THROW YOUR HEART OVER THE BAR

I attended a 3 hour self-talk seminar today at Crossfit Santa Clara with the original "firebreather," Greg Amundson.  It was very motivating and inspiring as he is extremely knowledgeable and passionate.  He told stories of how positive self talk can make you achieve anything from his many years in crossfit, military, and law enforecement. 

 "Self talk is the nutrition of your destiny," Greg explained.  Just like you would start an athlete with nutrition in his/her journey to improving a sport, you start an athlete in improving their character/destiny through positive self talk.  There is a progression pyramid that he detailed on improving the physical skills of an athlete and demonstrated how that mirrored the mental aspect.  He showed that after nutrition, you would take an athlete through some metcons (metabolic conditioning or "cardio"), then work on gymnastics, then weightlifting, and finally combining it all in sport, even if the sport is crossfit.  This progression parallels the pyramid of your destiny.  Your thoughts and words determine your actions, which turn into habits, this forms your character, which is your destiny in any activity you pursue.  

He backs up the power of positive self talk with many stories of how it takes belief to achieve anything you want.  This belief often starts with telling yourself you can, once that doubt enters, it will manifest itself.  One story sticks out.  To become a master trapezist you have to pass a test.  The test is to swing on a bar from one platform to another hurling your body through the air.  This is something that all elite trapezist do all the time, the only difference is in this test there is no safety net.  You can imagine how much more intense this makes it as if they fall it would most likely mean death.  One man got up there started to shake and froze up.  The trapeze master came up there to talk to him and said "don't worry, this happens all the time, you must believe.  Simply throw your heart over the bar, and the body will follow!"  This is great and I will take this thought with me when I want to let go of the bar.  This was a very motivating way to finish up my week.  "Simply throw your heart over the bar!"

*** I will post a recap of my weeks workouts and a video tomorrow... it was a good week.

Why give 100%

I have written a little on here about how to give 100% (check it out here)

The benefits of giving 100% are remarkable, a huge difference compared to 99%. Giving 100% comes from every aspect of life, not just during a workout. Being 100% in all aspects of life take commitment and will help to take your fitness to the next level. These are things like eating perfect, sleeping, recovery techniques, and stress management whatever that may be for you. These things all go hand in hand. I had a bad night of eating recently and thought it didn't affect my workout, but during the workout I didn't really achieve 100% and I probably did not recover like I should have. I just got through the workout. I noticed the night I ate bad that I slept terribly, making me more tired and stressed the next day. You see how they all are connected? People always try to get better by doing more, but why not try doing better? Ever heard of quality, not quantity? I truly believe in this and it is something I have learned over the last year or two. Try making every aspect of your life 100% and getting the absolutely most out of your workouts. What's the difference between taking 1 sec off of your wod time? Well at the elite level it can be huge, it can make all the difference in the world. So every workout that I do, I start with that mindset; it's the Crossfit motto of "every second counts!"

Here is an excerpt from a very good coach pushing Olympic athletes to reach their limits. It comes from OPT's blog back in February 2010.

Q: If an athlete hits a personal best, you usually stop the workout, regardless of what's left on the paper. Why is that?

CF: Well, it's dangerous. The time people get hurt is the next session after they've had a tremendous performance.

Q: Because they're trying to top themselves?

CF: Not just because they're psyched up and trying to beat their PR, but because their bodies haven't recovered from it. With very heavy weights it can take ten to twelve days to get over a maximal lift, same thing in sprinting. There's a huge difference between 95 and 100% performance. So instead of the 100 meters in 10 flat, it becomes 10.45 or 10.50. The difference in output and effort is unbelievable. Even though it's in the 95th percentile and qualifies as high intensity work, it's a joke. Keep in mind this only applies at the highest levels. If a kid gets a personal best, so what? We're talking about world record levels.

