Blogging is hard. Unless you're honest, you don't have shit to say, and it's close to impossible to be honest. Psychiatrists can talk about the super-ego, but in practical terms, you're always afraid that your mother is going to read your shit.
Fuck.
Sorry mom, and continue resting in peace.
The other problem is the lack of feed back. Every nine months some guy on the street says, "hey I like your blog," but that's about it. So I never really know if I'm arrogant, insane, inane, stupid or whatever.
Usually I don't care, and as far as I can tell that's the only real requirement for blogging.
For quite a while now I've been reading Dana's blog, http://dana.dccrossfit.com/?p=555
Dana is working on a double body weight squat, and she's awesome, but I suspect she doesn't know that. After months, I finally commented on her blog. She was probably surprised to find somebody thought she was neither arrogant nor insane, and she sent me an e-mail that lead to a further exchange. She asked me for some advice, and I sent her the e-mail that follows. This is a lot of the stuff I had planned to put in my blog and then decided not to. I gave it to Dana because she is committed to being awesome.
You can have it too now.
Sometimes blogging is as easy as copy and paste.
Hi Dana,
Given time and effort anyone can learn the mechanics of the squat, so as a
coach I have been interested in the mental game and differences in
mentality between genders. (I consider myself fortunate to coach many
more women than men, but wow, do I find it challenging.)
I know that my female lifters seem to approach a meet like a social event.
They're capable of chatting about knitting right up until they take the
platform. I conversely am probably the hardest person in the world to be
around until I get my opener in, and even then throughout the meet, I walk
around like a caged bull and speak in mono-syllables only to my handler.
I can tell you that when I'm on the platform all I can see is the bar, and
I'm not conscious of seeing anything after I grip the bar. I hear only
the head referee, and even though he or she is three feet in front of me,
the referee is just a disembodied voice to me.
I don't know that one approach is right or wrong, better or worse. I do
know that as soon as you un rack the bar, you have to be entirely certain
that you're going to make the lift. I believe that this confidence starts
between the warm-up room, chalk box, and the bar. In preparation for my
last meet I spent a lot of time youtubing great squatters, and I focused
on their approach to the bar much more than on the squat itself. Watch
how the greats get into a calm and controlled rage. I believe the object
is to work yourself into a mental state where you know from the hole you
can drive hard enough to break the bar in half if the plates don't follow
you up while preserving just enough higher cognitive function to remember
whatever two or three cues you need. After much work, my knees normally
track perfectly, so what I try to do is become as much of gorilla as I can
while saving just enough brain power to tell myself "back," and "chest
up." You'll want to go to your coach here, but from watching your video,
I think you've got it made if you only remember your choice of either
"knees out," or "spread the floor." As a technical aside, start spreading
as soon as you push your butt back; you're dead if you wait to push out
from the hole. As I sometimes describe it, make a hole, sit in the hole,
stand up.
I'm sure that at a minimum I get the nerves as bad as you. What saved me
at my last meet was not thinking beyond my opener. I had been obsessed
with officially breaking 400, and that ruined two weeks of my life.
Finally I realized that the only thing I had to do was crush the opener
and the rest would follow. True, this time it didn't work for me, but it
will at my next meet in November. In sum I'd suggest you forget about 205
and just watch yourself do it when the time for the third attempt comes.
As for the USAPL I decided to compete there to test out the rigorous
judging and because in my opinion they are a very prestigious federation.
I'd rate the judging as strict but fair, exactly as they claim. I come
from the Jim Wendler school of squatting which among other things says, if
you get three white lights, you went too deep. I've trained myself to
graze parallel, and I missed my second and third attempts high. In
retrospect, I could feel myself high on the second and I agree with the
judges. On my third, I made my best attempt to go deep, and while our
video is not a great angle, it shows me exactly at parallel; one white,
two reds. I don't think this is worth worrying about. Try squatting like
you always do and throw in an extra eighth-inch for the judges.
You'll be great.
James
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