, at this time of year, that you go outside to hunt and gather. It thinks you're ready to shut down for the winter - don't give it the option. Commit to something outside the home. "Owning Your Fitness" really means recognizing the root of undermining bad habits, and developing positive ones.

Reach For It

In a study published two years ago, big-time lottery winners (a million and up!) were surveyed to find out how they were handling life.  Spoiler alert: badly.  50% had very little money left.  Only 10% had done any kind of financial planning.  30% of those who were married when they found the golden ticket were already divorced.  The cars weren't enough; no house wasn't enough.  Scarily, 10% had developed gambling problems....after they'd already won!

It seems that the thing we desire most is change.  Change is our hope; our faith; our political platform; our dream.  The thing we want most isn't a thing at all: it's just to not be bored anymore.  Or not be tired.  Or fat, or hungry.  In our culture, it may be hard to name anything we're really missing;  we just want something....different. 

Better, if possible, please.

But this type of change isn't hiding in the cushions of your couch, folks.

The word, "Kaizen," translates from Japanese to mean : "the continuous pursuit of self-improvement in all areas." This is the Renaissance of Eastern culture...except that it's still happening. The key word here: Continuous.

Improvement in one area of life can frequently mean the partial disassembly of another.  There are only so many minutes in the day, after all.  There's only so much energy to go around. Even triglycerides have their limit.

Maximal strength, for instance, and aerobic endurance are mutually exclusive.  A bit. Being a "TEN" in one column doesn't necessarily relegate you to a "ONE" in the other. If that were true, you'd get stronger just by RESTING.  There's a middle ground.  There's also the possibility of being great at both.  Would you trade a "TEN" for two eights? That's the question facing the elite athlete.

However......

For most of us, we're starting at about a THREE.  We're not happy about it, no; but at least we're not a TWO.  Not like THAT guy over there.  Everybody here knows I'm a THREE and he's just a TWO, right?

....and that's why we get stuck.  We protect the THREE, because even though THREE ain't TEN, it's a thousand times better than TWO.  No way are we risking that THREE to try for a TEN, because TEN is impossible, and we don't want to look like a TWO out there, do we?  TEN is for guys with eight-packs and zero dependents, with great genes and tattoo sleeves and an amazing tan.  We look at TEN, and we forget about FOUR.

FOUR is going to take work. FOUR isn't on a lottery ticket. FOUR is harder than THREE.  But it's next-door neighbours with that sweet, sweet FIVE. And oh, FIVE.....can you imagine FIVE? It's almost too much to wish.  For now.

The lower that number, the more you need to take action.  Book an appointment. Commit to a group. Better yet, register for Catalyst Games 2010. Can't do a movement? Do the Scaled or REALLY Scaled version.  Everyone finishes. Nobody will know you're a TWO, and you'll feel like a TEN, solid as a church pew.  And it won't be luck.

***with thanks to Joe Scott, whose picture I first saw in the Sault Star January 29, 2008. He was doing medicine ball cleans with his (then) 8-year-old girl, Kiera. The line, "this type of change isn't hiding in the cushions of your couch" is paraphrased from his.***

A Cast of Character

You read that right. No typo.

This morning, I was reminded AGAIN why the 'cast and crew' here are so different: they have substance.  Stories.  Backbones. Issues, sure; but they're real people, not the Teflon-deep routine zombies you meet in so many other gyms.

This morning, Sean dropped a clean wrong. Sean's a competitive runner.  And when Sean's kneecap takes a sharp turn to the left...well, I worry a bit. But three minutes later, Sean was doing pullups and pushups - the part of the WOD that he still could do - right beside Neil and Katie. He'll be here tomorrow at 7am.

There's an old cliche about adversity not creating character, but revealing it. And CrossFit is a hard anvil against which to press, fold, and temper your resolution.  Being a solid person, true to oneself and one's peers, takes practice.  And every day, as I witness the rehearsal of Quality, it always strikes me that it's not just anatomy being built here.

Take Shannon. Rheumatoid arthritis? Meh. Lupus? See you at lunchtime.  Instead of "I'm down.  What can I DO?" and a hopeless shrug at life, it's "I'm down - now.  What CAN I do?" So she's rowing. And walking, and generally restarting for the seventeenth time.

Look at Renni: he gives up a weekend and a few hundred bucks to ride to Toronto....and Twitter for us at Sectionals.  Doesn't even ask for a free T-shirt.  He just shows up. (Note: he's the Featured Athlete today on the Catalyst Games 2010 site!)

Over here is Kiera: done her Catalyst Kids group, she drops to match her mom, burpee for burpee, when it appears that Mom's struggling to finish her own WOD.  That's stuff you don't typically see from an 11-year-old, but we see it every day.

Carolle, two weeks ago, decided to learn more about this CrossFit thing, and shipped herself to Toronto (at large cost and major inconvenience, softened only by a shopping trip) to learn. No obvious reward, no promise for payback.  Sunday, she's coaching at 10am (you WON'T want to miss that group.)

Yesterday, 25 of you hit 'like!' when I excitedly posted who was in the gym.  Biggest cheers went to the two "at-risk" teens, their counselor (Mitch,)their coach (Josh) and their teacher - Cathi - who came in, two-year-old in tow, to make sure they showed up. 

So it was almost no surprise, today, when I heard Mike call, "Hey, Quinn!" to a kid coming in for a visit. With his grandmother, Quinn rolled in - literally - to try some things out before joining Catalyst Kids tonight. A teenager, he's mostly interested in biceps curls and bench presses, but we had him do some pretty awesome stuff before letting him challenge Tanner to a foot race.

This overflow of character doesn't always come as a surprise.  Not anymore.  Instead, I'm surprised at the outside world: the flat-out bad driving; the inconsiderate "I'm next!"; the dog-eat-everything attitude of most. Immersion in a small but boundless world has raised my expectation of the big one outside our 16-foot door.  Maybe there is more to this CrossFit thing than exercise.

Don't Shoot The Piano Player

When I was a kid, my parents thought it would be a good idea to have me learn to play the piano.

I hate the piano. But they were bigger than me back then.  And so, from age four to age eight, I dutifully marched to the Kindergarten room after school to sit beside Mrs. Powis after all the other kids had gone home. You've never seen a kid move slower than I did at 3:30 on Mondays, friend; I'm sure the toes wore off my little Chucks from dragging the whole way.

One day, in an effort to motivate the small-for-his-age redhead with the miniscule attention span, Mrs. Powis gave me a song she referred to as an "Indian War Song." It was basically just pounding the keys - "Chopsticks" at their most violent - but it was enough to get me on the bench every week.  So I'd practice just enough that she'd let me play the "war songs" every week.

Boy or girl, timid or charismatic, every kid who learns music goes through the fiery gates marked RECITAL. I was terrified. I quivered backstage, feigning interest in Mrs. Powis' doll collection, trying not to throw up. I didn't know what a 'heart rate' was at the time, but I'm sure it was in the stratosphere. At my turn, possibly noticing how my green face was clashing with my red hair, the chubby old lady gave me this advice: "Don't worry, they're all going to clap anyway." It calmed me a bit: I'd rely not on my skill, but on the generosity of my audience (something I still do every day.)

Thursday night, post-WOD, as I chatted with Lacy, Angela and Lindsay, I brought up the Catalyst Games.  "No way!" they all balked.  "I'm not ready for that!" I told them they were ready; said all the stuff I'd said to everyone last year, and the year before; did my best to be encouraging.

What I wish I'd said was, "You're not going to win a trophy.  Doesn't matter.  Everyone at the Games is going to win, because I want them to win. I don't want them to win in a "Everybody gets a ribbon! You're all special!" kind of way, because that's stupid.  It's a contest.  Someone will place first, and someone else will place last.  Doesn't matter if it's you."

What I wish I'd said was, "Look at the post-Games essays from last year.  They were about autovictory: overcoming the self to better the self.  Using competition as a tool to motivate, and measure."

What I wish I'd said was, "No one else will even notice your results, because they feel exactly the same way you do. They're scared. They're training because they don't want to fail. But fear is the best motivator of all. Fear makes you eat your broccoli."

What I wish I'd said was, "Look at Darren, and Sandy, and Nancy, and Jori.  Read the posts.  I'll show you the 'Thank You' cards.  I'll show you the "Wish I'd Done It" emails from spectators. Now try to find out who won last year. Which do you think is more important: first place, or personal best?"

What I wish I'd said was, "Yes, yes, yes you can. Eventually, everyone finishes.  Imagine the worst-case scenario.  Can you live with that?I can.  And if you can, too, then you're crazy not to do the Games."

What I wish I'd said was, "If I have any voice left by 9am, I promise to cheer you loudest of all.  Because every person there is my friend, my ally, and my hero.  It's in my best interest for you to do well, and I get to choose the events.  I'm your ref, and I'm in your pocket. The deck is already stacked in your favour."

What I wish I'd said was, "Don't worry, they're all going to clap anyway."