Q: In your book, The Charlie Francis Training System, there's a picture of Mark McKoy benching 315. The caption reads, "This is an indication of the upper body strength required to be a 10.19 second 100-meter sprinter and the number three hurdler in the world in 1987." Can you clarify that? Does a person need to bench a certain amount to be a contender?

CF: It's not a formula that says, you've got to be able to bench this and squat that. What it means is that high-quality performances are the result of high-quality training. There's nobody who can go out there, for example and say, "Oh, I want to beat Michael Johnson in the 400, well, I'll just go do what he does." Look, if you can't beat him in the race, you can't do his workouts! It would take years to build up to those things, so who cares what he does in his workout? You can't do it, so don't worry about it!

love it...

Fight Gone Bad

There are times when I hate Crossfit.  Sometimes I feel beat up, stressed for my workout, and it becomes a job making me tired all the time not permitting any kind of social life.  But every once in a while I'm reminded why I love it.  It's like golf, the most frustrating game ever, but it just takes one great shot to keep you coming back.  Today I had one of those great shots.  I was very nervous going into FGB.  I took a few days off the prior weekend due to a small injury and I did not feel like I was prepared.  I thought there was no way I could even come close to my previous best score and started making excuses for myself to not go hard in the workout.  I finally got over my fear somewhat and made a lofty goal for myself of 435.  I went into the workout trying to stick to that pace.  I came out with a score of 440.  That wasn't all that surprised me, I didn't even feel that bad, I think I had more in me.  I felt great!  The previous times I did this I was rolling on the ground for ten min afterward.  I needed this workout to boost my confidence.  I was struggling the past week with an injury, lack of energy, eating poorly through the holidays and all this made me lack motivation and most of all confidence.  This workout was a confidence booster.

  I always say there is a moral to every workout.  Here is the lesson I take from this; there are going to be times when things get tough.  It is inevitable that things will not always go your way, but it is how well you can claw and scratch to get back.  I feel confidence and motivation go hand in hand.  Both were down for me this past week.  I really did not want to do this workout for a million excuses I could have made up.  I told myself to just do it.  I didn't want to give myself a big goal to shoot for because I thought it would be too painful.  But I told myself just stick with the plan and see how long I can hold on, don't let fear hold me back.  I didn't just give up or make excuses of why I couldn't go hard.   It got my confidence up and now Im motivated to keep on going.  It kind of got me out of my slump.  I talked with OPT afterward and he said "learn from this, it has just begun!" Here we go...

I feel you can apply this to any aspect of life.  Don't let fear hold you back, just try it and you may just surprise yourself.  This will increase your confidence and in turn motivation.  Coincidentally on OPT's blog he just put a quote that applies perfectly.

• No one thought it was possible to run a mile in 4 minutes; Bannister does it, then 4 people do it in 1 year, now high school kids do it regularily; how much are we limiting ourselves based upon what we know?
  The athlete I want does not know why they are doing what they are doing; they are just doing!
  

Even more coincidental is on the crossfit mainsite for today, they also have a quote on motivation that applies.  You think that motivation is a big part in achieving your goals?

• "People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing - that's why we recommend it daily."
  - Zig Ziglar
  

Here's the FGB video!

Fight Gone Bad from Joseph Warren on Vimeo.

Comfortable with the uncomfortable

How do you push through the pain? How do you get mental toughness? How do you get better, stronger, faster?

I have been receiving a few emails on how to become competitive in Crossfit, what is the right formula, how do I take it to the next level. There is no right answer to that question, especially in a sport like Crossfit, and especially since the sport is so new. It is finding what works for you, and maybe that comes from trying what has worked for others. What I do know is to be the best that you can be, you have to give it 100% and get comfortable with the uncomfortable. So how do you do this. Below are some things that I learned this past year and some strategies I use that I would suggest to anyone wanting to be competitive, really for any sport.

