Pull-up Intervention and "Good" Work and Rough Beasts

"If the fundamentals of good work excellence and ethics are in harmony, we lead a personally fulfilling and socially rewarded life."

It's time.  Tonight, I have pull-up intervention planned for me at CFMD.  While I can do strict pull-ups, I have Elaine (from Seinfeld)'s kipping pull-up style: spastic and voluminous.  I guess because I have so much energy and brain cells, wasting a few too many is not too bad.  I can get through a workout, albeit inefficient.  So, tonight I have pull-up intervention (as Coach Joe intimated earlier this week after a few too-many humbling experiences in workouts).  

This has been a tough week--spiritually--at work.  My CF hour is my escape from the realities of feeling myself crumble beneath the weight of a bigger-than-CF-flipping-tire we call public education.  I feel like a broken axle, while mere anarachy is loosed upon the world.  Impotent.

Yet, CF, this week, has been a metaphor for this.  Our strengths, our foibles, our heart's underpinnings, all vying to best our previous efforts on a particular behavior/task.  And if not, we learn anew.  I wear myself out doing "good" work (coined by Gardner, Csikszentmihalyi, and Damon).  It is a good weariness, despite my self-doubts, frustrations, tiredness, soreness, and ramblings.  And I feel it necessary to keep trucking away, doing what feels like the impossible and learning how to will myself to get to the finish (even with uncontrollable and unfixable limitations).  Small victories from the pain and challenge equate to more and more strength--fortitude and resolve that I carry over into my next work day.  It is a mental, spiritual, and physical feat. It is the stuff that life, "good" work, motherhood, and sports is made of.

So, even though pull-up intervention feels like a "ding" to my ego,I know it's not. It's automacity and efficiency I'm seeking and practice makes perfect.  CF is practice for life.

Am I too serious?  Yeah, I'm a reading teacher.  I'm passionate about metaphors. It is this "good" work that builds and rebuilds relationships--endless possibilities (and dendrites).  It is rebirth and resurrection.  It is a sudden epiphany. It is ominous.  It is immense.  It sometimes is the rough beast slouching toward Bethlehem.

CF is my daily reminder that despite life's hardships that we rise to the challenges and we are changed and better for them.  Even the day of rest feeds my soul.  So, bring it on.

Ego Check

Last night, all I could think about was R/X'ing the workout (21-15-9 C2B and SDLHP with 100 double-unders as a buyout).  My pull-ups suck, but I really thought I R/X'd.  I got my chest to bar, but I guess you can't kip?? I don't know.  All I know is that pull-ups from a dead hang are no problem, but those dang CF pull-ups are freaky and weird and counterintuitive and, anyway, all I could think about is those dang double-unders though.  I'm going to do 100 of them.  I'm going to do 100 of them.  

When you are speeding through the workout and everything present a problem and you are trying to get stronger, form just goes to hell.  I have to step back.  I WANT to be stronger.  That's what I WANT.  I want to be able to R/X (and I need to be stronger to do that, but it doesn't happen over night).  There's an anxious part of me that can't stop what happens in my life from happening and I'm bringing that frantic pace to the crossfit now and it's going to end up killing my motivation.  My ego needs to be in check...

I question whether I can get stronger.  Can I really bench more than my max 130?  Can I squat 225 again?  I just need to slow down, and stop that frantic pace of my "real" life from creeping in.  Whatever the case, it won't happen overnight.   Time to revisit my goals and rewrite my action steps.

Step 1:  Check My Ego

Motivation

I posted a nice little link on my FB fitness group page...

but I just don't see me doing this.  I'm already intrinsically motivated to workout.  I can't remember a time I didn't give it my all when I worked out.  Don't take it easy on me, I say to me.  Still, it's a good idea.  Hopefully, it will help some of my peeps create and sustain good workout habits. 

Response

Yeah, I know I put it out there and you felt free to email me that CF'ers are a cult and always injured.  Well, I have some things to say about that.  First of all, when you live 20 years longer and reach an age of 45, you might know a few things more than you do.  Secondly, if you try getting off your arse, you also might figure out that people who are active still get injured and sick.  

From my perspective in the 2 months I've done crossfit and with the 30+ years I've been a competitive athlete (gymnast, soccer) and fitness professional, I know about injury.  When you are younger, competition drives your game.  Competition involves ego and youth involves risk.  You get injured--sometimes it can be prevented and sometimes not.  Crossfitters compete and the elite are competitive athletes.  They train as such.  Injury is part of the sport.  From the part of me (past my prime) that still has dreams of being elite, I know pain is part of anything.  You ache when you get out of bed sometimes--hell, almost every day.  There is soreness and then there is SORENESS.  I've learned how to work around the fact that I'm almost 50.  In my head, I am an athlete.  I revel in the beauty of the human body, but I acknowledge  it's never perfected and sometimes (I know this one really well having watched healthy friends succumb to cancer)--it can't even be bettered.  At some point, we all die.  So, while I'm living and healthy, I'll just keep kicking.

If you want to call it a cult...go ahead.  I've been caught in many vortexes which I am still a part of today--tribal belly dancing, for instance.  Yeah, and I like body modification.  I mean, really like it.  I would be pierced and tattooed all over if I wasn't tempered by my job.  I also am in the eating healthy cult.  Yeah, I don't drink or smoke or eat crap.  So what?  No one's recruiting you.  I'm just sharing.

