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Posted by Andy Petranek :
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
ATHLETE PROFILE: Will P.
Hometown: LaJolla, CA
Age: 28
Occupation: Director of Player Development at UCLA Football
When did you first start CrossFitting?: Sometime in 2009
When did you first start training at CFLA?: January, 2012
Favorite WOD: The Volkswagen (CF Football)
Least Favorite WOD: Anything w/ HSPUs, pistols or muscle-ups
Tell us about you sports & fitness background: Sports have always been apart of my life. Since I was around 6 years old, I always played soccer, baseball, basketball at the local YMCAs. In high school I was in love with football and basketball, playing year round and for traveling teams. I went to UCLA to play Football (as a Tight End) from 2002-2006. After my football career was over I started training athletes for Play Fast Athletics down in San Diego. We trained junior high, high school, collegiate and professional athletes from all sports so I was well accustomed to strength and conditioning. I also had a period of time after college when I was attempting to play professionally so I trained with some awesome coaches who really helped me not only perform better functionally, but also educated me in a ton of things that I took away with me.
How did you first get exposed to CrossFit? Take us back to your first WOD... what was it, and how did it feel? My good friend Sean P. got me hooked when I was still living in San Diego. He runs CF at Victory MMA in Point Loma and at CF La Jolla. We would do wods in the La Jolla box and I loved it! I was missing the intensity and competitive atmosphere from being a D1 athlete and 24 Hour Fitness just was NOT cutting it any longer. I believe the first wod I ever did was Fight Gone Bad. It was brutal but I loved it! I've been doing it ever since, mainly on my own.
What sort of changes have you seen in your body, health and fitness since starting CF (before/after)? I've lost a good amount of body weight and fat percentage since my football playing days of being around 290lbs. I sleep better, feel better, can move better.
What sort of changes in your life have you experienced out of taking on something like CrossFit that were totally unexpected? Being able to feel pain/tightness in my body and knowing how to alleviate the tension and pain. Also, how eating paleo really does make you feel better. It's not a gimic!
Please share with us any favorite CrossFit / CFLA moments: Having my picture posted on http://www.crossfitfootball.com and trying to do rope climbs after watching Zach and Stanwyck fly up the rope...it wasn't pretty.
Any advice for people just getting started? Learn the techniques early, don't be ignorant! Oh and don't cheat reps!
What are your hobbies, interests and/or talents outside of CrossFit? Church. My wife! UCLA Football. Concerts and shows - Michael Jackson's Immortal Tour by Cirque Du Soleil was awesome! Trying to eat paleo as much as possible!
Tuesday's Workout (CAP)
5 Rounds for time of:
200m Run
10 Power Cleans (155/105)
10 Pistols
...and coming Wednesday (NO CAP)
4 Rounds for time of:
100m Farmers Carry (50% BW)
15 Burpee box jumps (20)
10 Strict Toes to Bar
Posted by Andy Petranek :
Sunday, May 20, 2012
I was at the Dodger's game yesterday. Their pitcher, was having trouble from the start, and by the middle of the second inning, after he had loaded the bases with no outs, I was saying to my friends that they should take him out! If you're a baseball fan, you know that this is something that you never do... take out a starting pitcher, unless absolutely necessary, prior to the 6th inning, because it messes with your starting pitcher rotation. None-the-less, I was thinking, for the sake of THIS game, TAKE HIM OUT!
Well, their Manager, Don Mattingly, didn't take my short-term advice... and by the 7th inning, the Dodgers were behind by 2 runs. And just like that, in one swing of the bat, a pinch hitter drove a ball over the left field fence, bringing in 3 runs and giving the Dodgers the lead which they kept through the end of the game!
After the game, I was thinking about my knee-jerk, emotional reaction in the second inning, my desire to TAKE HIM OUT shortly after the pitcher started having difficulty, regardless of the consequences to the rest of the team, the rotation, the other pitchers, and his confidence. In that moment, there were a few things I forgot:
1. Sometimes when the going gets tough, the tough need a chance to stay in, stick it out, and get going. Taking the pitcher out, effectively forcing him to quit, could, quite possibly destroy his confidence and effect his performance for way more than one game.
What do you tell yourself when things get tough? Do you give up, and look for your "reliever." If so, what are you saying about yourself, and how does it effect your confidence the next time things get tough?
2. There isn't always a back-up to get you out of sticky situations. Sometimes you need to "hold the line" and when it gets tough, DIG IN.