Find something that gets you excited to train. If that means take some time off, then do that. Thats the hardest thing to do, and I can't do it too well, but I definitely learned to listen to my body. I see too many people that dont do this and end up injured or continually workout at 90% or less, never really achieving 100%. The times I have hit my workouts the hardest have always been after an injury when I can't wait to get back at it. So take a lesson from me and prevent the injuries from happening and take some time off to relax until you cannot stand it anymore. You can also take this time to do workouts you enjoy from a strength program to yoga. But just find a way that gets you excited to train and hit it 100%. I always imagine that i am lucky to just be able to move around the way I can, so I take advantage of it.

Pushing 100% and taking yourself to a place beyond what you thought was possible takes practice and Im not sure if you ever truly get comfortable with it, maybe just more confident. That confidence comes from just doing it. That is what I am focusing on right now, it is the only way to get better, to keep pushing through. Its what prevented me from winning the games. Here are some strategies that I use to push through. My sole focus during the workouts right now is pushing as hard as I can, no thinking abut the time, and no thinking about failing, just trying. I actually want to fail right now. That means I pushed hard, very hard! Its challenging to go to failure, its a mental test. Right now I sprint the first round of any wod as fast as I can go and just struggle through the rest of the wod, no pacing, that makes it a lot tougher. I have side bets with the guys I workout with; who can win the first round, and who can win the rest of the workout. I did this strategy recently in a 20 min amrap, it made the rest of the wod very interesting. It almost helps me push harder. There are always those wods where you think they will be easy then get surprised by how difficult it is. Its hard to push through there because you werent expecting that and all that goes through my mind is why is it so difficult. When I push hard early it gets me in the right mindset that this is going to be hard, but I know I can push through. This helps me get comfortable with the very uncomfortable.

Lastly positive self talk is crucial, listen to what goes on inside your head during workouts, try to make it positive as if you were coaching someone else. This is not easy! Try to even smile during the wods, and tell yourself it is fun and you like it! You may look crazy but realize it is fun, at least afterward is fun knowing youre done and you achieved going 100%. I have surprised myself the last couple weeks when the voice inside my head says you can't do it, slow down, and I just try to ignore it expecting to fail (which is what Im shooting for) but to my surprise I have been achieving. It shows I have more potential than I even think.  I need to work on that voice inside my head a little bit. But doing it and surprising myself builds confidence which in turn helps to get comfortable with the uncomfortable. Try it!

Post Crossfit Games

I wont go into too much detail on my thoughts of the Games, but I want to say that they were fun, inspiring, and a great learning experience.  I thought the workouts at the Games were perfctly designed exposing many weakness and representing true athletes.  It was inspiring to see all the great athletes pushing their limits which has motivated me to push harder and try to find more potential within.  My greatest weakness I saw in myself was my mental toughness and fear of failing.  I saw the best times in most events were from athletes who pushed the limits and failed one or two reps.  That will be my focus for the next couple weeks or so, to push myself to failure.  I want t fail more often.  As I approach competition I can then work on more strategy and pacing, but for now Im gonna go hard, dig deep, and see how much more I got.  If I fail, I know I will learn and grow.  

Here is a video of a workout where I failed a few reps, it was good because I pushed hard and learned that not having a false grip muscle up makes it much more difficult.  I still want to push harder on squat cleans, i have to get rid of that fear of getting tired and failing.

Joey "PosterBoy" Warren squat clean muscle up from Joseph Warren on Vimeo.

Todays workout I may not have pushed hard enough. It was unbroken sets which made me think to pace a little, but at the end it may have been easier than I expected. I need to push failure. I need to test my mental toughness!

WOD:

5 Rounds:

25 x unbroken wall ball toss

10 unbroken chest to bar pullups

t= 6:29

Stronger than you Know!

Another great post that comes at a perfect time to speak to me from DailyOm.com

We are almost always stronger and more capable than we believe ourselves to be.