Even if you play an "Indian War Song" when your audience is expecting "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star."  Maybe more so.

The Middle

It was hot on Monday.

Despite the humidity, despite my red hair and "Casper The Friendly Ghost" skintone, we started off on "Luce" anyway.  My first kilometre was great: a 4:26, without pushing hard at all.  I was ahead of Deluco, excited for muscle-ups, and unconcerned about the squats ahead of me.  I was about to slam into a wall of hurt.  Hard.

Two hundred metres into the second run, I stopped sweating.  I'd been drinking all day (or had I?) The sun wasn't that bad (was it? Hard to tell.) I saw a few floating dots, and stopped to walk, watching Josh pull farther and farther ahead.  I stared into the bottom of the ditch, dry-heaving with heat.

My first round was nine minutes long.  The second was over nineteen. But this story is about the third.

A full bottle of Gatorade later, I was pouring sweat and praying for cloud cover. My heart rate was still too high, but no longer alarmingly so.  The kilometre run seemed long, but do-able. I reached the turnaround, thankful for the downhill ride back, and gave myself permission to walk a minute.

In the stillness of July, sound carries a long way in the Industrial Park. Before I saw them, I heard them: "You wouldn't catch me out running today!" and, as I turned to look, "He's going to hurt himself!"

Raise your hand if you think I walked one. single. step. after that.

Lately, we've had hard workouts, all over the map and definitely outside the comfort zone of most.  A year ago, many of us would have tried to pace ourselves: to draw the length of the workout into a timeframe with which we were more comfortable.  Short workouts? Try to pace it out with water breaks.  Count reps.  Pull the heart rate back down into familiar territory. Keep it in the middle: that place where we're just a little uncomfortable. Scale the weight down until I can do it all nonstop.

But a 35lbs bar for "Grace" is easy.  And your friends from high school....they're not your fitness friends, are they? They're great for Saturday night, but if they saw you running, in the heat, on their way to the flooring store....would they call you crazy? Would they want you back, with them, in the safe, comfortable middle?

Everyone else arounds you wants you to stay the same forever. Your boss wants you to show up every day; score 85% on your performance review; be satisfied with your Christmas bonus. Your teacher wants perfect attendance and regurgitation. Your old gym wanted you to fall into the typical circuit of malaise: sign up, miss workouts, blame yourself. Your spouse wants you to lower your standards, so that they can slip quietly into their own lessened expectations. Your kids want you to be on time for soccer, and make pizza on Tuesdays, and pay for their iPhone.

The middle is easy. Heck, it requires no effort.  It WANTS you; it pulls you. Resist.

PS - my last round was 11:10.

 

Labour

Far from the glory of Element CrossFit Ontario Challenge this weekend, I had my own time trial: move my parents into a new house.  Their remaining possessions, after years on a 300-acre farm, were scattered all over St. Joe Island, mothballed in the garages and basements of friends.

To that end, Friday found me a beast of burden.  My dad (the youngest, by a decade, at 61, of the 'work crew') and I twisted, shoved, swore and sweated in the rain.  His buddies stood by, ready to tarp.  Former farmers all, their sixty-year-old calluses itched in anticipation of work, but their backs had softened by a few short years of Florida commutes and The Back Nine.   Lifetime Labour, downsized to Management.  They took out their nervousness on know-how: every tarp was folded just so, ready for the dry-and-pressed ratchet strap.  In my usual manner, when one guy (arms resting on the truck bed) said, "It's not heavy, it's just awkward," I commented that I'd heard the same said about him.   What followed was a grocery list of complaints: knees, back, hips....sprialing downward to hypertension, diabetes, gout.

To their credit, we moved an entire household in one slow, extremely clean convoy.

On Sunday, I got to enjoy something I haven't done in five years: mowing my own lawn.  I love cutting grass.  Until now, though, there hasn't been a 'lawn' at our house. The mower was cranky.  It hadn't run in several years.  It complained until I finally tipped it on its side and, in the rain, started taking it apart with my brother-in-law.  The air filter was old and caked (I contemplated pushing it around the yard with my thumb covering the air intake, but knew I'd never live it down.)  We fooled with the throttle; we cleaned the plug several times.  We shot enough gas into the cylinder to warrant a call from BP.  We tried fashioning a DIY gasket out of cork.  We scraped out old gas that had turned to varnish.  And after a few hours, sputtering and bitching, it ran. 

Many times in transit the mower sputtered and almost died.  After ten minutes, the motor started to level out.  The blades moved faster.  Small hiccups in gas supply, which caused the motor to rev low and then high, became less regular.  The motor began to purr.

At lunchtime, I commented to Dan that it was running like a top.  "Sometimes," he said, "it just needs to WORK for awhile to get fixed."

We get a lot of credit for 'fixing' bodies at Catalyst.  With someone's chiropractor or physiotherapist, we put a lot of wheels back in motion.  Sometimes, the problem is complicated and technical and requires many textbooks.  And sometimes, the glorious machine just needs to work.

Is CrossFit Hardcore?

CrossFit doesn't look like your workout.  No, it doesn't.

There are no '3 Sets of 8.'  Not a single 'triceps kickback' to be found.  And while we have lots of novel exercises to 'work your core' and 'improve your stability,' we prefer to teach you to move better in your own skin than stand you on a blue-pimple novelty and watch you quiver.

We make big claims: that we create an elite level of fitness.  That we get you places you've never, ever, ever been before.  That their workout is our warmup.  To back those claims up, we have to do movements that are efficient, challenging, and get you far more bang for your buck than a selectorized machine ever could.

A clean and jerk, for instance: once a staple of the workout crowd, and a fundamental lift for improving your grocery-carrying and storage, is banned from nearly every 'fitness club.'  For all the wrong reasons, too: it requires coaching, chalk, and the occasional drop of a barbell from overhead.  Knowledge plus cleanup plus noise?  Not an option if your teenage 'personal trainers' have to learn it all in a two-day course.

But a clean and jerk is a big lift, requiring a lot of energy.  From a purely mathematical standpoint, it's four times as challenging as a bench press.  If it seems scary, it's only because you haven't seen it around much - or have you?  Lifting your bike onto your roof racks - that's a clean and jerk.  Storing your Christmas lights on the top shelf - that's a clean and jerk.  Doing it in the gym first just makes you break fewer bulbs.  And fewer backs.

That's right: contrary, maybe, to what you've been told, this stuff prevents injuries.  The strongest, safest backs in the world belong to powerlifters, NOT bed-resters.  Knee injuries are typically the result of misuse, imbalanced use (the knee extension machine, anyone?) or non-use.  Deadlifts don't hurt your back - given the right chance, they'll save it.  Ask around: chiropractors, physiotherapists, and doctors send patients to us.  We modify our methods for the injured, yes.  But they're on the same road as our competitive CrossFitters, albeit a different starting line.

We choose to exercise in stark boxes.  While exercisers from the 1920s,1930s,1940s, and 1950s would feel right at home, the modern machine-indoctrinated fitness pursuer will struggle to comprehend our methods.  At least, at first. Slowly, they'll recognize little glimmers of sameness.  "Hey, I did that as a kid!"  "We do squats at my gym...but we don't go that low."  "I've seen this on TV, but I never thought I could do it...."

Our workouts are short, but tough.  But you'll want more.  After a month, you'll find yourself checking our website on a daily basis, and joke about 'drinking the Kool-Aid.'  After three months, you'll start breaking your own personal bests and bringing your friends.  We've grown because CrossFit is amazing, not because we have a special limited-time offer on our membership.

Now, there's no denying that for most people, once they've been immersed in CrossFit, they can't ever go back to average.  It tattoos you.  And once you've offered up your fresh, pink skin to the prick of the needle, its mark is indelible.  You can't undo CrossFit; once you've been painted, you can't go back to beige.

There's joy in sweat.  There's family in common discomfort.  There's a chemical addiction that comes from challenging yourself this way.  There's pleasure in learning new stuff every single time you're in the gym.  That's what CrossFit is: sweat+community+knowledge.  Call it what you like.

Seeds

A little over a year ago, local two-wheeled maverick Andre Riopel rode his bike through a snowstorm to chat.  He said lots of great stuff, but here's the part I keep repeating: If you care about your body, you have to care about your immediate environment.  And if you care about your neighbourhood, you have to care about the world.

If we had to add one Commandment to a ***New! Improved!*** New Testament, I'd push for this: "Thou shalt leave no footprint."  Leave it better than you found it.  Carry in, carry out. 

Have humans made our planet into this big, grungy mess? Probably.  However, we stand alone as the species with the means to clean it up again. If Fight on Friday proved anything, it's that our Catalyst community responds enthusiastically to a challenge; but add a benefit for someone other than ourselves, and that response is absolutely overwhelming (70 people!?!? Unbelievable.)

If there was ever a time for useful Resolutions, it's Easter, not New Year's Eve.  We're not pegged down by the elements now.  Time to plant a garden; time to build a playground; time to grow some trees. 

