Out for the 2014 Open

Sometimes life changes in ways you never could have anticipated.  In 2011 I completed 11.1 less than three months after having a plate installed in my broken elbow and scored just over 7 rounds.  Today I completed only 33 reps of the same workout because I'm competing in a qualifier for the Pan Am Games in weightlifting next weekend, and that was all I felt comfortable doing without influencing my chances of competing well.

As recently as mid-January, my training was pretty much 95% CrossFit weaknesses and 5% weightlifting program.  My training was at the highest volume it had ever been, but I never did heavy squats or squat cleans because my primary focus was on getting 10 consecutive muscle ups, 40 consecutive handstand pushups and a time on "2007" that I wouldn't be totally embarrassed about.  I believe I was fitter than I had ever been, and more excited than ever to try to make the CrossFit Games.  I believe that my chances were better this year than ever before.

But, suddenly a dream I've had my entire life has actually started to come true.  It appears I may have a shot at representing our country in weightlifting.  I was about as close as a person can be in track and field in 2008 despite some tough circumstances, and I was about as close to making the CrossFit Games as you can be in 2013.  I want to write a different ending to this story.  I want to find a way to make it the rest of the way to my goal, and it seems this may finally be my chance.  My PRs are climbing, I'm squatting nearly every day, and I believe I'm just getting started.

When I initially considered this change of focus, and this new pursuit, I found myself wishing for a guarantee.  I wanted a guarantee that I would make it, that the sacrifice would be worth it, that I wouldn't find myself disappointed again.  But, I finally realized that not trying is the basis for the only guarantee I could possibly have: that I will not make it if I don't try.

As a weightlifter, I get to spend every single day focusing on my strength.  As a CrossFitter, I've avoided pushing my limits in weightlifting because developing a specialty tends to come at the expense of general physical preparedness, i.e. being a better weightlifter made me a worse CrossFitter.  Now, I get to wake up every day excited to be a better weightlifter, and my joy about that has only grown in the past six weeks.  I've already formed wonderful relationships within the weightlifting community, and I'm thankful for the warm welcome I've received.

At the same time, I still love CrossFit with every ounce of my being.  It is the foundation of nearly everything positive in my life.  It's created two careers that I love - the Seminar Staff and my affiliate Arena Ready, it's the basis of a community I can't imagine my life without, it's helped me to finally form a healthy relationship with my body, and establish an identity that I desperately needed.  And, in four years of CrossFit (including a year healing the broken elbow) I've added 60 pounds to my snatch, nearly 100 pounds to my squat, 20 pounds to my clean and learned to jerk.  I wouldn't have had this opportunity if I weren't a CrossFitter.  So, although I can't compete in CrossFit while I'm pursuing weightlifting, I can certainly cheer, judge, coach, and love it, and I plan to do just that.

I plan to come back to the CrossFit Open at some point in the future.  I still hope to make the CrossFit Games someday, but for now, I am a really happy, excited weightlifter.  I hope to represent our country on an international stage, and I hope to finally reach a goal I've had since I can remember being capable of setting a goal.

Best of luck to my friends competing in the Open, and those who will go on to test their fitness at Regionals and the Games.  Now that I'm a spectator, I'm even more in awe of your incredible capacity and humble hearts.  I'll be cheering for you.

Stubborn

Sometimes people say that I was born the athlete I am today - suggesting that my ability to show up physically and mentally on game day is an innate attribute.  It is so hard for me not to argue when someone says that because of how hard I've worked to develop my physical and mental attributes throughout my life (since first watching the Olympics at age 5, I've been learning the art of the game face).

I was not born with the ability to compete well, nor am I a physical freak of nature.  I'm a little knock kneed, and my arms aren't the same length.  I've messed up literally hundreds of times in competition, only to experience the devastation that a poor performance brings, over and over again.

The only thing I may have been born with is stubbornness.  I may not reach my goal, but I will not give up on getting better.  I do not want to waste my life, and I do not let failure define my future. I want to be better tomorrow than I am today, so today I make choices which will influence my tomorrow.

Every time I fail on big and small stages (even when I miss lifts in practice), I look at the events leading up to the failure and try to evaluate what I could have done differently to reach a different outcome.  The next time I face that challenge I try not to make the same mistakes again.  I'm constantly thinking through my strategy for the upcoming day, month, and year to try to plan ways that this year will be better than the last - how I'll be thinner, stronger, healthier, happier and more successful than I was the year before.

I was not born with it.  Neither were you.  But I have a good set of tools.  Today, I choose to use them.  Do you?

