First of all, I just wanted to say that I’ve been a fan of Lisbeth Darsh’s blog posts for quite some time. They’re short but sweet. I guess we all have different styles of writing, as I’m all about pounding out a lot of words as they come into mind.
Maybe I’ll try out some shorter blog entries and see how people react to them.
So I’m referring to this post from Lisbeth’s blog that really struck a chord in me. In recent years, I’ve been all about losing my fear of failure. It’s that fear that has held us back in so many things since we were young.
You can thank school for that 😛 Okay, while I think it’s great to have a solid education, and I also believe you can be successful with or without it, the way school works sets many us up for paralysis later on in life.
Whenever you hear the words “fail”, “failing”, or “failure”, you think of getting an F on a test or a report card. All you thought about was avoiding that F and getting those A’s. In elementary school and most of high school, I was an overachiever, so sometimes even if I got an A- on something, I’d flip a shit. That simply stressed me out and got me nowhere. All I thought about were the grades and not failing.
That mentality of avoiding any failing whatsoever held me back in so many aspects of my life. I didn’t tryout for the baseball team in high school cause I thought I wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t as friendly and outgoing since I was afraid of what people thought of me. I was afraid of taking any risks.
It wasn’t until college that I realized it’s okay to fail as long as you learn from your mistakes. Initially, I thought I was starting to become a fuckup in academics and in certain social aspects of my life, but it was through those mistakes that I matured into the person I am today. If I didn’t take those risks then and now, I’d probably be too afraid to walk into a CrossFit box. For real.
Failure is an end state–a finality, an acceptance of failing. But as long as you’re still trying, you’re not a failure.
That right there summed up years of my thoughts on learning from my mistakes. Failure is the end of a journey. It’s when you give up and back down. Failing is just part of one that’ll continue to move forward. You dust yourself off and try again 🙂 (RIP Aaliyah)
This kind of thinking has really helped me with life in the box and outside the box. Before, I used to be afraid as fuck to get under the bar for any heavy cleans. Now I just go for it. Before, I used to be afraid to talk to random people. Now, for the most part, I absolutely enjoy it. I’m almost energized by it lol.
Reading that post on Lisbeth’s blog brought back many thoughts and events from my past. If I didn’t start facing fear head-on, I don’t know what would happen to me. I’d probably be miserable.
Fortunately, CrossFit came at an important time in my life and flipped my world upside down. Yeah, it was a rocky start, but my life’s a whole lot better because of it.
Kip it real, my friends.
Today, I was a little more considerate. I didn’t drop the F-bomb today during our 1 rep max power clean session, but the intensity was still there.
So here’s what we did today:
A) 4 sets of single rep power cleans, the last set being a 1 rep max test, rest 2 minutes
B) 4 sets of 3 rep shoulder presses, last set being a 3 rep max, rest 2 minutes
WOD:
8 min AMRAP
80% of 1RM power clean
15 air squats after every 3 reps of the clean
A pretty brutal load for the hour, although it’s more of my type of workout. No running or annoying bodyweight movements, aside from air squats in the WOD which are nothing to me since the squat is my thing.
For real, once the workout was posted the night before, all I could think of was that 1 rep max power clean. I was visualizing in my sleep. I was practicing the movement in my kitchen. Although, no, I wasn’t waking up with my arms in the rack position haha.
When we started the strength portion of the workout, I didn’t really care too much about the shoulder press. I pretty much PR’d that 3RM, although that’s not saying much at 115#. I just wanted to rip that barbell off the floor.
I started things off with a few reps of 135# to warmup. The weight just shot up there without having to dip down to catch the bar, so that was a good sign. My body wanted this. Bad. For my first set, I did 185# and since it was quite a bit of a jump from the warmup, I felt a bit uneasy. I didn’t let that phase me.
Then I did my first shoulder pre…fuck it. As I said, the shoulder presses weren’t important to me lol.
For set #2 of the power cleans, I did 205# and it felt good. The bar landed perfectly on the meaty part of my shoulders, although I landed my feet rather wide.
In between sets, I was just amping myself up. Once in a while, I’d chitchat with some people in class, but I was honestly listening to every 3rd word someone said. I just wanted that PR. Bad. I’m normally a really happy person, so I tried finding any sliver of negativity in my mind to fuel my last 2 lifts. What did that consist of? I think it’s better that you don’t know lol. Maybe this is something you can try out since shit…I was in the motherfuckin zone.
Lift #3 of 225# went up pretty nice, with only a slight walk forward to center the bar on my shoulders. Okay, I felt good to go. Then and there, I knew it was on.
Minutes later, for lift #4, I put a bit of chalk on my hands, just enough for a solid grip. Too much of it will increase the chances of rips FYI. A lot of people don’t realize this, and I used to chalk up like crazy when I started. Anyway…I stepped up the bar, aligned my laces with the barbell as usual. Looked up at the clock. 10 seconds to go.