The path to progress will not be cut by the uncallused hand. Like CrossFit, if it were easy, everyone would do it.  Also like CrossFit: you can't really have faith in anyone until you first build faith in yourself.  It's got to start somewhere; what better place than here?  What better time than now?*

Happy Easter.  We're closed today.  Take a day away from improving yourself, and expand your influence instead to improve your neighbourhood.

*quoted from a source that's perhaps never been quoted in a 'Happy Easter!' message.

The Next 7 Days

Today is Monday.  Out of a possible 24 hours, 9 are already gone; another 2 are committed for sleep later tonight.  You'll spend another nine working. That leaves four.

In the Western Christian calendar, this is the season of rebirth.  And about time, too: we're dying here! For the first time, our childrens' generation has a lower projected lifespan than our own.  We've literally got it so easy - so pain-free, so automatic - that it's killing us. 

It's a common misconception that we're just plain lazy.  We're not.  Our minds have been finely tuned over a million years to be primed for action.  We simply haven't come all this way, done all this preparation, to be more ready to watch Oprah than ever before.  It's also a mistake to think that we've reached the end of evolution....unless we're capping the genome right here. If we continue to devolve, it's over. 

Our problem isn't lack of motivation.  It's not weakness of character, or weak ankles, or some elusive 1950s term like, "willpower."  Given a crisis, we can still respond better than our predecessors.  So what's stopping us?  Too much information, Jerry!

Paralysis by analysis.  We're looking for the perfect way to shed our skin.  In a city of a hundred avenues, we're mesmerized by the map, bagel in hand, acting the tourist.  We sample the culture without becoming immersed.  We do drive-by dieting.  We count to 8 (sometimes 12, if Dr. Oz says so) while we kill time on the recumbent bike, waiting for the Exercise Pill to pass the patent board.

You have better options. 

They're simple, but they're not easy. For one, you can spend three weeks learning to exercise.  You can meet Smilin' Whit every morning for 21 days, and reap the benefits for the next 50 years.

You can give yourself permission to be bad at it - at first.  We all were.  The most successful are just the ones who allowed themselves to fail most often. 

You can plant something.

You can come to Fight On Friday, hover near the back, and just try not to get excited.  It's impossible.  Try NOT to cheer, we dares ya.  Try not to smile.  Then remind yourself: this is exercise.  Are we supposed to like it this much?

You can try a Zone meal.  One thing about the Zone style of eating: forgiveness.  If you eat a non-Zone meal, just eat a Zone meal at the next one, and you're back on the road to insulin bliss.

You can tithe.  That is, commit in advance to spending two percent of your day, once per week - 30 minutes - with a personal trainer.  30 minutes, once per week, and then just do the homework you're given.  Heck, we'll even figure out your Zone blocks for you.

By Monday, you could be living a different life.  To say 'reborn' is cliched nonsense, but starting a different track will be like learning to walk again.  Expect shaky legs on the upward climb to self-actualization.

100 Reasons I'm Doing CrossFit Sectionals

1. Three words: "Go, daddy, go!"
2. Anxiety makes me a better athlete.
3. Fear makes me eat my broccoli.
4. "Feeding The Baby" - I'd probably just stand there and pantomime everything if I wasn't competing.
5. Gotta represent the "unnaturals" who didn't play sports their whole lives
6. Got an Army to feed!
7. Next year, Sectionals may require prequalification
8. This is year One of my 15-year training plan for the Masters division
9. Ray Gowlett: "It's like unwrapping your Christmas presents!"
10. The worst-case scenario (last place?) really isn't bad at all.
11. It's not a fashion show, and I support that.
12. It's my sport. 
13. I love my team. 
14. Carolle, who showed up for every single Team WOD every single Friday.
15. Competing at CrossFit = winning at life.
16. Two rounds of 7 hours' good conversation with my wife on the long drive.
17. My kids tend to try the stuff they see me doing.  Anyone else ever notice that?
18. I get to wear 3 of my favourite hats in the same day: cheerleader, coach, and athlete.
19. The next day, I'll wear my fourth favourite, when I write about it.
20. I get to watch Josh Deluco up close.  This kid's something special.
21. Get to hang with other Affiliate owners and friends!
22. I'll do anything for a cool t-shirt.
23. Feeling my lizard brain writhe during the last 10 seconds before the start.
24. Frequent exposure to physical stress makes me better at dealing with other stress.  It's a physiological fact.
25. If you knew me in high school, you'd never have guessed I'd be here.
26. CTV news, baby!
27. Participation is good for the sport.
28. 48 hours of post-Sectional glee.  Almost like a refractory period.
29. The incredible photography that shows up afterward!
30. Watching the CrossFit community flex its collective muscle.
31. Watching the CrossFit philosophy flex its solid muscle.
32. I just don't have the opportunity to be amazed that often anymore.
33. I know how hard it's been to get to my current level, and if there are 100 better, that's going to be incredible to watch.
34. If I keep meeting new people, I don't have to learn any new jokes.
35. This train only goes forward or backward.
36. Posting the WODs on my facebook wall got 21 responses...in the first 10 minutes.
37. I think this is the 'right' carrot to hang in front of people.
38. I'm going to learn like crazy.
39. I'll have more people to cheer for at CrossFit Games 2010 in Aromas (hey! I warmed up with that guy!)
40. Event #4 might just be a max deadlift.  You never know.
41. I'm never going to be this young again.
42. OPT.
43. It's all about the story.
44. I get to see if the wiring and the plumbing work well together.
45. I get to carry my blue foam roller through downtown Toronto.
46. I'll get to see Whit compete against other girls. Yikes.
47. "The walk" over in the morning with the Team. Nervous jokes are double-funny!
48. 'Recovery' swimming with my kids.
49. I'd like to get it done so I can get back and try 'Muscle Murph' - 50 muscle-ups, 100 clapping pushups, 150 x 95lbs front squat, with a mile before and after
50. Writing this list is really easy - that's reason enough!
51. Test, revise curriculum, repeat.
52. My form will be checked against the highest standard.
53. How else would I know?
54. I'm building an exercise habit, too.  You don't ever stop.
55. I've already got the calluses.
56. So I can convince 20 people to come next year. 
57. As long as I can keep Clint healthy, I'm not the oldest.
58. Some of the most athletic physiques in the country....and not a single mirror.
59. Best seats in the house are on the stage.  See # 4, "feeding the baby."
60. Gotta stop Josh from eating the jar of pickles before the pickle-eating contest.
61. I know the family's watching back home.
62. My sister's flying across the country to be there.
63. I'll share a chalk dish with some of the best lifters,writers,and businesspeople in the country.
64. More people wearing Chucks in one room than anywhere else north of Westside Barbell!
65. "This is a truth derived through competition, not debate." - Greg Glassman
66. Brent's outfits are best experienced in person.
67. Exercise theory funneled down to a fine point.  Either it's true, or you lose.
68. Only the bullfighter really knows what it's like in the arena.
69. Ray's "game face."
70. It's nice to be in an environment where "lockout" doesn't refer to striking auto workers.
71. The soundtrack is always excellent.
72. The sound of 20 bars slamming the ground in unison.
73. Solidarity.
74. Alecia smiling while she links pullup after pullup.
75. There will be deadlifts there.
76. A glimpse of the next level, waiting for my footprint soon.
77. CrossFit Huronia owes me a shirt.
78. This essay.
79. It will keep me humble for another year.
80. Proud, but humble.
81. The competition IS my reward.
82. Not too many years ago, I would have chickened out.
83. My wife does CrossFit now!
84. The other Sectionals events were AWESOME!
85. The three brand-new CrossFitters who signed up this week.
86. The Saturday Morning, 9am group is doing the same workouts!
87. 40 first-timer, never-evers finished Murph last weekend!
88. The anticipation is always worse than the action.
89. There just aren't many sunsets left to ride off into.
90. We're collectively nudging the human genome back in the right direction.
91. The species didn't go through this whole evolutionary process to be better at watching Oprah.
92. EVERY time we've called, the Catalyst Family has answered. Time to repay the favour.
93. Brad Rennison: boy wonder.  (You want me to try the 3k row for you? Sure!)
94. WWPDD? (What would Pam Didonato Do?)
95. Now, I can link muscle-ups and do HSPU on the parallettes.  I couldn't until I committed.
96. Some athletes are complaining about the workouts already, 8 hours after they've been posted.
97. I get to live like a professional athlete for the whole weekend (thanks, Ray!)
98. I have a reason to train hard, eat right, and sleep.  Also, complain.
99. I stole Philsy's rope, and I need an excuse.
100. I can.  Therefore, I must.

What We're Doing About It

"You can hand out condoms, drop bombs, build roads, or put in electricity, but until the girls are educated a society won’t change."