Community

CrossFitters talk a lot about community, so much so that sometimes I think it's become merely a buzz word.  When asked what you like about CrossFit, you're supposed to say, "It's changed my life," "I can do things I never thought were possible," "the workouts are so challenging," and "I love the community."

Well, this weekend I was asked on camera why I CrossFit, and I'm pretty sure I said the same things everyone else says, word for word.  I consider myself introspective, occasionally creative, and usually hilarious (although it's mostly just me who laughs at my jokes), so I was disappointed to hear the same "boring cliches" emerge from my mouth.  The trouble is, I couldn't really think of anything else to say, because they are all true.  And pretty much universally true.  I believe this forms the basis for an exceptionally strong worldwide community - formed by sharing significant experiences.  Life, for that matter, is that way.  We all share experiences (good and bad) which build into a wonderful interconnected web which results in a supportive community so far beyond that which I had previously recognized.

This weekend I was blown away by my community, and was reminded that no one should ever think they live in isolation.  I received messages of support from people I haven't heard from in many years, even people I thought would have forgotten me by now.  I was surrounded in person by people who inspire and support me on a daily basis.  I watched people cheering with great enthusiasm for perfect strangers, who just by working out, just by being them, were encouraging others to reach for healthier, happier lives.

I was blessed to have two moms and two of my coaches in attendance this weekend, along with many other family members and friends watching via the refresh button on the Games site.  I was touched by how excited they were for me to compete and succeed.  They've already endured a lot of CrossFit talk from me - descriptions of workouts and movements I'm sure they couldn't care less about, and yet they were excited to spend three days watching me do them.

I was blessed by my teammates - I watched each of them give everything they had - being brave enough to even compete at Regionals despite having some significant fears to overcome, to complete 15 reps of a recent PR weight, to dive underneath a near PR snatch without having been able to warm up properly, to compete well despite overwhelming soreness, to set PRs which had eluded them for years. I was also humbled by the genuine enthusiasm of the people who almost made the team - rather than detract from our community by being selfish and hurt (as I was last year, much to my chagrin), they were the #1 supporters this year, and I am so grateful to them for that.

I was blessed by the other competitors - I was so surprised to have so many people who inspire me telling me I inspire them.  When I've watched CrossFit, it's always seemed, based on how friendly they are to each other, that there must be a bit of an "insiders" clique, yet rather than feeling like an outsider, I was amazed at how genuine the camaraderie actually is, and how it extended to me even as a competitive newcomer.

I am so grateful to all of the judges, volunteers, sponsors, CrossFit media and staff for making the event this weekend possible.  Participating in Regionals made me feel more like a star than I did at the Olympic Trials (and that was an incredible experience).  CrossFit has created something really special - and beyond HQ, the gyms, the coaches, and the competitors, it's also a credit to all of the people who are willing to give their time, talents and enthusiasm to media, logistics, programming, announcing, equipment, and everything else that goes into putting on such an awesome event.

I hope that everyone who was watching this weekend realizes that the competitors on the field are no different than the fans.  We are all capable of so much more than we think possible - through consistent effort, good nutrition, and effective exercise we can all be healthier, stronger and more capable than we are right now.  And we are each surrounded by a huge community of people who love to see us each succeed.

Super Hero

Sometimes after "3...2...1... GO!" you have to just go.  Stop thinking about whether you can do it, whether you're fast enough, whether someone else is faster, whether you should slow down in case you get too tired later on.  Sometimes you have to just GO and trust your training, your instincts, your body.  Tell the mind that its job is to stand by and cheer as the body takes over.

[To be clear, while you are developing proficiency in a movement, or if you're nursing an injury, sometimes it's necessary to be cautious - this will likely be the subject of a later post.  However,  sometimes in the absence of a physical limitation people are still hesitant, and in that case I say (to myself first and foremost), just GO!]

As an Olympic Lifting coach I watch people try for PRs all the time.  Some people PR by a few pounds practically every time they snatch. Some people hit mental roadblocks and stay at the same weight, two wheels for example, for months.  Oftentimes the difference is what they say to themselves.  The difference between "Oh my gosh, I've never snatched 100 pounds before" and "This is only 5 pounds more than I got last time, it's almost the same thing" is quite often the difference between a miss and a make.  Victory vs. defeat.

I am sure to be inadequate if that's what I let myself believe. Before I can accomplish anything I have to convince myself that what I am going for is possible for me on that day.  I'm tired of losing in my mind. It really doesn't ever happen that someone else beats me. Sure they might be faster, but only when I give up do I lose. And I never give up because of them, I give up because of me. Because I fear that I am inadequate.

