Poor me

“When the fight 

begins within himself, 

a man's worth something.”

- Robert Browning, 1855 -

You lost your job.  Your best friend died.  Your dog ran away.  Your favorite NFL team blew the playoffs.  Your significant other bitches at you constantly.  Your neighbor is a thieving asshole.  You got put in a fight and lost.  You wrecked your car.  Your government is screwing you.  You blew the interview.  You lost your wallet.  You made a mistake on your taxes and got audited.  It's raining hail and sleet and lightning and earthquaking.  You've been cheated on.  

One big breath and exhale a nice, long, sentimental..... "FUCK."  

Now, get over it.  Anger is a gift, my friends.  It is a primal, unbridled opportunity for you to take your life by the throat and rip that shit open like Dalton protects the Double Deuce from pseudo-cowboy denim dancers.  

Bad things happen, and with that we, being the good people we are, like to think that a higher power wouldn't bestow something so terrible on US.  WE should be left out of the people marked with cancer, divorce, death, disease, etc..  We like to complicate matters thinking that there is some set of rules that if we abide will free us from hardship, effort, and in that we immediately relieve ourselves of power.  

Life is pain.  Once realized, you are free.  Free to choose what you believe to be right, fair, and true - amidst all the pain.  

The power of choice in an incredible event.  

"This is what I believe, and I'm willing to die for it."

Don't overcomplicate it.  Be aware of the choices at hand, and give them meaning by understanding that through the pain we find a life no one can take.  Nothing can change it or let you down, or alter it in any way.

Take all that pain, put it through the incredible machine that you are, and use it as the gift is was meant to be.  

Be useful.  Don't be a victim.

Breathe, and listen.

Its not uncommon to perk up and focus when someone speaks in a whisper.  The subconscious thinking there is more content to be gained with less volume.  It may be, or not.  Either way it has your attention.

With television, radio, and the coffee shop clubs constant incessant talking, pontificating, open judgement - when is there time to listen?
Are you able to hear what your telling yourself?  Deep down there is a right, and wrong, and the ability to listen to it needs to be refined.  How much noise are you blocking out, how much energy does it take?  Does it distract you from being the person you want to be?

What was it that drove you to begin?  Listening to yourself at moments of calm will undoubtedly produce a vision of the path you truly desire to walk.  Have the guts to start, keep going uphill, see whats around the bend, and always move forward.  It's always going to be one step, one breathe, one moment.

When you remember a time that you were you, in your truest sense, the task you are doing or the people you are with are a clue as to what makes you happiest.  It's a sign that you are woking with purpose, which leads to passion, and fulfillment.  Let yourself be taken back to what moves you.  You don't need to be a hard ass to be a bad ass.  Just keep following your dreams.

There's calm in there.

Tick Tock, Bitch.

The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.
Abraham Lincoln

It really is something when you work for yourself.  You have to set a schedule, or an agenda almost every hour.  Even if you work for someone else you still tick the bosses list as the days spiral towards the weekend.  As CrossFit athletes we do this by setting goals, or by planning out our food in advance, and making time to get to the gym.  Oftentimes, CrossFitters are "type A" personalities, Alpha/Omega, In-fucking-charge folk who won't stand for a minute of lost productivity - which is great.  Do more, be more, have more fun doing it - I can sink my teeth into that.  But lets look in the rearview for a minute.  When is the last time someone accused you of being REALLY GOOD at something?  If you've been accused recently and if it's something you are really good at, then your first thought was sure to be "Yeah but it could be better if I..." And that's the point.  With a limit of 24 hours we really have all the time we need, but none to spare.  An average day might be: 8 hours of sleep (if you are concerned about gaining strength and conditioning at all), 1 hour of training (if you can warmup and get it done without being a jabbajaw), 3-5 hours eating/cooking/cleaning (minimum, right?), and 8 hours working (Not if your self-employed - suckers!).  Not much time left after that, is there?  Thank god for rest days and a pocket calendar!  So thats 22 hours of your day right there.  Every person on the planet, rich or poor, strong or weak, black or white, has the same 24 hours to play with.  Some will find a bar stool with their name on it, some will be a slave to the moving picture box, and yet others will find a way to get it all done.  
If you had 2 hours a day to get what you needed to get done signed, sealed and delivered perfectly - how would schedule yourself?  Where during the day would you do this?  How would you stay at maximum effort for that amount of time?  Anyone who has put a serious mental project at the forefront of their operation will tell you - it's fucking exhausting doing real hard thinking and planning!
I'd think an outline or plan would be in order - an agenda that you wrote and can adjust on a whim if needed.   Then I would plan short bursts of work into my day during times I am most alert and undisturbed.  Personally, the 15-20 minutes time allotment is where I do my best output.  Some days, and only on some types of projects, I can go for an hour or two in one shot, but capping a work period quickly forces me to keep focused and allows my brain maximum output with minimal fatigue.  Best work in minimal time, yup, that's CrossFit.  Metal.
Most of my work is done between 4 AM and 2 PM.  Most of that is used up coaching classes, eating, WODding, reading Chaos and Pain, and answering phone calls and emails.  Which really leaves about 2 or 3 fifteen minute chunks here and there, and a few hours around noon to make something of myself.  I don't care if this is not your schedule, its an example, figure your own life out and keep reading.  The first focused amount of time is spent choosing which projects to tackle that day based on importance, how much time it will take in its entirety, and whether or not I even need to do this or if I should find a friend to help me with it.  (You do delegate, don't you?)
Based on the law of diminishing returns, we know that the longer I work on one thing, the less it will yield overall.  Here's a novel concept, KEEP YOUR INTENSITY UP.  Nourish your intake (Steaks and Heavy Squats) to cover your energy expenses (anything requiring your attention for more time than it takes you to sneeze).  Once your agenda is set blast away working on it in small chunks until your 15-20 minutes is up.  Then stop.  Get the fuck out of the room and do something, anything else.  Try drinking water, stretching, or juggling knives doused in gas set on fire.  
Working at higher intensities will yield more maximal output over a longer period of time than if you were to try to maintain a constant pace for the entire day.  
Interval working.  And if your LSD addicted boss or partner tell you to stop fucking around with knives you can tell them to stick one up there ass.  Your too busy being fucking awesome and getting more done in 15 minutes than they did all yesterday because they were tired or some bullshit.  