Our capacity to cope successfully with life's challenges far outstrips our capacity to feel nervousness. Yet in the weeks, days, and hours leading up to an event that we believe will test our limits, we can become nervous. While we may have previously regarded ourselves as equal to the trials that lie ahead, we reach a point at which they near and our anxiety begins to mount. We then become increasingly worked up, until the moment of truth arrives and we discover that our worry was all for nothing. We are almost always stronger and more capable than we believe ourselves to be. But anxiety is not rational in nature, which means that in most cases we cannot work through it using logic as our only tool. Reason can help us recognize the relative futility of unwarranted worry but, more often than not, we will find more comfort in patterns of thought and activity that redirect our attention to practical or engaging matters.

Most of us find it remarkably difficult to focus on two distinct thoughts or emotions at once, and we can use this natural human limitation to our advantage when trying to stay centered in the period leading up to a potentially tricky experience. When we concentrate on something unrelated to our worry—such as deep breathing, visualizations of success, pleasurable pursuits, or exercise—anxiety dissipates naturally. Meditation is also a useful coping mechanism as it provides us with a means to ground ourselves in the moment. Our guides can aid us by providing us with a focal point wholly outside of our own sphere.

Below the Surface

DailyOm

Finding Deep Strength
A daily excerpt from DailyOm.com, couldn't speak to me more right now!

We have all have times in our lives when we think we don’t have the strength to carry on. You do, and you can.


We have all faced moments in our lives when the pressure mounts beyond what we feel we can handle, and we find ourselves thinking that we do not have the strength to carry on. Sometimes we have just gotten through a major obstacle or illness only to find another one waiting for us the moment we finally catch our breath. Sometimes we endure one loss after another, wondering when we will get a break from life’s travails. It does not seem fair or right that life should demand more of us when we feel we have given all we can, but sometimes this is the way life works.

When we look back on our lives, we see that we have survived many trials and surmounted many obstacles, often to our own amazement. In each of those instances, we had to break through our ideas about how much we can handle and go deeper into our hidden reserves. The thought that we do not have the strength to handle what is before us can be likened to the hard surface of a frozen lake. It appears to be an impenetrable fact, but when we break through it, we find that a deep well of energy and inspiration was trapped beneath that icy barrier the whole time. Sometimes we break through by cutting a hole into our resistance with our willpower, and sometimes we melt the ice with compassion for our predicament and ourselves. Either way, each time we break through, we reach a new understanding of the strength we store within ourselves.

"Isabel"

As perfection is never attainable, it is the journey toward perfection that makes one great!

-Progress not perfection: Even those who survive the impossible are still only human. 'That final stage in the process of being lost can prove to be either a beginning or an end. Some give up and die. Others stop denying and begin surviving. You don't have to be an elite performer. You don't have to be perfect. You just have to get on with it and do the next right thing.' - Laurence Gonzales "Deep Survival"

Here is a crossfit benchmark, "Isabel", a workout that I have never done before.  The workout is:

135lb snatch x 30 reps for time

My strategy was to start out fast and do as many consecutive reps as possible and then just truck along as needed.  My goal was to get sub 3 min and I far surpassed that.  Now I have a better understanding of where I want to be on this workout.  

As I previously saw failure, from my previous post, and had to learn my limits and reset my goals with a new path in mind of how to achieve that to prevent me from failing miserably, here I reset my goals from a success. If I dont, I will not grow and progress, and I'll remain stagnant.  So I'm learning that goals must always be redirected when you better understand where you want to go.  But you must have a goal in mind or you will have no direction, and ultimately no motivation.

Another new goal; sub 2 min "Isabel".  Is it achievable?  Hell YEAH, and I will do it!

135# snatch x 30 for time from Joseph Warren on Vimeo.

"broken"

Every once in a while you find yourself broken down.  While this is discouraging it is a good time to reflect and grow.  It humbles you and brings you back down to earth.  We all can relate to this, if it is in every day life, work, family, or friends.  We have to know our limits so we can protect ourselves from injury and we know where we need work in order to progress.  Everything you do takes progression and you must take the first step with a goal in mind and a path determined of how to achieve that.  Most greatness happens when the journey is enjoyable, not just the outcome.  Sometimes during a workout when Im in extreme pain, I try to smile because I know its supposed to be fun!  