When things get tough for you in your life, do you throw your hands up in the air and quit? If you're really in, truly committed, and you keep yourself in the game in spite of how difficult it is, you'll usually find that you have the ability to rise to the occasion, coming up with incredibly creative ideas that you never would have come up with otherwise.
3. When you're playing on a team, winning and losing is a TEAM effort. If one person struggles, on a winning team, the others pick up the slack. Team builds character and confidence. Team requires FAITH.
Who is on YOUR team? Do you give your teammates the chance to support you, and pick up the slack when you're not at your best? Do you have back-up that you're confident in? Do you have faith in your team?
TEAM!
Monday's Workout (CAP)
Spend 20 minutes working on Turkish Get-ups
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Complete as many rounds as possible in 12 minutes of:
10 Front Squats (65/45)
20 Push Press (65/45)
30 DB V-twist (25/15) (single-count)
...and coming Tuesday (CAP)
5 Rounds for time of:
200m Run
10 Power Cleans (155/105)
10 Pistols
Posted by Andy Petranek :
Friday, May 18, 2012
"The black hole" is Seiler's term for a nightmare training zone that can be hard to resist—an enjoyable, moderately taxing workout intensity that falls somewhere between a piece-of-cake recovery pace and a hellishly intense interval session. It's vigorous but not aerobically painful. Excerpt from Outside Magazine. To read the rest of the article, click here.
Does the black hole sound familiar to you? I know it well... because prior to CrossFit, I found myself in it, most of the time. I remember my endurance training back then... weeks in which I'd ride 150 miles, run 40 and kayak another 10. Each time I went out, unless I was specifically doing running intervals at the track, I would push myself, moderately hard. For me, this was a pace that usually meant a little bit of pain, but one that I could maintain for at least 40-60 minutes. I really never had a "go easy gear," unless I was recovering immediately after a race. When I was in this go moderately hard gear, it felt like I was pushing myself pretty hard, and found myself thinking that it would lead to improvements in my speed, stamina endurance.
Little did I know it, but I was in the 'Black Hole.' My progress stalled, and I started to plateau. When I started CrossFitting, it was a radical shift from this moderately hard pace all the time, to high intensity at most times followed by workouts (or rest days) of complete low intensity. This, as it turned out, lead to big improvements in my speed, endurance, and stamina (among other things). With these sorts of results and improvements, you'd think that I'd easily be able to keep myself out the Black Hole. Nope. Logically I know that I need to avoid it like the plague, however, my mind plays tricks on me, and suckers me in to going 'moderately hard' on days when I should be recovering easy, or pushing super hard.
Want a really great chance for a breakthrough? Go hard, or go easy, but don't go in-between.
It's a push-up line up!
Friday's Workout (CAP)
Complete as many rounds as possible in 18 minutes of:
6 DH Pull ups
Walking Lunges, across the gym and back (45/25)
6 Reverse burpees
OH Walking Lunges, across the gym and back
6 Push ups
OH Walking Lunges, across the gym and back
...and coming Monday (CAP)
Turkish Get Up skill work
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Complete as many rounds as possible in 12 minutes of:
10 Front Squats (65/45)
20 Push Press
30 DB V-twist (25/15) (one-count)
Posted by michael stanwyck :
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Some numbers I love. I will geek out for hours over mathematically trying to quantify workouts or movements. Some numbers I can't stand. Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of money, but I'm the kind of guy who used to not want to open his bank statement because I just didn't want to know. Guess what that led to -- a situation I definitely didn't want to know about. Then I was gifted a book called The Soul of Money by a good friend of mine. It was a total re-evaluation of my relationship not only with money but with why I was the way I was about money. Said simply, it was all a question of "enough," or what the book calls "sufficiency."
What did I have to do to have the experience of enough? I couldn't necessarily just make more money appear (maybe even that is another conversation), but maybe simply being willing to look at the numbers might be a start. So I did. And guess what I found out. Things weren't nearly as dire as I had imagined. What was once "too little" was now "plenty." I had created a situation of insufficiency in my head that wasn't actually there. With just about the exact same amount of money and a shift in "being" I now have enough to take a vacation every year, several great weekend getaways, at least one really nice big night out each month, paying off some embarrassingly large debt in a couple of years rather than something like 13 at the minimum payments, putting some away into an operating savings account, and saving enough to move! This all came from altering the experience and not the amount of money.