— Greg Mortenson, author of "Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace, One School At A Time"

Greg's talking about digging into roots.  He's talking about very poor people in Pakistan and, more recently, Afghanistan.  He's talking about the way to really beat the Taliban in the Middle East.

We're talking about insurgency, too.

The common foe, when it comes to our health care system: dogma.  Do the same thing, hope for a different result.  Feed the machine until you're elected out of office.  Repeat the same information until it becomes a cultural mainstay.

"Walk-ing-means-the-loss-of-weight!  / Ev'ry-body-knows-it's great!"

Except it doesn't work.

"Eat-your-grains-and-you-will-see / You-can-beat-di-a-beet-ees!"

Not so much.

"Once-I-swore-by-Lip-I-Tor / Now-it's-ACE-in-hib-it-ors!"

....or you can do something else.

We're not going to change the system from the inside: that much is clear.  We've been waving flags, from deep in the back pocket of the Industrial Park, for years.  That doesn't work either.  We could revert to our more primitive techniques of yesteryear, and write angry editorials in the middle of the night, to no effect.  There's no way to make it through the centre.

We're going around.  In the next few months, we're building a library.

Though we're going to plant the seeds, this will be a community garden.  Using the mezzanine space at the Park, we'll make our texts, research, and Journals available to everyone, for free.  Got an interesting study?  Bring it in.  But this isn't about the Dewey Decimal System. 

Our goal is to spur discussion, and debate.  Dissemination of information is a skill, just like public speaking, cleans from the high hang, driving a car, or muscle-ups.  Practice is required. 

Yesterday, I wrote about the stressed-out Healthcare system relying on the old fallbacks of low-calorie, low-fat diets.  The basic code of The System is still an "if/then" model, in a world full of greys.  YOU'RE the one who's going to have to pull the sword from that stone.  Luckily, you're in the right group. 

We have a few municipal wrinkles to iron out, first.  And we need permission to reprint certain Journals and articles.  But in the meantime, start ripping things out; printing things off; storing things away.  Our interns are working on a filing system.   Coop's finalizing engineering-type stuff with the City.  We hope to deliver by September.  Thanks for making it possible.

Get Well Soon

"You can listen to me, or you can die."

Those were her doctor's words.  But now, hunched over her collapsed body in her tight hallway, her doctor was far away.  I made eye contact with one of the Paramedics: he knew the truth, too. 

"Your doctor told you to drink that?" he asked, drawing a curtain of professionalism over his incredulity.  He nodded toward her jug o' juice, the main part of her diet for the last two weeks.  To her, it was medical science: 1000 calories a day of Space Tang, a mathematical miracle.  To us, it was a Carbohydrate Cowboy with an itchy trigger finger.  Having a diabetic lose weight on a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet seemed to defy logic.  But, then again......doctor said!

They took her away in an ambulance.  Again.  To Big-E Emergency.  Again.  Protesting, again.  To be prescribed few calories, no fat, and rigid adherence.  Again.  Hey, it works for everyone else, right?

On the porch with her son and grandson, I couldn't hold my tongue.  Maybe my message of research and logic and overreliance on 1970s technology was lost in my shocking use of profanity.  Maybe, but I'd had enough.  After sprinting my fastest 400m ever to find my mother-in-law, sweating and fighting for consciousness on her low-pile carpet, I was ready to say my piece.

Patricia's doctor, you see, had never told her there was a third option.  There's always a third option.  In this case:  3) ...or you can do something else.

They'll call it improving impaired glucose sensitivity.  They'll call it improved glucagon/insulin balance.  They'll call it restabilization of fasting blood sugar.  We'll call it walking.  For now.  Later, we'll call it walking with a little more. 

They'll call it a low-carb diet.  We'll call it better balance of protein, carbohydrate, and healthy fats. 

It's clear, now, that it won't be possible to change the medical system from the inside.  You'll need to look outside the traditional 'medical' world for help: and that's scary, isn't it?  There's just as much bad information out there as good information.  But we're going to help, and we're going to do it in a big way.  More on that tomorrow.

Today, though, Patricia is still using a hospital bed.  After spending her first night in a hallway, alone, she was finally given a room. The next day, Grammy's shoes were stolen.  Yesterday, doctors gave her medications checklist a serious overhaul......and no one mentioned exercise.  Dietitians visited last week, and gave her a book about the DASH diet (low sodium) - an excellent idea to treat the symptoms of congestive heart failure, but not the causes.

Who's at fault?  The system.  The 'funnel' paradigm - intake, process, output - is a defensive model.  It's reactionary.  To make it worse, the funnel's overflowing.  Your best bet is to avoid the process.  We'll talk about that tomorrow, too.  "Get Well Soon" is can't just be a greeting-card cliche anymore; it's a social imperative.

Are Kipping Pullups Cheating?

This:                                                                                    is not this:

....absolutely true.  CrossFit is frequently the target of derision among those who haven't done a WOD.  Without a foothold from which to attack the science, they instead pick out minutae - like the kipping pullup - and ridicule, instead of question.

The goal of the kipping pullup? Perform more work.  Not "isolate the back" (as if such a thing were possible,) or "widen the lats" or "build thickness."  The kipping motion allows for greater wattage output in the same amount of time, and more consecutive work to be accomplished.

The most common counter-kipping position?  It's "cheating."  But by whose rule-sheet?  Is there a secret Hoyle Book of Calisthenic Exercise?  Is this guy really our best frame of reference; our greatest referee?

Kipping is different, yes; and often, different means scary.  That's our Lizard Brain talking.  

A kipping pullup and a bodybuilding pullup are different exercises. Neither are 'better' than the other without the context of the athlete's goal.  The goal of the kipping pullup is NOT to develop the 'bodybuilder' pullup; therefore, use of the kip does not detract from the usefulness of the exercise.

I'm still amazed, after 14 years in the industry, at the furious arguments online over what's "right" or "wrong" - as if there were such things.   Our goals, as part of the CrossFit community, are to increase work capacity across broad time and modal domains.  Do bodybuilder-style pullups have their place at our table?  Yes, insofar as they increase our ability to do more abduction in the frontal plane in less time.  They're an assistance exercise, like front squats and bench presses.  They're means to a greater end.

The path to glory can't be charted from a couch.  If you're exploring the New World, you've got to be on this side of the globe before you can comment on the natives.

Developing Youth Athletes

This is Jackie Chan.  Maybe you've heard of him (if you haven't, scroll to the bottom of this post.) 

Watching Jackie last week on a typical "Entertainment!"-type show, I was surprised to hear the interviewer ask him the key to turning kids into martial arts superstars.  No doubt the answer would surprise a lot of parents: Chan didn't emphasize discipline or practice or even a martial art.  His answer?

Badminton.

In The Dancing Wu Li Masters (Gary Zukav, 1979,) contributor and Tai Chi teacher Al Huang describes speaking at a conference and providing a very visual example of technique vs. brute strength.  Huang, a ping pong player of small stature (around 135lbs,) asked a 300lbs attendee to jump into his arms.  After much back-and-forth and assurance, Huang caught the man - more than twice his bodyweight - and held him up in front of the audience. 

Is amazing balance and coordination, then, a racial trademark?  Is it the domain of a culture rooted in the martial arts; is it borne of the necessities of combat against larger opponents?  Or is it the fruit of a different cultural value system, in which 'sport' and 'art' are not parallel lines, but part of the same continuum?

As Westerners, we've taken the approach of prioritization of time: a child leans toward doing artistic things, OR sporting things.  This is largely a function of our industrial-model system of education: sit here.  Listen. Repeat what you're told.  Now choose: do you want to go left, or right?  You can be a red circle, or a blue square.  If you like blue, you're a square.  If you like circles, you're red.  Simple.

The more prevalent philosophy in Eastern (and most European cultures) is one of variety.  Consider the USSR's system for preparing athletes throughout the 1950s, 60s, and 70s: teach children a huge variety of sport while young, including wrestling, gymnastics, and weightlifting.  Develop skills in all disciplines until physical maturity is reached.  At that point, begin specialization, but always continue to include "off" sports as part of the annual training plan.  Their weightlifters played soccer; their throwers wrestled.  And played badminton, ping pong, and did tumbling exercises. 

The reason: different systems develop at different rates.  For instance, most of your neuromuscular development happens at a young age; this is why kids who do gymnastics or dance before age twelve typically have better balance and coordination when they're older.  A child's kick reflex develops very young; their aerobic capacity develops later; and their hormonal systems develop later still. 

This week, we'll look closely at planning a young athlete's training - and practice, and play - to provide the best experience in terms of progression, growth, skill acquisition, and fun.  

Want a sneak peak ahead?  Want the long version?  Click Below:

Download Long-term athletic development

Thanks for your interest. Here's your Free Prize Inside!:

Your Lizard Brain: A User's Guide

I've just finished reading, "Linchpin" by Seth Godin.  It's a terrific book - as always - and I recommend you pick up a copy.  The main thrust of the book is something other than just the basic biology of your brain, but Godin spends a lot of time talking about why we self-sabotage, delay, procrastinate, and fail to live up to our own high expectations.  He's talking about our Lizard Brain.