I know I shared my blog.  If it bothers you to read it, then don't.  I'm not looking for constructive criticism or accolades necessarily (although I'm fine with both).  I'm posting it so I can say 5 years from now...that's where I was.  Wow!

The Lose-Weight Mentality

So, I got on the scale this morning.  I knew what I weighed, even after the holidays and even though I eat when I'm hungry (she says while licking her fingers after having a lambchop)--Fred says, "128."  A chiropractor running posture analyses at The Vitamin Shoppe says, "130."  I knew it.  132.  I'm fine with that.  In fact, I'm more than fine.  It is not just a comfortable weight.  More importantly, I feel good.  Even with the small aches of a ribhead healing and my flare-ups related to the PF, I feel strong and able to modify for my injuries.   I like feeling hungry and eating.  That's good and it is not the lose-weight mentality I've had for nearly 4 years now.  Seriously, 4 years of watching, counting, planning, logging, tweaking, depriving, bemoaning, and preaching.  I feel good.  Dang it.   I like meat--good cuts of meat and I like veggies.  I can go without bread and sugar.  Occasionally, I will have something sweet and terrible, but that is occasionally.

It occurred to me that I have been stuck in the lose-weight mentality for awhile now, even to the point where it wasn't going to happen.  So, I was disappointed there was no change or that the scale was going up.  Well, yeah...because I'm lifting weights, heavy weights and I'm not eating 1400-1800 calories a day.  In fact, I have no idea how much I'm eating.  I just know I'm eating.  And when I work out, it's short and sweet and I go by how I feel or what I am avoiding because it sucks.  That means I probably need to address it.  And I'm practicing and doing the things I avoid because I suck at them, too.  And I feel alive because of it.  Really alive.

And, I like CFMD because I feel at home there.  People want to be there, and they work hard when they are there, and they support and cheer for each other.  Personal triumphs become group triumphs and no one ever has a bad workout, just a workout that is more challenging.  And we can all say, "I did that" and "we did that."  That's cool.  That's really, really cool.  I walk out glad I went in, even though I think when I go in, I'll be glad to walk out (because some things are THAT hard).

There's no room for the LWM in my life.  Right now, I feel unfettered and disciplined; focused and open; strong and hungry.  Hungry for everything that working out and eating well entails. 

What is it about handstands that gets me into Crossfit?

What is it that will bring me into Crossfit Milk District even on a day where I'm having trouble moving?   Handstands or rope climbs.  Okay, I don't have a reason, other than my ribhead, not to go.  Sore is not a reason.  Tired is not a reason.  No kid activities to excuse me.  Tonight's WOD is bench press (75% - easy for me) and a metacon workout (not easy because of my ribhead).  I am low energy from Day 2 of the 21 Day Sugar Detox (even though I hardly eat anything outside of paleo and extra carbs in the form of clean, moderately-portioned extra serving for my activity level).  Still the promise of handstands make me happy and motivated to just go ahead and go in.  Tomorrow  is Nina's Metro or District lifting meet and I won't go in and I know I'll go in on Thursday and Friday and Saturday...so, why not join the ranks who are sore from last night just like me?

WODs in the woods and resolutions for 2014

Day 3 of the trip is a scheduled rest day OR a long, loopy run.  After completing 7 miles hiking up and down hilly lake trails, viewing our cabin from across the lake (yeah, last night, I was wondering as I looked across said lake:  "Wonder what's over on that little inlet..."), I don't feel the need to do much more than make my paleo dinner (pork roast, rosemary sweet potatoes, and brussel sprouts and kale) and rest my sore foot (PF started bothering me around mile 5), as well as thinking about my 2014 goals.  I'm really looking forward to a nice 2014.  Here's the main goals (may be a shocker to some as they are some deeply held goals):

1) Getting stronger and stealthier/faster (more power and speed) so I can compete in crossfit games
2) Learning and mastering Olympic lifts:  clean and jerk, snatches, and yeah, deadlifts
3) Relearning proper running gate and working on mobility to get rid of my PF once and for all
4) In addition to beautiful Blue Caravan, performing solo belly dancing (for fun--not for money) with Fred (my talented musician husband) playing--looking to do some tribal fusion pieces that implicitly or explicitly give voice to my heartsong - for the challenge and beauty
5) Figure out what to do about work--where I fit in (see diatribe below*)
6) Like my friend, read 60 books this year!  I'm on book one:  Insurgent (which is a reread, but I'm counting it).

*I love teaching and I do like 5th grade, but I need some intellectual stimulation (like last year).  I'm sick of the freaking evaluations based upon my students' gains, and I think the freaking formal evaluation dance is stupid and pointless because it is not about real learning.  I want to teach...I don't mind motivating a group of kids who are unmotivated, but I want to have a class where kids are curious and want to learn and read, not just the hardest cases ever.  I need HOPE, not endless nights of wondering how my students will survive the night, let alone their adolescence with the odds they are up against.

 I absolutely love reading, but if you tie me to gains on a freaking test given one time with a group of students who read at a 1st grade and 2nd grade level, that takes all the fun out of it.  It's not fair to them and it's not a reflection on what really matters the most--learning is amazing.  Looking forward to working this out some how.  Rant done.