Working yourself to death is not an answer to an ever-increasing workload demanded by your pursuits or goals.  Smart interval training dialed into your life where you are getting the most out of yourself at your most productive times of the day/week/month/year is something that takes tweaking and constant refinement but in the end will yield you more out of less.  


Sweet, succulent efficiency.  


Take your time, it is all you have.

One of the most vicious, brutal, and throat-crushingly hardcore mammals to ever nut-punch a lion unconscious by swinging a couple King Cobras around like a pair of serpentine nunchucks – the African Honey Badger.  Your time is as precious as he is ferocious.  Go forth...

Scrutinous Mutation

I often ask at the onset of one's experience at CF Farmland a very simple question: "What do you get out of 'easy'?"  Confused looks, raised brows, and a slow jaw-dropping action follow as if a cog had just begun to start a chain of thought that had laid dormant for eons.
It seems as though without a way to express ourselves in a physical capacity, one which offers us a glimpse of our current physiological thresh-holds, we lose the mental intensity required for adaptation.  Lets be honest, mediocrity is par and exceptional performance, grasped by those who seemingly spend their lives devoted to pursuing excellence, is far and few between the masses.
Anyone can be mediocre, just show up - late even - do what's required, stay away from others who might need to ask you for help or worse yet, an original idea!  Get by, in sum.  Do what's easy.  Ambivalently wanting to be better in life but not willing to take a leap towards understanding what is holding you back.   Sounds like ignorance, rather, lack of thought and, denial.
Simple solution: Go the opposite direction.  Admittedly, this blog is biased, so I'll just say it.  You should CrossFit.  (I'll pause for those offended by me pushing my beliefs on them).  OK, the gasps have cleared.
CrossFit isn't a thing of purely physical acquisitions.  It involves becoming, for lack of a better term, "unfuckwithable".  Spawning inside your head a mindset that won't be broken long after the body has cried mercy.
Go the other way from easy and you just might find yourself surrounded by others doing the same.  These people will motivate you, and you will motivate them.  You will all be on a path of bar-raising and norm-crushing.  It will self-propel. Until one day you realize you have committed yourself to pursuing excellence and the masses are left behind to wonder "how?".  Your swaggering clique will propel you to set higher standards for yourself, and will make you accountable to the weaknesses that are exposed, never letting them be swept aside.
Start this process by setting goals.  Assess yourself.  I am: nervous, fearful, disciplined, anxious, overconfident, etc...  I need to be: calm, collected, intrinsically motivated, dedicated, etc....
Pick one goal.  Assess yourself.  Ask your clique to assess you.  Write down comparisons.  Look for what you've been missing from a bird's eye view in the vision of yourself so you can reset it.  Review your one goal.  Assess yourself.  Ask hard questions.  Find that weakest link.  Expose the shit out of it.  How can you train it?  How can you make it better?  Assess yourself.  Ask your clique to assess you.  Review the goal.  Is it better yet?

This isn't complicated, it's simple.  You must be focused.  You must be steadfast and unwavering with your pursuit of achieving the one goal.

Before anyone chimes in I usually answer myself, "Nothing.  You get NOTHING out of 'easy'."  Getting better is simple.  Not easy.

Who the hell do you think you are?