In the very deepest recesses of your think-box hide your Amygdala, almond-shaped clusters of cells that formed the earliest parts of our advanced thinking as humans.  These are where it all started, and still form the "buck-stops-here" final decisions that override our conscious mind.  The cerebral cortex ("grey matter") is actually pretty new, compared to the amygdala; this 'Lizard Brain' (Godin's term) is what saw us through the earliest phases of humanity.

The priorities of the amygdala:

Fight

Flight (default setting)

Food

F - ( uh, procreation.)

...in short, survival at any cost.  Avoidance of risk is its specialty.

It's easier - far easier - to check email a dozen times this morning than to drive to CrossFit.  It's soothing to stay on facebook until it's too late to make it to the Group on time. It's easier to research cell phone plans online than to go to the store and have a conversation.  As Jerry Seinfeld joked, "Public speaking is the #1 fear of most people.  Death is #2.  People are more scared of public speaking than death.  That means that most people would rather be in the coffin than giving the eulogy."

The Lizard Brain hates confrontation.  It fears judgment - even if that fear is irrational.    It avoids eye contact.  It screens your calls.  It makes excuses.  It hides in the familiar. And it overrides your smarter brain, which creates a lot of anxiety.

Show up at CrossFit for the first time?  Nah, let's read the blog a few more times.

Call the girl?  Not today.  Tomorrow.  I have a deadline.

Hold my wife's hand in public?  My buddies might be there. 

Sign up for Murph?  I hate groups.  Plus it's not my 'cardio day.'

Get some running coaching? I hate running.  I'm so bad at it.  Plus, it's boring.

Call out a local politician in a public forum? No, it might reflect badly on my business.

Finish my school work?  Not when the skiing's so good!

Write the speech for PodCamp in advance? I'm better 'off the cuff.'

Join the new Barbell Bettys group? No, I don't know anyone there.

Start the WOD? Wait for a good song to come on / wait for Whit to finish her warmups / chalk up again.

Do the Polar Bear Swim?  No, it's pointless.  Just look at those laughing, screaming jerks!

BEATING THE LIZARD BRAIN

Steps:

1. Recognize what's happening.  If you've checked email more than once in the last 3 hours; if you've been on facebook all morning; if you're checking hits on your website more than once per day; if you're using a code-name on news forums.....the Lizard is in charge.

2. Acknowledge that you're reacting with a primitive portion of the brain.

3. Frequently expose the Lizard to challenge.  Do more public speaking.  Do stuff that makes you uncomfortable.  Go to karaoke.  Join a group as a stranger. Take a lesson.

4. Train the weakest links first.  Great at double-unders?  Run to warm up.  Awesome at deadlifting?  Train muscle-ups all week. 

5. Choose things that make you uncomfortable.  Exercise, books, public exposure.  Do them.

The longer you avoid, the deeper you dig.  Running a mile, twice, in sub-zero temperatures, is not comfortable.  It's not fun.  Snuggies are warm, and safe, and feel like a nice hug and look great on your new couch and don't get bored while you watch the Olympics all morning.  But that big, fuzzy parachute will become an anchor.  That's okay, says the Lizard Brain.  You just lean back, and let me do the talking...........

Sketchy

Via Allyson:

So, my friend says to me today, "I told my personal trainer about your 205 lift and they said that they would never, ever have me lift a weight like that, and that people shouldn't be lifting that heavy, unless they are training for Olympic lifting. In all my 8-9 years of being certified every year, I would never do that. Catalyst is sketchy and I don't trust them."

I just shrugged my shoulders, I didn't want to get into it with her.

(above, right: the picture that started it all?)

But after, I wondered how she has my friend train, and how the hell does she know that I am not training for the Olympics? This is also the trainer she told me smokes cigarettes with her after working out, so she is questionable anyways.

I wonder if Watson thinks that he is wrong for getting me started on dead lifts, or if you feel badly for having congratulating me on scoring that 205?
By the way, I lifted 220 yesterday....
Thanks for being sketchy, Chris.  

Above: more Catalyst family sketchiness.  First HSPUs for Lori and Palma!

I wrote about the pitfalls of competence last September.  Some folks, after receiving training in one area, spend the rest of their careers defending that one point.  Unfortunately, progress - in life, in work, in fitness - means frequent exposure to situations at which you aren't efficient.  Yes, it's uncomfortable.  That's the point.This is why we choose achievement first, and aesthetic second.  This is why our coaches have their own coaches.  This is why we put our daily workouts online - free - every single day.  This is why, instead of dangling the juicy worm, we show you the pointy hook.  Right off the bat.  Above: after running her first full mile, Carolle works her way up to 265 on the Deadlift Ladder.  Definitely sketchy.

We have to start from a position of honesty, because we're asking a lot of you.  Honesty means exposing weakness - our own, your own.  Things get REALLY honest around rep #52 of a 75-rep snatch workout.  If you don't trust your coach absolutely, it's over.  It's bedrock, or it's nothing.

"How much can you know about yourself if you've never been in a fight?" - Tyler Durden, Fight Club

We're building habits.  This is why we track performances.  This is why we make appointments.  This is why OnRamp is 21 days long.  This is why we make it fun.  Most members call it 'addiction.'  We call it lifestyle.Is there a good way, a better way, and a best way?  Yes, we think so.  Is there a 'right way' and a 'wrong way?' No.  However, a 'personal trainer' who smokes is pretty close to one of those.

Resolve To Be Imperfect

I don't have much faith in New Year's "Resolutions."  Too often, there's not much "resolve" involved, and resolve is a learned skill: if you practice, it gets stronger; let yourself off the hook, and it atrophies.

It's no secret that January is the biggest month in the fitness world, cash-wise.  January 1 is packaged as a physical "reset" - a chance to start from scratch, from absolute zero, from ground level.  It's far from perfect, though: your blood sugar levels are probably still scattered from the Immaculate Consumption of the holiday season.  The nights are long and cold.  You're full of SAD-induced self-doubt.  In short, you're an easy sell for a good membership coordinator.

If you're returning to exercise from a long bout without - even if it's been since childhood - your resolution should be this: start something.  Still be doing it February first.  That's it.  Stop looking for the perfect solution; it isn't out there.  There's no perfect program.  You can't out-exercise a bad diet.  Likewise, diet without exercise will do really bad things to you in the long term.  Dr. Phil isn't a solution (just look at Oprah.)  Gardening, shopping, and walking the dog are NOT enough.  The Canada food pyramid relies too heavily on grains - you're better to simply stick to the perimeter in the grocery store (you can call it the Canada Food Circle if you like.)

If you're already exercising, push harder.  Yes, your form may suffer a bit - but it won't go from 100% to 0%.  In fact, if your form is always perfect, I have serious doubts about your intensity.  Add a stopwatch.  Eliminate your rest intervals.  Mix heavy strength training with anaerobic work. 

Just jump.  The chute will open. Don't wait for someone to push you (right side.)

 If you're already doing CrossFit, stop 'parceling' your reps.  DON'T wait until you're ready to do 15 box jumps; do 1 box jump RIGHT NOW!  THEN decide on the second. And while you're deciding, think this: "It's not going to hurt more than the last one.  Could I live through that last one again?"  Yes, you can.  And when that stops working, think THIS: "If this were my LAST rep, would I be resting right now?" 

Best case, if you're doing your workouts with a good coach at your shoulder, are you doing your best to exceed their demands, or waiting for them to drag you down the path?  My happiest moments are when I ask for 5 more box jumps - and you hit seven.  

 Make a mess.  Get dirty.  Sweat.  Drop things.  Cheer out loud.  Come undone.  Forget about your war paint, and sharpen your spear instead.  

Start with something, and stick with it until something more intriguing comes along.  Grow laterally as well as vertically.  Place yourself in an environment of common effort.  Live up to that standard.  Come back with your shield, or ON your shield. 

Above all, it's gotta be now. There's no perfect time.  Go.

Virtuosity

 By show of hands: of the Seven Deadly Sins, who believes sloth doesn't get its share of the limelight?

Sloth is more than gluttony.  It's more than teenage binge-drinking.  It's more than one more cookie.  Sloth is the malevolent lack of self-denial.  It's self-abuse by abandonment.  It's active neglect.  It's not a passive process.  You have to allow it to happen.  Sloth isn't driving a city bus, that will broadside you on your way to work.  You don't wake up, hung over and disoriented, with a bad tattoo and Sloth in your bed.

Sloth is what makes you lazy mentally AND physically.  Sloth makes you careless with the feelings of others; it makes you arrogant.  Sloth makes it okay to not try.  Me?  I'm fine with failure.  I love success.  Can't stand not making an attempt.  This takes practice, of course.  You have to become comfortable with being uncomfortable, as we often say.  But this is how success works.  This is the way in which the same character elements that earned you a sub-5:00 Fran are going to get you a bigger paycheque this year.  This is how your first box jump is going to walk you down the aisle.

