I'm not sure I'm counting correctly, but I think this is the third installment of the Master's preparation series. It was supposed to be the fourth, but I realized I realized I'm not an expert on recovery, the proposed third part. I can say only that I believe it's the most important part of training, and that I'm not sleeping.
I'm doing what needs done in this situation, excluding variables, but so far, nothing.
VP recently reported that I'm CrossFitting like I mean it, and I'm not sure if she made that up, or if she's repeating something I said in pre-preparation trash talking, but in either case I realize I now know what this means to me. The whole of my mental preparation and CrossFitting like I mean it is simply this: before I start a work out, I instruct myself to do my best, and in the event of any kind of mid-work out breakdown, I take two tenths of a second to ask myself if I'm doing my best.
The preliminary instruction part is pretty straight forward; I demand my best and I get it. I can tell you that tomorrow when I do Fight Gone Bad 6, whether I score 250 or 350, it will have been no less than I was capable of at that time on that day.
The breakdown part is more involved, but probably not necessary for the majority of people. If you've been around me for 60 minutes of CrossFit, you know that I could be described, charitably, as temperamental. If I don't like where the chalk bucket is, I want to kick it through the wall. If I don't like the knurling on the barbell, I want to roll it off the mats. If I don't want cheer leading, I want to scream, "shut the fuck up," and so on.
None of that, of course, helps with my power output. What I'm training myself to do, successfully, is to realize that nothing will ever be the way I want it to - and indeed why should it - and that my power output declines less taking two tenths of a second to regroup than it does righting the plyo box I would have bounced off the wall.
Last week was the halfway point in the fat loss contest, and my success in going from an estimated - by four site pinch test - 17% to an estimated 10% provoked some productive discussion about motivation. I'm going to admit there's a large and narcissistic component to this. If we have beaches in Colorado, it's probably too late to go to them, so the usual solution ( I think it was first proposed by IronSport Gym in Pa. ) is to provoke bar fights so that when you rip off your Affliction shirt, your washboard abs are prominently displayed.
That's not my style at all, but yes, I do spend way too much time praying the copy machine at work jams so I can rip off my shirt and clear that motherfucker.
Okay, that's fun. But really I do this because I can, and I take that as incontrovertible proof that you can too. If I play a small role in your getting the girl because of your assertive and aesthetic handling of the copy machine, that's pretty fucking cool.
Things I've learned in six weeks of hard work:
it's true; you can have results or excuses, not both
the hardest part of erging a personal best 2k is strapping into the stretcher and knowing that you're not getting back out for seven minutes or more
the most important part of erging a personal best 2k is saying, "today, motherfuckers, no excuses"
as soon as you can do 100 pull-ups, you have to do 100 pull-ups - tomorrow may never come and even if you're not cremated, it's customary to pose the corpse hands clasped on abdomen
for no reason whatsoever it can be decided that masters athletes don't have to do double unders - when you suck at double unders, doing your best means they stay in your warm up
for a while, over-reaching is a great training stimulus. don't be an idiot and dip into over-training, you're awesome, not immortal
some days you can't do shit. what matters is that you showed up, and trying but failing to do shit was your best that day.
it's possible to blow your calories and macros eating clean food - that just takes a kilogram of yams or 2 kilos of squash.
if you eat a kilogram of yams, it was probably dead lift and heavy metcon day. most of those frightening carbs got shoved into your depleted muscles, and if you wake up a half-pound heavier, it's probably a quarter-pound of perfectly usable glycogen in the muscles, and a quarter-pound of retained water that will be leaving soon enough.
when you do your best, you can cry because thirty people don't show up, or you can remember why you love the three who do.
forget the hookers and cocaine, Twinkies and Sprite, the pancakes will still be there
if you weren't going to drink the gasoline your Puerto Rican friend brought back from the island, it wouldn't be sitting on your desk. you're doing your best, and after the contest, win or lose, you can drink it in celebration. dipping into it now is going to fuck you over, but that's also your choice.
No comments:
Post a Comment