Restarting your New Years resolution, this time smarter!

Did you make a New Year’s resolution? To lose 10 pounds? 15? Or something completely different? I’m guessing that for most people, right around now your diet has started to slip a little bit and maybe you aren’t hitting the gym as much as you were planning. At this point, 2 months later is about the time when almost half of those resolutions have failed and people are no longer working toward them.

As I posted in the middle of January about how we should be setting process goals instead of outcome goals as our “resolutions”, now is the time where it becomes even more important. For those who made that outcome goal, many people don’t know exactly how to achieve their goal and now their lack of knowledge and lack of time with the real world catching up is causing them to fail and give up on their resolutions.

How can someone maintain that resolution or start over now? Process Goals! I said it before, but these are truly the only goals that are sustainable and will get you to where you want to be. If you want to lose weight, stop eating junk! But that is a little extreme, isn’t it? So you start slowly, first just take away pop, and then make a commitment to go to the gym 3 times a week. After that you will see great progress, and once that becomes ingrained in your lifestyle, then you can take away something else and maybe add a day at the gym. Making those small changes slowly until they become a part of your lifestyle is the way to really see results and achieve your goals.

Now is the time that most people will see failure in their New Year’s resolution. Don’t be just another person to fail. Now is the time to restart and really get your life set by making small changes. Anyone can do it, you can do it!

To a better day, week, month, year, and most importantly, to a better life.

Getting My Butt Kicked Like I Can't Remember

This past Wednesday 2/5 I had my first day as an intern at CrossFit DoneRight in Rockville, MD. I met the other intern and some coaches and everyone was really nice and I became even more excited about this than I was before. The people are really nice and I like it.

For myself and the other intern, they are first putting us through the 6 intro sessions required by all new members to go through except they are packing them into 3 sessions. That first session, te learned technique and also how to see movement faults in the plank, push up, ring row, hollow body, hollow rock, sit up, air squat, front squat, press, push press, and deadlift (I think that was everything). We then did a quick WOD of tabata squats and sit ups. For those who don't know what "tabata" is, it is 8 rounds of :20 on 10: rest of the same movement. It looks easy enough but it absolutely crushes you if you really go all out. My quads were absolutely trashed after the air squats and since we went right into shadowing a class we didn't really have time to cool down. Since my quads were trashed so much, the next day of 5x5 back squats at 165# (70% + 5#) welt like max lifts each time, it was terrible.

We then met again Friday. I came in earlier than the other intern to shadow a class. It was kind of funny, the coach who was leading the class didn't introduce me so during the warm up, one of the athletes asked him who I was, why I was watching them and if I was lost. I was then introduced and all went well. After the class I did a quick deadlift session of 3x5 @ 195# (70% + 5#) plus a set of 15 at 135#. After that we then almost immediately went into the next intro sessions with the other intern. We went over double unders, went over the deadlift again where the other intern and I critiqued each other. I actually realized some issues I was having that were probably holding me back, especially when doing multiple reps. We then worked on pull ups, did more push ups, went over the overhead squat, handstands, burpees and wallballs. We then did another conditioning workout of a 7 min AMRAP (as many reps/rounds as possible) of 7 wall balls and 7 burpees. I was able to get 7 rounds and 2 wall balls. For me the strategy was to just keep moving and I think I did ok. My legs weren't as crushed as after Wednesday but that was a lot of squatting to do over the past few days and I'm glad I was able to have the weekend as a break for my legs.

These 2 conditioning workouts definitely showed me how much I have been favoring strength recently, but I still feel that I need to get much stronger to be more successful in CrossFit so I am going to stick it out.

To a better day, week, month, year, and most importantly, to a better life.

Monthly Review: January

After doing a year in review for the first time, I have decided to do a monthly review, so here is the first one for January. January was a relatively uneventful month for the most part with the last week being pretty exciting. For the first 3 weeks of the month it was very consistent of just doing a morning workout at CrossFit Haven and then going on with whatever I had for that day. We were doing a strength program based on Wendler’s 5-3-1 and it helped me get back to the strength I was at before having some issues last semester. It is a good program and if you need something more than a linear progression but not a complicated or advanced program, it is a good one to go at.

That next week we maxed out on the front and back squat, deadlift and strict press. I don’t like to max all that often but it was perfect timing for me because it was the last week I was home and would allow me to transition right into a new cycle at school. For my front squat I hit 185#, which tied a lifetime PR of mine so I was happy with that after having a lot of issues with my knee last semester. I got 225# for my back squat. I was happy with hitting that, and while it may not be a lifetime PR I am very happy with it. I can’t remember a time in the past that I maxed out for a single on my deadlift before this, or at least there is no record for it, so hitting 275# was good for me. I hardly deadlifted last semester so I’m pretty confident that with consistent pulling I’ll be able to surpass that pretty quickly. Lastly for my press I hit a lifetime PR of 120#. I was absolutely ecstatic about hitting that because I had been stuck at 115# since May; I had moved up all my rep maxes, but I couldn’t push past 115# so that was a great feeling.

After a rough day of traveling back to school, the next day I went to the Baseball Injury Prevention and Peak Performance Workshop at Nationals Park hosted by the Washington Nationals, specifically Dr. Weimi Douoguih, the Director of the Washington Nationals Medical Staff, Angela Gordan PT DSc, the Director of Physical Therapy for the medical staff, and John Philbin, the Head Strength and Conditioning Coach of the Nationals.

This was an incredible opportunity for me, for one because I got to spend the day in a major league clubhouse, which I found incredible as a huge baseball fan, but also because it was an opportunity to learn from some of the best in the business. I learned a lot about the risks with baseball and balancing health with performance among other things. This was a very cool workshop, and if it is hosted again in the future, I will definitely consider going again.

This past week was the beginning of starting my next cycle as well as the first week of the semester. Like I said in the past, I am doing a 5x5 (3x5 for deadlift) starting at 70% and moving up 5# every week (every other week for press because 70% is so close to my max and I’d stall pretty quickly on that). It was a good start to it and I realized that adjusting to the relatively higher volume squatting will take a bit because while the weights were fine, it was harder than expected with the volume. I foresee this going well and progressing pretty well.

Friday I interviewed at CrossFitDoneRight in Rockville for an internship and Friday evening I found out I was accepted for it. My first thought was of pure excitement because it is a great opportunity for more experience and being in an affiliate setting will be really cool for me. My stomach then sank a little bit for how busy I am going to be. After some careful looking at everything going on though, I think I’ll be able to handle everything and I am extremely excited about this.

To a better day, week, month, year, and most importantly, to a better life.