Leading up to Femme Fit 2011 my PR in the clean was 225.  I cleaned 240 that day.  Leading up to NorCal Recovery Comp in April, my PR (and the last time I had jerked heavy) was from Nationals in March.  I jerked 225 (because I accidentally added 10's to the bar instead of 5's and decided to go with it).  Finally, last week my deadlift PR (a lift I'm convinced I'm not good at) was 335.  Working up to that weight I was feeling strong and told Rob he could put whatever he wanted on there.  I deadlifted 370 (surprising even him - he thought it was 360).

Had you asked me before those competitions if I could do those things, I would have told you maybe... someday.  But in a competitive environment, knowing that people are watching - some cheering and some sending miss daggers - ambition can outweigh fear.  This is one of the reasons I encourage people to compete.  If you can create a training environment for yourself in which you can quiet your inhibitions and focus only on your achievements you can give yourself a clearer view of your capabilities, which, once known, can't be unknown.  GO, and let your body blow your mind away!

Winning Doesn't Feel Like Winning

This week in a remarkably profound email, my boss wrote a sentence which caught my attention, given the NorCal Regionals are now merely 9 days away.  He said, "What's crazy about winning is that it doesn't feel like winning.  It feels like a lot of hard work, because at any given moment, that's what winners are likely to be doing."

When I read that, it nearly made me cry.  In my office... at work.  Nearly crying because of a sentence in an email having nothing to do with sports.  If that doesn't feel like winning, I don't know what does!

Seriously, I've spent all but about a few weeks of my life training in the hopes of winning something.  Whether it was soccer, jumping, or hammer in the early days or now in 2012 first it was 5 weeks of the CF Games Open with USAW Nationals thrown in for good measure.  Then, immediately thereafter it became CF NorCal Regionals.  And, suffering from temporary insanity (or possibly superhero disorder), I spent a few weeks in there also training for the Olympic Trials in Long Jump.  I know.  Unrealistic.  But jumping 19ish feet after 10 years away from the sport gets a girl to dreaming!

The problem with winning in sports is there is a lot of sacrifice involved in the journey - declining fun social invitations, being away from family, enduring physical challenges, making consistently healthy choices, and more, yet these sacrifices have to be made with no guarantee that they will actually result in victory.  In 2008 I watched in disbelief as one of the best throwers in the country, one of my heroes, failed to make the preliminary cut at the Trials after training for over a decade.  She was without a doubt deserving of a spot on the Olympic team and she didn't even finish in the top 12.

That was part of why I quit throwing hammer, although obviously it's a complicated equation.  I couldn't imagine spending four more years training, working and sacrificing - giving more than I was willing to give - if ultimately I couldn't be sure that I would win.  For me the sacrifices required to win didn't match up to the likely outcome (to be a math nerd for a second: reward for winning * likelihood of winning = expected reward < necessary compensation for sacrifice).  Now, on the flip side, even knowing that I may not ultimately perform as I expect or hope in a CrossFit competition, I'm willing to recommit myself to the life of a semi-professional athlete.  The difference now is that the sacrifices I'm making as a CrossFitter and an Olympic Weightlifter are sacrifices I'm willing to make with no guarantee - even if I don't win I know that my life is better because of the quest.

Now, 10 days away from Regionals, even though I'm scared, every muscle in my body hurts, I'm exhausted, and I'm not sure I'm good enough, I haven't and won't quit because I believe that I will be better, having gone through this struggle.  There's a good chance (probably most people think there is 100% chance) that I will not be competing in Carson in July - after all, I'm in NorCal, I only finished in 30th in the Open, and I am up against some really talented women.  But, having trained, focused, and fought for this opportunity, I know that I am better than I was, and on some level I have already won.

My broken wing is almost as good as new - wanting to compete at an elite level provided an incentive to restore my arm completely, rather than accepting partial function as good enough.  I am mentally stronger - I have shown myself time and again that I can fight through fear and pain, I can keep moving when my body says stop, and I can show up even when I don't want to.  I'm struck daily by how difficult life can be at times, and I know that the strength I develop as an athlete carries over to strength in other areas - whether or not I compete well next weekend I will be better prepared to face obstacles which I'm afraid of later on in life.  I may not win, but in working to win, I improved.

At this point in time I am doing lots of hard work.  I hope this is what it feels like to be winning.

Technical Proficiency

In explaining the hammer throw, Kevin used to tell me (to paraphrase badly) that he was trying to show me the moon, but he could only point.  I've found that to be an extremely useful insight both as a coach and as an athlete.  There is no magic to the words any coach uses to describe any feeling.  While some coaches may use words which are more effective than others in communicating a feeling to a particular athlete, the words they use are only as good as the actions they produce.