I don't care about the stripe of your faith; I don't care which church you'll attend tonight (Mosque, church, temple, DVD player?) I don't care to whom your children will bow tomorrow morning.  But I think we can all agree on this: 

However our body was produced - through evolution, through creation, through a dovetailing of the two - it's in our best interests to keep it tuned up.  If you tend toward the agnostic, you can't ignore the science behind the role of good fitness: your offspring will be healthier.  You'll live longer.  You'll contribute more - which is your social obligation.  If you're Christian, Muslim, Jewish...I personally believe it an affront to your Creator to neglect yourself.  Strong muscles?  All the better to serve you with, my dear.  Good aerobic capacity?  All the better to sing......

In faith, as in exercise, simpler is better.  Simple and easy are two different things, however.  Can't cross the Red Sea?  Part the waters, Moses!  Can't fix your sore back?  Learn how to pick things up better!  It's simple, really.  The simpler you can make your life, the better you'll live it.

In 2010, I don't care if you get a 400 on Fight Gone Bad.  I don't care if you clean and jerk 250lbs.  I'll cheer if you do, and be excited in a way that caffeine can never provide.  What I really want for you, my friend, is a simpler life.  Exercise that's hard but quick.  Food that grew up somewhere.  Friends without the burden of suspicion.  I'd like you to have a story, and I'd like to give you a forum to tell it.

2010 will pass quickly.  You're entering it with empty hands.  If you leave it without a story, it will be a wasted year.  Worse, you'll be guilty of not trying.  Your body will show it; your mind will show it.  You own 2010.  And possession is still 9/10 of the law.

Technique V Intensity

 These things we do - these lifts, these jumps, these pulls, these games - they're hard.  

They're hard because we do them fast and heavy.  And they're also hard because they're technically demanding.

One big reason that GloboGyms succeed? They water down exercise to its lowest common denominator.  They remove the 'think about it' barrier.  It's idiot-proof.  It's Wonder Bread.  It's vanilla.  There's never a risk in choosing vanilla, because you always know what you're going to get.  

Not so with a clean and jerk.  Kids - little kids! - practice technique in these lifts for years before they ever touch a bar.  They lift broomsticks and PVC pipe and aluminum lookalikes.  Weightlifting is a sport, but it sits on the spectrum somewhere between gymnastics and martial arts and powerlifting.  It's graceful and technical and nuanced and beautiful.  And it requires coaching.

Under heavy load, it's hard to do a perfect clean.  Full, triple-extension pulling power is nearly impossible on the second rep, let alone the thirteenth.  And this is where the argument lies, both within the CrossFit community and without: at what point do you sacrifice technique for intensity?  And when do you 'shut it down' to execute better technically?

In a famous speech, Coach (Greg Glassman) makes a few great points about Technique v. Intensity.  The video is NOT workplace safe (f-bombs away!) but here are some highlights, edited for obscenity:

"The real risk lies in not learning the mechanics.  Now, real world, can we learn the mechanics without ***ing up?  No!"  He's talking about operating in the margins: the farther you go from mediocrity, from vanilla, the more risk you're taking, and the more you have to be willing to err.  That's a good thing.

"My best performers are moving through the workouts at what - I'd give them, like, a 92 on form."  That's still really good, but maybe not realistic for the average CrossFitter.  Heck, someday I'd LOVE to earn a 92 on form on a snatch, period.  However: "There's efficiency in good mechanics.  When we define 'strength' as the productive application of force, I -by necessity - introduce form and safety into the demands."  Aha. "I'm not just looking at contractile force; I want.....productive work.  I want functional movement accomplished."

 Some classic Glassman illustrations: "No one ever won the Indy 500 where, in the last 5 miles, they were only running on two cylinders."

"(she) was a real connoisseur of good form.  Never able to generate any intensity.  What's going to happen is that if you say, I will not take my intensity past where the form goes bad, you'll never generate any intensity."  

One more good one: "Do I want good technique, or high intensity?  Yes.  It's like asking, do you want me to meet you in the right place, or be on time?  Yes.  It's gotta be both."

One thought that's my own: it's one thing to have perfect execution in a perfect situation.  It's quite another to focus enough to perform the movement under fatigue, or distraction, or haste, or duress.  Practice in those situations is absolutely necessary.  A trailer of firewood tips as you're pulling it home?  Do you want to get it back on the trailer fast, or do you do one block at a time with a prescribed rest period between each?  You're loading sandbags to stem a flood in your basement: do you change shoes, chalk up, and put your belt on?  Your buddy calls you to help move his refrigerator: do you go looking for straps, and insist on a few reps with his little bar fridge first?  No. Outside the gym, the setup will never be perfect, the load never balanced, the curveball never right across the plate.  You MUST learn adaptation here; you must learn to deal with imperfection.

Adaptation

 There are two parts to the textbook adaptation equation: stimulus and response.  There's one factor missing.

Absent is Environment. The effect of anything new to you is affected - enhanced, dampened, even dismissed - by your worldview.  Consider trying to sell Obama's health care plan to a fiscal Conservative, or cutting back government services to a Communist; they're not going to go for it, ever, because their frame of reference is different.

When we do CAT Testing on new clients, there's typically one glaringly obvious weakness that shines through in each.  Obviously, they're inefficient at that particular fitness trait, and it's because they've adapted least to that particular stimulus.

Take this example: a human male with a lot of strength training background scores low on the Aerobic test.  He's least efficient at aerobic metabolism.  This means if we expose him to equal part cardiovascular activity, strength training, and METCON work, he'll adapt first to the cardio...because that's where he's least efficient.

Weight trainees (predominantly men) who have gained a little muscle under the bar become nervous about doing much aerobic activity, for fear they'll lose some muscle mass.  So they walk, very slowly, on treadmills to do "cardio."  Or they'll do nothing.  Unfortunately, this is a vicious cycle, and it's perpetuated by bodybuilding magazines who make their dough on supplement sales (Men's Health, Men's Fitness, FLEX, and the others: all owned by supplement companies, if you trace back far enough.)  Soon, guys who "work out" are scared to do ANY aerobic activity for fear of looking 'flat.'  

 When I started CrossFit, I quickly dropped 20lbs.  It was VERY hard to adjust, mentally, to weighing under 190lbs after years of competing at Powerlifting.  No, I wasn't fit; I was just strong and a bit bigger than I'd ever been.  Now that I'm a more efficient runner (thanks Mike!) I'm able to gain weight without worrying about getting slower.  I've adapted to the aerobic exercise.

When women start CrossFit, we advise them to lock their scales away for two months.  Typically, they're starting with little muscle mass, and they'll gain muscle and lose fat at close to the same rate.  They take awhile to adapt to strength training......but their clothes feel looser, they're much stronger and faster and fitter and closer to doing amazing things.

 When you try anything new, you'll have an easier time if you're more aware of your current state (the environment of Your Self.)  For instance, you're usually either gaining or losing weight, not staying the same, and it takes time to halt that process first before the train can start rolling in the other direction.  Critics of CrossFit ("I got too skinny!") are usually those who have dropped out after the first month; they've exposed their weaknesses, but don't allow time for adaptation.

The beauty of CrossFit is that adaptation in one area doesn't require regression in another.  It's NOT true that the act of rising to a "9 out of 10" as a runner means that you fall to a "2 out of 10" as a weightlifter.  Not at all.  These traits are NOT mutually exclusive until you reach a very elite level.  Being a generalist - specializing at NOT specializing - does not mean that your target is a 5 out of 10 in all areas; it means forcing a REAL adaptation.  

I'll leave you with this question: does rapid fat loss, as you'd see from a Rice Krispies (now with whole grains!,) The Biggest Loser, the South Beach Diet....force a long-term adaptation, or just a short period of physical stress?  And if the latter, what do you think the adaptation will be to that stress in the long term?  

The Original Eight

In March 2008, we were at a crossroads.  We faced an interesting dilemma: a 2-year study on exercise adherence was pointing us - shoehorning, really - toward CrossFit.  It had all the elements that, we'd shown, produced long-term adherence to exercise: community, challenge, progress, novelty, and a sense of 'sport.'  On the other hand, it was somewhat counter to what we'd learned in University.

You know the story: Tyler volunteered first (his original blog is here.)  Then, we offered a deal to eight friends and former clients: show up for a month straight.  We'll provide the space and the workout.  You provide the scores.

In the Original Eight: Philsy.  Kubis.  Whitney.  Krista.  Taylor.  Angela.  Gabe.  And one more....

But also in that eight was one hand uncounted, until recently.  She attacked the WODs in 2008.  She finished in the top half of participants in nearly every single workout.  She provided rides for other new CrossFitters.  And then....she got pregnant.  And gave birth 3 months early.

A year and a half later, she sent me this message: "Dare I come back?"  I invited her to watch FranFest; she did, tiny baby in tow.