Why does my personal financial situation matter? For two reasons. One is because numbers are that important. If you can see it, you can measure it. If you can measure it you can move it. Your money, your health, your relationships, your career, whatever. Statistics are the key to real, measurable results. The second, and more important in my opinion, is that you may find that just being willing to change the experience will completely alter what you have. You may think that one day when you HAVE something (like money, time, a fulfilling job, etc), you will DO something (like save, take a vacation, whatever), and then BE something (HAPPY!). What if it simply worked the other way around? EXPERIENCE first (BE HAPPY!), then DO what a happy person does and then HAVE the life a happy person has. Could it be that simple?
Today's Workout (NO CAP)
Overhead Squat
Find 15 rep max
- Gold standard is BODY WEIGHT!
...and coming Friday (CAP)
AMRAP 18
6 Deadhang Pull-ups
OH Walking Lunges, across and back (45/25)
6 Reverse Burpees
OH Walking Lunges, across and back (45/25)
6 Push-ups
OH Walking Lunges, across and back (45/25)
Posted by Becca Borawski :
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Whenever I go on a "restrictive" eating plan, I have a bit of a freak out period. I suddenly want to eat all sorts of things I never eat anyway. For example, recently I endeavored to try out intermittent fasting. I eat from 12-8pm each day, but not outside of those hours. The first couple of days when it hit noon I ate everything in site. I wanted ice cream. I wanted crackers. I wanted a candy bar. I never eat these things, but it was like my mind thought I was never going to see ANY food ever again. After a couple days that subsided, and as everyone around me predicted, I settled a bit into this whole IF thing.
But that's when the "inner toddler" took residence. This is the part of me that wants what it wants simply because it can't have it. What I've come to realize, though, is that the inner toddler isn't real. I mean, the cravings and feelings are there, but they're not based in actual needs of my body. Unlike the first few days where I think my body genuinely thought I might starve it, I feel as though my body has adjusted, but some emotional part of me hasn't. So the inner toddler is desperately hungry from when I wake up until 11:59am every day. It causes hunger pains and cranky thoughts. It causes me to look at the clock every five minutes for hours on end. And then, suddenly at 12:00pm...I'm not hungry anymore.
This is the true hallmark of the inner toddler and what caused it to deflate it's power over me. It wants what it wants when it can't have it - and doesn't when it can. Once 12:00pm strikes I forget I'm hungry. At 12:45pm I look at the clock and think, "Crap, I better start eating!" The great part about it, though, is now I KNOW it's not real. It's just emotions and things that don't have a real effect. I can say hi to the inner toddler, give it a little hug, and move on with my productive ways.
I'm really not sure what's happening here.
Wednesday's Workout (no CAP)
800m Run
400 Single unders
400m Run
200 Single unders
200m Run
100 Single unders
...and coming Thursday (no CAP)
Find your 15 rep max overhead squat
(Gold standard is bodyweight)
Posted by Andy Petranek :
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
When you make a commitment to do something, do you feel obliged to do it? Do you feel like you HAVE to do it or do you have freedom around it? I started thinking about it and wondered, what's the difference between the two, commitment and obligation.
Here's the definition of obliged from dictionary.com: "to place under a debt of gratitude for some benefit, favor, or service: I'm much obliged for the ride."
And here's the definition of committed: "to pledge or engage oneself: an athlete who commits to the highest standards."
The way I see it now, the difference lies in the reason behind taking the action... because both will deliver actions. The person who feels obliged, feels that way because he/she has already been the recipient of some act of kindness and feels like they have to repay the act or person. Obligation, to me, means I am doing something because I should, it's the right thing to do, I'm supposed to do it, and I need to repay something or someone who has done something for me. Commitment, on the other hand, comes out of nothing. With a commitment, there is nothing that I have to do, should do, or am supposed to do, nothing that needs to have happend because it is "right", because the only person responsible for whatever it is I've committed to is me. There is total freedom with commitment... prison with obligation.
So here's the million dollar question... how do you turn your obligations into commitments, to rid yourself of the necessity of doing something because you're supposed to? Another question - do your commitments FEEL more like obligations? If so, why? I wish I had all the answers, I really do. I feel like I have a clear distinction between the two, but I'd love to hear your thoughts and your answers. Please post in comments.
Keith, getting some window shopping in during his WOD, wonders if his wife, Angie, would like that black leather studded collar for their new dog.
Tuesday's Workout (CAP)
For time:
42 Wall ball (20/14)
21 Pull-ups
30 Wall ball
15 Pull-ups
18 Wall ball
9 Pull-ups
...and coming Wednesday (NO CAP)
For time:
800m Run
400 Single unders
400m Run
200 Single unders
200m Run
100 Single unders