9.
8.
7.
6.
I gripped the bar with both hands, got into the ready position, and counted the last 5 seconds in my head.
5.
4.
3.
2.
1.
Rip that shit.
The bar carrying 235 pounds shot up there like never before. It was like everything was happening in slow motion. The mechanics. All the stuff I read in Starting Strength. All the countless times the coach would recite the cues for the clean. In that moment of slow motion, it’s like I was able to check every aspect of my form. Everything came together perfectly.
I dropped my body slightly into a quarter-squat position. The bar landed on my shoulders, and time went back to normal. Noticing the bar still needed some care to complete the rep, I walked forward. I yelled out AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. One step. Another step. Straightened out my core.
Success.
Once I realized I pulled off the 235# power clean, a 10# PR from November, I couldn’t help but break out into a “Rob Orlando-like moment”. Oh…what exactly is that? In the 2010 CrossFit Games Northeast Regionals, Rob did 3 reps of a 300# clean and jerk. Get an idea of my celebration from this part of the vid.
YEAHHHHHHHH
I was yelling out YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. Did a Tiger Woods-like fist pump. Shit, I even jumped up in the air a bit cause I was SO amped.
Then I ran to our “PR bell”, rang it like crazy, and let out one last yell.
The owner of the box was cracking up. He was loving it. As I said in my F-bomb article, that’s so out of character for me. Coach was just like, “Whoaaaaaa! Where did all THAT come from?”
After a few moments of simmering down, Coach walked over to me as I was stripping off the weights, and said, “Look at you. When you first walked in here, you were a shy kid. Look at you now. Good job!”
The little things like that mean a lot. I felt really good after that, and I’m sure he was stoked as well. Just imagine how fulfilling his business is? To see people grow and mature over time like that? It must be great.
We still had the 8 minute AMRAP.
Okay, this is the sad part. I fucked up my math for 80% of my 1RM. Someone was using the calculator at the time, so I just wrote it out on the whiteboard. After years of relying on a TI83+ and Excel for math at school, I felt like an idiot struggling with a simple multiplication problem haha. I couldn’t focus after that lift as well, but yeah, enough with the excuses.
I was supposed to use 188# for the WOD, but did 205#…needless to say, I still managed to get 16 reps in those 8 minutes 🙂 It wasn’t until the end that one of my friends pointed out the weight I was using. Oh well…it was a weight I didn’t think I could stick with for the whole 8 minutes, but I pulled it off. Man, today was an awesome day.
Happy Monday!
Okay, so I saw this video shared a few times on both my personal and KippingItReal Facebook accounts, so I had to check it out to see what the fuss was all about. The title itself was honestly that not enticing to me, which was why I didn’t think much of it when it was posted 2 days ago.
Check it out:
To tell you the truth, I was bit bummed out by the vid, thinking it would be something really eye-opening. Maybe because I’ve always stressed the importance of learning the squat? Squatting was my first love (lol), thanks to Mark Rippetoe’s Starting Strength.
Please don't squat like this...
My love for squatting and all that jazz aside, this video still has a great message for everyone. Whether you’re a CrossFit newbie or a seasoned firebreather, you can easily forget how important the fundamentals of squatting are.
Hey girl, you need a spot from behind?
What Pat Sherwood says towards the beginning of the vid sums up the message:
The squat: absolutely fundamental. Building block to everything else that we’re gonna do in CrossFit. So, do this well and everything you do will fall into place. Do this poorly, and everything else will be challenging for you.
Greg Glassman...get it? OH YEAHHHHH
When I started out with real barbell squats (not that lame Smith machine bullshit), I made it a habit to at least hit parallel. I’m thankful I listened to everything Rip wrote in that damn squat chapter. If I remember correctly, it was over 40 pages long. While my body wasn’t used to a lot of things, like not using a barbell pad or not hooking my thumbs around the bar, I kept at it.
Once I really got the ball rolling on various powerlifts and Oly lifts at my box, man did those squatting fundamentals help a ton. Push presses. Push jerks. Squat cleans. Power cleans. Snatches (mmm…). Overhead squats. Deadlifts. Front squats (obviously lol). And believe it or not, rowing.
Squatting is like free-throws for a CrossFitter. It may seem like a waste of time in the beginning and might see frustrating. Regardless, keep at it and make the squat your bitch. You can thank Greg “Kool-Ad” Glassman later.
June 9, 2012 will be the date for the CrossFit for Hope. CrossFit will be teaming up with St. Jude Children’s Hospital to fight against child cancer. 100% of the proceeds go to the hospital 🙂
So what’s the workout like? Think Fight Gone Bad format, but with these movements:
Three rounds of:
Burpees
75# Power snatch
Box jump, 24″ box
75# Thruster
Chest to bar Pull-ups
For more information, check out the official CrossFit for Hope site or talk to your local CrossFit affiliate. Registration begins April 26th!