Consider the story of Rip Van Winkle: asleep for a hundred years, the world moved on, abandoning him to culture shock in his own culture when he awoke.  Part of the society in which he was now estranged, he had to reabsorb into the stew for which he helped write the recipe.  

This was Vicki.  The last time she saw CrossFit, it was just a group of eight crazies at 7pm, trying not to disrupt a Pilates group that was sharing the space.  It was jumping pullups and high squats.  Now, it's FranFest.  The world moves on.  Imagine seeing FranFest through her eyes: fourty-four participants.  Dozens of spectators.  Loud music and sweat and chalk and broken plates.  Team T-shirts.  Spectators and Super Whit. 

Above: the early risers.  Some of the athletes (also Ed) before the spectators arrive.

Even more impressive: the community.  In the picture above, everyone knows the name of everyone else.  They know who's trying Paleo eating; who just had a crazy workout personal best; who just had a birthday.  They've celebrated, en masse, achievement and victory.  They've grown hoarse cheering each other.  They're teammates.

I'll never claim to be a good businessperson.  When I met Mel Rose, I told her I was the worst salesperson in Sault Ste. Marie.  I still am.  The CrossFit Community has grown from within: clients dragging friends to the Saturday Morning 9am group, or needling them relentlessly to get into the OnRamp group.  It's no longer about a gym.  The Eight have gone forth, and multiplied over and over.  

The Cumulative Effect

Above: the ghosts of workouts past.

In the second round, dropping into your thirteenth thruster, there's a 'blink' moment.  Somewhere between the bar crashing down into 'rack position' and your butt hitting that ball, there's a little glimpse of Angie.  Negotiating with that pullup bar during your final nine, you may flash back to lessons learned under Murph's hard bully pulpit.

The beauty of generalized fitness: overlap.  How is it, after three months without trying Fran once, you can score a 20-second personal best?  How can it be possible that, after six months Michael-free, you can have a 2:00 PR?  And how do you explain, please, the idea that two women have already had personal highs in the clean and jerk today.....without trying them in three weeks?

Something's going on here.   "I think mass hypnosis is unlikely and the fact that this program really works is the reason we're all here." Coach Greg Glassman

This week, we saw personal bests on Deadlift - from a guy who hadn't picked up a bar in three months.  We saw ridiculous times at FranFest that can't be entirely explained away by pullup proficiency.  We saw folks drop 3 minutes off their Elizabeth time without any extra practice on ring dips.

This thing we're after?  It's fitness.  The way we practice?  Large loads over long distances, as fast as possible.  The result?  Faster-stronger-better.  

Yes, we cuss Fran.  We call her names that we wouldn't let our mothers hear us say.  But she's a fair judge, isn't she?  Either you're better, or you're not.  You're faster, or you're guilty.  Fran isn't just a workout: she's a five-minute microscope into your value system.  After that first 21 pullups, you're fully exposed.  You might as well be naked out there.  If you skipped the strength WODs, you'll crumple.  If you cherry-pick the METCON work, you'll sag.  Miss a few WODs this week?  Yes, the coaches will chirp you a bit.  Miss a few next week?  Your buddies will ask you where you've been.  And a few more?  It will show.  Eventually, you'll want to participate in one of these workout/block parties, and the accumulation of skill - or not - will be obvious.  Uncovering weakness is no reason not to participate; rather, it's all the more reason to test yourself.  

Practice makes permanent.  The phrase is true, whether about developing skills or habits.

You're An Athlete

Here's the good news: You, Mr. 9-to-5, are an athlete.  No, you didn't plan for this to happen.  Lucky you!

And now, the bad news: You, Ms. "Night Shift," are an athlete.  Sorry.

Somewhere in those flipping calendar pages, you changed.  Physically, at least, you underwent an evolution that can only be triggered by challenge.  Mentally, you may not have changed.  At least, not yet.

First, the litmus test:

1. When you woke up this morning, and saw Fran, was your first reaction anxiety?

2. Have you changed your eating habits today to avoid that trek outside to the ditch, post-Fran?

3. Do you accept that, worst-case, you may have to sacrifice that virgin to the Fran volcano?

Doesn't matter if you answered "yes" to any of them, because the first question was a trick: if you woke up this morning and checked the WOD, you win!  Cue lights and bells!

And now for the painful part.  Barker's Beauties, tell 'em what they've won!

If your body accepts this new reality, but you haven't yet mentally embraced the notion of You 2.0, that creates discord.  And discord makes you dizzy.  Discord makes your fingers tremble and your guts knot.

If you're behaving like an athlete, but eating like a nonathlete - ditto sleeping, recovering - then your sport will suffer.  And you'll suffer, too: more than necessary.

Every WOD, you have to cross a line into athleticism.  The workout demands it, and you do it.  I've seen you do it.  But you don't have to cross back into "normal" afterward.  You don't have to pull that yellow cardigan back over your head when you get home.  Crossing and recrossing, entering and exiting that competitive domain, is painful.  Entry has a huge cost, and there's no one stamping your hand at the door.  Why do you insist on going out for the metaphorical smoke every half hour, and then paying to re-enter?

We're not asking for a lifestyle change.  You made THE BIG CHANGE weeks - months, years? - ago.  The hard part's done.  

We're not asking for you to ditch your friends.  We're asking you to evaluate your 'down time' activity: does it help?  Does it hurt?

We're not asking you to give up beer or donuts or Saturday Night.  We're just asking you to think, while you're sitting on the edge of the treadmill.  Ask, "If I'd known that 'Angie' was going to come up today, would I have eaten differently yesterday?  Would I have gone to bed at 10pm instead of watching 'The Office'?  Would I have balanced my breakfast better?"  Then take your own advice.

You're a competitive athlete.  You have a coach; you have teammates; you have fans and an arena and team colours and a competitive schedule.  Do your best.

10 Things We Believe

In two days, we'll be celebrating our four-year anniversary.  Catalyst was but a gleam in the eye of Coach Coop four years ago today.  While we learn stuff every year, and usually highlight only the scientific research relevant to our clientele, this has been an extraordinary year.  A year for the grassroots Catalyst community to really stand up and take over.  As such, the things we've learned together - coach and client, staff and member, friend and athlete - have been simple, but earth-shaking nonetheless.

Yesterday, Lisbeth Darsh (essayist, blogger, owner of CrossFit Watertown, editor of the CrossFit A-blog.....) issued an impromptu challenge to CrossFit Boxes: post an article just like hers.  This is our response.1. We should all treat food like a drug.2. Every meal: palm-sized protein, hand-sized vegetables, thumb-sized healthy fats.  3.  I'd rather have a 450 deadlift at 183lbs, with a sub-25:00 5km and a 230lbs clean, than a 500+lbs deadlift at 205.4. I need a personal trainer.  So do you.5. In the supermarket, buy all your stuff from the periphery.  Don't go down the aisles in the middle.6. A good coach is aware of his weaknesses and willing to address them.7. Novelty is the key to engagement.8. CrossFit is community of athletes participating in a common sport.9. It's all about the story.10. Kids should run, jump, tumble, climb, fall, carry, and throw.  Adults should be like kids.

One Year From Today

 

October 23, 2010.  You're in a small change room, rushing into your workout clothes.  You wore the same shorts yesterday, but don't give it a second thought; they'll be too busy to notice.  Your tribe has already gathered outside; you've got less than four minutes until Coach starts the warmup.  Already, you can hear the nervous giggling of the pre-workout banter.  You can hear the clack! of plastic pipe as it's set out for the warmup exercises.  The rip of tape; the slap of heavy plates being stacked; and then the throaty whirr of the rowers.

Coach's voice sounds a little gravelly; last night's group must have been fun.  Almost in a state of suspended animation, you check the blackboard for the eleventh time, knowing that the workout must be imprinted in your head long before the clock starts.  Once Coach starts that countdown, there's no more room for processing in that beating skull, only these: survive. drop the weight. hands on the bar. one at a time. go again. move!

There's no time, today, to remember that nervous person you used to be.  The one who drove down Industrial Court 'B' three times before walking in.  That dude, in jeans that didn't quite fit right, who had to suck in his gut for the whole first class; or that chick who thought that 'skinny' was the goal here.  Friendless, a stranger on the Moon, you somehow got through that first group.  Afterward, at the water cooler, you met Anna.  And Philsy, and PJ, and RichandNancy (one word) and Carolle and all the rest.  Soon, Leanne had talked you into her Paleo challenge (you recall thinking it had something to do with dinosaurs....) 

Gradually, those jeans loosened.  You started caring about your Fran time.  You signed up for Murph in March (oh, how that hurt, but how you loved ranting about it to your friends at work!)  You did BaseLine Week in May, every day at lunch with Clint, Brent, and Glen.  Someday, you said, you'd hang with those guys for real....

And then, when a member of the Catalyst family needed help, you were there.  You ran for them; you shouldered a small part of their burden, because you knew they'd be right beside you, too, if necessary.  You did stuff at 2am that you never thought you'd do...well, never ever. 