Stepping into the cage last week to have a crack at some squats, which at the loaded weight was one that left me humbled in July, caused a pretty powerful jump in heart rate and my mind to recall the horrible "crushed into the earth by metal" feeling I was hoping to avoid.
Enter: the power of visualization.  Or maybe not.  Now, I've read tons of blurbs, books, articles on the subject and I know the experts say to visualize yourself in 3rd person, as if you are watching yourself in a movie, performing the task at hand.  Do it in such a manner that you can feel the sensory input.  The more details imagined, the higher the rate of probability your outcome will match your vision.  But seriously, who wants to stand around imagining the smell of iron and the wicked hurt of a 3x5 done at 95% when you could walk up to a bar and huff the 45's right in front of you and then feel the real deal?  I think its definitely a valid approach for success in lifting and in life for some people.  Hell, I might use it someday for something.  But the singular driving force of progress more than anything in most of my lifting/CrossFitting career has been linked to one thing:  that white-hot raging fire inside.
It's not something I'm going to be able to narrow down into a definition, either, so I suppose pontificating an entire blog on it was a poor choice, but I will give it a shot.  Here are 3 examples of what I use to blister my brain with power before tackling something.  Maybe they'll work for you, maybe not.  This blog is free.
#1:  I internalize the thought, "I will sacrifice my body for this cause and place the emphasis on my mind."  In other words, long before it starts to be an issue I will get over the fact that my elbows tendinous tissue is ripping out of place because Muscle-up reps #70-75 aren't going as planned.  I get over the fact that I just saw a chunk of skin go flying off from somewhere in the middle of my heaviest power clean of all time.  It doesn't matter.  Why do I train?  To stress the body AND the mind.  I read somewhere the mind cannot differentiate between mental and physical stressors.  For those looking to take a nugget away from this here it is: Your body is not what is holding you back.  Larger stressors, larger adaptations.   Don't believe me? Then read this:  Train the Mind for Increased Strength by Tommy Suggs  and this: “Are you hurt or are you injured?”
#2:  Watch Predator or Terminator 2 once a month at minimum.   If you are looking for an explanation you are beyond help.  Try this instead: DO NOT CLICK IF YOU VALUE THE LEVEL OF YOUR TESTOSTERONE
#3:  The Perfect Way to Brew French Press Coffee.  Replace "coffee" with espresso beans.  Drink and repeat 3x before 6 am.
Simple.  Keep your head in it, raise your Test levels, and fire up the kettle.

The squats were heavy and I made quite a sound driving out of the hole on each effort, but they didn't beat me that day.  Moving forward...

Somebody hasn't had there coffee yet.

Old School

It's been like this before.  For someone, somewhere.  It's not the first time someone has experienced pain, cuts, bruises, scrapes, bones snapping, ligaments tearing, tendons popping, or absolute exasperation.  It might be the first time you have, but in all of history, that's pretty insignificant.  The reason we are able to do these workouts at all is because our ancestors lived this life of running, jumping, pulling, digging, climbing, lifting over and over and sun-up to sun-down. 365 days a year or else they die from lack of food, shelter, warmth, or materials.

If it isn't a different body we are sporting then where is the slack coming from?  Our fragile little eggshell minds.  That's where.  Luckily, therein lies the opportunity.  To learn, through experience.  About ourselves, our limits, our shortcomings.  About our want to curl up far away from another rep, or another plate on the bar, or to just say fuckitall and grab a sixer of some lager because its Sunday and football is on.  Its in those places we either win or fail, where the choice is ours to make but we let society say otherwise for us.  "I" isn't in the equation when the server puts bread on the table for everyone to pass around and you smile and take your slice.  But on Monday when it's just you under a heavy set of iron-clad back squats I would be grumbling to myself "Where the fuck did everyone go?!"  They went home and didn't give a shit, most likely.  Discounting themselves from all the crazy hard-core fitness nuts that they see on ESPN2.

On your next 397th rep of 400 remember, it's not the first time in history someone's lost their cookies.  It's always been like this for somebody, somewhere, and probably is worse right now.  Burn yourself white-hot and sear the memory into your head.
Remember, and learn.

Misery, Love, Company

Those that look miserable usually are.  You know people walking around in disarray with that look that says "I'm constipated" gnarled across their face?  It's because they're full of shit.
These same people flake through their day and, want flakiness from you as well, to validate the excuse of a life they live.
Where is all the self-love?  Where is the want of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?  The constant drive internal that rejects your current place/situation/social status/income-level/educational-merits that say you are "this" not/won't/can't/will-never-be "that".
Where are the throngs whose priorities stem from the deep place inside that says "I'm not a piece of shit.  I deserve the best.  Let's get to work.  Rinse, lather, repeat."?

Thank god for the gym.  We are lucky to have other people singularly focused on fitness for a purpose and who will support you as they have been supported.  Lucky again as this CrossFit movement spans the globe and we will always be at home at any affiliate.
If you're an outsider and don't accept what the miserable consider a life and, if you reject being labeled by social norms, you might be looking for some good company.