Today I did a workout called "unbroken".  It broke me down.  Here is a video of me getting my ass handed to me.  I had to cut the video short because I had to take too much rest before completing the workout.  Even though pushing the limits is great to improve your fitness, and what I try to get all my clients to do, sometimes I need to know my limits or I will fail miserably.  Its one of the hardest things to do in crossfit, figuring out how to pace yourself.  When do you push through the pain, and when do you breath?  Today I failed.  It was on 20th rep of the last set, I just couldnt do another one.  I was at 5:20 at that time, I waited 1 min tried again and failed at 18 reps.  I rested a while again and finally completed 20 unbroken pullups.  This was 9 min later for a total time of 14:25.  I was 1 rep away from 5:20, and failed because I didnt know my limits and 9 min later I finished my last set. Enjoy watching me get "broken".

The workout was:

20 unbroken pullups

500m row

20 unbroken pullups

500m row

20 unbroken pullups

"unbroken" from Joseph Warren on Vimeo.

Wihout goals, there is no direction... the path to death!

From the book Deep Survival from Laurence Gonzales

  – Just as you can become lost in the woods, you can become lost in business or in a relationship: “If he'd been able to reason more clearly, he could have understood that he was not on the correct route. But logic was rapidly being pushed into the background by emotion and stress. So, by the simple act of putting one foot in front of the other, he was about to cross over from mild geographical confusion to a state of being genuinely lost. The stages of getting lost resemble the five stages of dying described by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, the psychologist who wrote On Death and Dying: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.”

Get better everyday!

"On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow." 
Friedrich Nietzsche 

August 25, 2009 DailyOm.com

Healthy Body, Healthy Spirit
Scorpio Daily Horoscope
Exercise and physical activity could invigorate you today. It might be that by moving your body you are able to stretch the reaches of your mind and refresh every aspect of your life. Getting out in nature and feeling your feet connect to the solidity of the earth could ground you in the present and infuse your life with the joys of simply being. Finding time to do something physical, whether it is a yoga practice, tai chi, or a form of aerobic exercise could help strengthen this feeling of connection. If you can, you might also use your physical practice to inspire your spiritual one by paying attention to the thoughts you tend to have when your breath increases. Doing so could strengthen the bond you have between your body and your mind, making your practice a moving meditation.

Today's Workout:
high hang clean x 1/ hang clean x 2/ squat clean x 3 - 135,155,175,185,195
slow tempo pull ups x3 - 45lb, 50, 55, 60, 65

metcon:
3 rounds
Amrap chin ups
Amrap air squats in 60 sec
rest 1 min

Moral in every workout!!!

I have been keeping up with all my workouts, and taking much more with them than previous. I have been trying to keep in tune with how the workouts feel and learning and experimenting. I used to focus on best time and beating the guy next to me. Lately I want to know how I can make each workout fit my needs. I feel i need more strength and endurance, so to work on these I have been focusing more on them in the workouts. If during a workout, there is a strength component I will focus on that part, and solely on that part. We will see if this will help me gain strength. To workout on endurance, on workouts monostructural dominant (primarily endurance), such as today I experimented with going balls out right off the bat. I was gassed immediately, and it probably hurt my time. Did it help me better my endurance, probably because I reach my max heart rate really early testing my work capacity for the rest of the workout. So does this have efficacy in training, yes, in competition, no, because I will not get best time. Both are good ways to train. I think it is good to try to increase work capacity by going balls out, but it is also good to practice strategy. I am playing around with both ways of training and learned a valuable lesson today. Mix it up! Both ways are good. Crossfit is a constant psychological game.

Today's wod:

400m run

10 muscle ups

150 double unders

10 MU's

400m row

10 muscle ups