And when the Games rolled around, like they do every September, you answered.  You wrote down your name before you could chicken out.  You showed up, shivering nervously all over again, as ready as you'd ever be.  By 2pm, you had realized that you'd lunged or skipped or burpee'd across some line back there somewhere, and there was no turning around.  You'd become one of them: the Kool-Aid was long drunk.  The 'refresh' button on your browser was worn down.  You'd uttered the phrase, "too sick to go to work, but not too sick to do the WOD."  Coop had mentioned you a few times in blog posts.  You'd added other CrossFitters you've never actually met to your facebook friends list.

And now, today, at one minute to twelve, you're back at the Park.  You're no longer "exercising" or even "working out."  Now you're training.  You're using the WOD to prepare; no longer for that next belt loop, but just because it's there.  Because Deadlifts had the audacity to paste themselves to the chalkboard this morning, and damn it, you can taste 350.  That record board has been waiting for your initials for too long.  Coop wants a good picture?  Today's the day he'll get it, by God, and he can use it for his Christmas cards.  There's a newbie in the group, and you'll get them a glass of water when it's all over, but right now Coach is fiddling with the time clock and you've gotta get your heart rate under control and you need a piece of chalk and Donna's warming up with your max and the 7am Group hit really, really high numbers and can I handle this? and he's starting the countdown and it's too late to do anything but go and the bar's in my hands........

No Scale

I'm yelling as loudly as I can, but no one in the room can hear me.  I'm bellowing numbers in descending order: "11!"  The crowd roars.  "10!"  They start jumping up and down. "9!"  They're looking at my hands in the air now, as the room heaves with excitement.  In front of me, she's standing, hands on hips, trying to pull air down from the ceiling.  I'm talking right into the back of her head.  But she's gone.  Gone to that "other" place.  It's a domain reserved solely for the athlete at the paper-cut-sharp edge of the envelope.  She's found it.  Fourty-three seconds later, she'll collapse into the mob of her fans, shaking all over.  Many of them have teared up.

Yeah, but how much does she weigh? 

He slid, a thousand miles an hour, under his Harley-Davidson.  "You'll never walk unaided," they said.  "You'll never work again," they said.  "How are your bed sores this morning?" they said.  This summer, he ran his first 5km race.  At midnight.  With his son, for his 18th birthday.  

Yeah, but what's his bench?

It's safe to bet that she's never won any single sport in her whole life.  She's experienced that hell-on-earth when, on the playground, the teams are chosen, and she was one of the last two to be picked.  "Please, pick me.  Please, anything but last again. I can do better than that other kid.  I'll try really hard.  Please, please, pleeeeeease."  So last week, when she finished the 500m row portion of the workout in first place and headed to the rower, the crowd was reserved.  When she finished the box jumps in first place, they were clapping.  But when she dropped the skipping rope first, they exploded. Thirty adults and teens, on their feet, cheering. I told them my voice was cracking from all the yelling, but that was a lie.  

Yeah, but how many friends does she have on facebook?

Setting the table, her sister commented on how muscular her arms looked.  "Holy crap, girl!  What have you been DOING?!?"  She told them about CrossFit.  About kipping and almost doing pullups.  About Barbell Bettys and knee socks and how Fran felt after a night shift and how much she could split jerk.  Predictably came the response: "You're crazy.  I could NEVER do that stuff."  She just smiled and shrugged, quietly knowing that Confident is the new Size 4; that yes, they could do this stuff, but she alone had the guts to pull that particular trigger.

Yeah, but how many calories could she possibly burn in 20 minutes?

I'm already hanging from the bar before the referees start to argue.  "He's gotta go back!" says the man in charge.  My personal judges, possibly the nicest coaches this side of the 49th Parallel, tug me down from the rack and escort me through the plates, back to the bar.  It wasn't a happy reunion.  I had to redo 3 squat cleans at 165lbs.  And I still had a quarter mile to run, 5 more big cleans and jerks, and 24 more pullups.  I was staring down the barrel of a very long day.  

The crowd was rowdy.  It was only 9am, and many had already yelled themselves hoarse.  But I couldn't hear anything: nothing but a small voice, chanting "Go-Daddy-Go!  Go-Daddy-Go!"  So I went.

Yeah, but he weighs under 200lbs now!  He's little!

No scale in the world can measure this stuff.  

Cherrypicking

May 2008.  My second day of CrossFit. Linda was her name, and she was well versed in the frustration of young men.  And me, just a barbell-lovin' farmboy from "down the line," who had no idea what he was in for...

 Mike and Tyler had been drinking the Kool-Aid since February, and were already seeing results.  I was coming off a 3-year Powerlifting rip, competing in the 198lbs class.  My first WOD was a huge stroke of luck: CrossFit Total.  My second was....a little less lucky.  Though I was pulling 500+ deads on a semiregular basis, my power clean was an abysmal 135; to make up for it, I added weight on the deadlift.  I didn't rush; I paced between exercises.  I tried to keep my thoughts - and my lunch - to myself.  I was partially successful.  I've never run into Linda again.

If CrossFit is good at one thing, it's this: exposing your weaknesses.  The more weak links in the chain, the quicker the chain will snap.  You can only coast on  your strengths so far; ultimately, there's going to be a big confrontation, and the winner ain't a fixed bet, amigo.

There were a lot of scrapes, twists, and pains at Catalyst Games 2009.  Be sure of that.  Some were mentioned once and then tucked away in some dark recess of the unconscious mind to be dealt with later.  Some were temporarily hobbling.  But 48 hours later, there was only one ache being discussed at the Park: regret.  

I wish I hadn't dropped to the Scaled 2 Class.  

I should have kept going. 

I should have shown up and done the first two Events.

 I should have done it as Rx'd.

I should have done it, period.

You never regret the WOD you finish.  You never look longingly at a platform on which you've left everything you had to leave.  You never wish to have all that sweat back.

If a WOD intimidates you, good.  It's exposing a massive opportunity: a chance to strike right at the heart of your weakness.  A chance to kick Mr. Sandbag while his gloves are drooping.  It's a chance to make an investment: to pay a big lump against the principal, not just cover the interest.  Because there IS interest: the longer you wait to deal with this stuff; the more you choose your WODs based on your strengths and ignore the "hard ones"; the more you turn your cheek to that blazing, illuminating bulb, the harder it's going to be for your sight to adjust.

C'mon, Linda.  One more chance, baby.  You and me, down by the river.....

Push

My friend, Dr. Mike Mackay, calls it, "Feeding The Baby."

When I'm watching an athlete do box jumps, my knees involuntarily flex and pop! - just like I'm jumping with them.  You do it, too: teaching your teenager to drive, you pump the "air brake" from the passenger seat as you approach a stop sign.  When you're spoon-feeding a baby, you open your mouth with them.

One of my greatest downfalls as a coach: I'm a huge fan.  I want everyone to succeed, every single time.  I appreciate the value of failure.  Absolutely, I do.  But if I can steer you around it, I will.

We do big events like Catalyst Games 2009 to push you.  And it works: 3 people have achieved their first muscle-ups ever in the last 2 days.  Women are getting their first pullups, everyone's linking double-unders, and some are hammering the BCTs like never before.  We're getting emails about competitive standards for knees-to-elbows.  You're submitting pictures of your pushups.  You're changing your facebook status every 2 hours.  You're watching dozens of videos to learn how to get better.

It's tough, as a coach, to referee.  It's tough to hold the line on standards.  Flipping that yellow card over, making you do an extra rep, isn't easy.  But it's fair.

Letting you get away with a pullup that isn't high enough isn't about punishing you.  It's not about being in "a bad mood," or disliking you.  It's about devaluing the accomplishment.  Last weekend, knowing that Nancy's status in the Rx class depended on her getting 3 pullups (she'd only done one, ever, before that,) it was very tempting to drop the standard.  To pat her on the back and say, "that's okay.  You tried your best.  Good for you."  Instead, I gritted my teeth and held the line.  Nancy responded.  She did 3 pullups.  She's ready.  

At 11am yesterday, Jeremy couldn't say he'd ever done a muscle-up.  He ran into the gym between clients and hammered until he got one.  Then he got another.  And another, and another.  Now we're working on Brent.  

These events are hard.  Until you've done one, you can't really appreciate how ridiculous these demands can be.  And yet.... we do them.  We finish.  We push hardest in the final 30 seconds.  We empty the tank.  We leave nothing in reserve.  And then we do it again.  And again.

I know it's frustrating to do extra reps.  I've been there.  But if I give you a freebie, what am I giving to everyone else?  More importantly, what am I really pushing you to achieve?  If we were like every other gym - hell, like most parts of our wimpy "trying-your-best-is-good-enough" culture - you wouldn't be doing pullups today.  And I'd still have a voice left by Friday.

Thanks for being cheer-worthy.  Now get out there and push.