When someone tells me to jump, or pull, or shrug, I still have to jump, pull, or shrug correctly.  Shrugging in Olympic Lifting, for example, was a mystery to me for years.  Up until recently, there were lots of pictures of me looking like a c from the top view, where my front formed the inside of the c.  To me, shrugging meant shoulders up, and when weighted, that meant shoulders forward.  Now, thankfully, I've come to understand that shrugging actually means shoulders up and back.  Talk about a difference in execution.  In either case, I would have to call the movement a shrug, but the physical result is dramatically different, and my success in completing heavy lifts is different too.

Sticking with the Olympic Lifting example, in a single session I may be told: jump, pull, shrug, hook grip, weight in my heels, chest up, eyes up, head up, look up, fast elbows, drop under, stay back... and the list continues.  As a hammer thrower, cues in this volume were also common - I probably had 10 cues to work on at a minimum in every session.  As a less experienced athlete, these sessions used to make me glaze over.  I'd try to focus on all the cues in my head, but merely remembering them all, much less executing them, was exhausting and overwhelming.  I remember sessions where my best throw could be reduced to about 50% of my ability - we're talking technical meltdown.  Only later did I learn that even exceptional athletes can rarely hold more than 2-3 (and really more like 1-2) technical cues in their head at a time, and those cues generally have to be in different phases of the movement.  For example, my current cues in lifting are heels down, shoulders up.  When I start the lift, I focus on heels down (a.k.a. weight back).  Immediately as I start the lift, I shift my focus to shoulders up.  If I continue to focus on heels down after the lift starts, it's almost impossible to keep my shoulders up.  If I try to focus on both at the same time, there's almost no chance I'll be successful on the lift.  Weird.

Some could think this makes it hard to ever learn anything new.  Kevin had a great illustration for this as well (the man is a genius).  He told me to picture a new cue as though it were a field covered in fresh snow - completely unmarred by any footsteps.  He said that each throw focusing on that cue was like a path through that snow.  At first, each throw is somewhat independent from the others - like a new path in the snow.  Over time, the paths (throws) create a highway through the snow (muscle memory) and it gets very difficult to change the path because of how deeply it's embedded.  This is great news for technical events - learning a new piece of a movement is like the new snow - while the other parts of the movement are existing highways.  The new movements will be different every time at the start, and it won't be clear exactly where they lead, but the old highways will retain their structure - enabling you to find new paths without losing the old ones.  Each time you execute a technical movement, you pick the highway you want to build, and you trust your body to follow the other highways.

Watch out NorCal.  Today Carl Paoli helped me find the moon on muscle ups!  Now I know what "fastest situp of your life" feels like - I'm planning to spend the next few weeks building my highway :)

Healthy Perspective

There was a time in my life when I suffered from a variety of eating disorders.  Initially it was about performing better in sports, after all, if you carry a five pound dumbbell while you run, you'll go slower, so why not lose five pounds and run faster?  Subsequently it was about body image, self worth, fear, anger, control, etc. the list goes on.

When I first started CrossFit, I had lost about 20 pounds in the prior year having retired from hammer throwing, and making good on my promise to myself that the second I quit throwing I'd return to my pre-hammer weight (about 170).  I told Chris that I wanted to work out, but had no interest whatsoever in talking about diet or nutrition because I'd found something that worked for me (basically, trying to eat healthy-ish and suppress all thoughts of size, weight, or anything related), and I didn't want to drum up old ways of thinking.  In other words, "If you talk to me about diet I'm really afraid that my current state of fragile indifference could revert back to full blown eating disorders.  Please don't."

Now, a little more than two years later, I have been as light as 158 and as heavy as 178.  I have twice cut weight successfully from about 174 to 165 for weightlifting competitions and have once failed royally at the same without restarting my eating disorders.  I've learned a tremendous amount about the difference between form and function (focus on the latter tends to help improve the former), and I've fully embraced the concept of the Paleo diet (eat less of what man makes, more of what God makes), although sometimes I fail to put this belief into practice (yes, that was me you saw eating chocolate yesterday for lunch).  Interestingly, while my all-time Squat, Deadlift, Clean, Snatch, Bench, etc. PRs have gone up, my weight has stayed essentially the same as when I started CrossFit (apparently something other than weight can move weight), and my clothing size has dropped from a high of 14, to 10 when I started CrossFit, to 6 now.  Incredible.

But, let's be honest here, it's not all puppies and rainbows.  There are days when I want nothing more than to eat a full pizza, ice cream by the pint, chocolate by the bar, chips by the bag, and a good old fashioned salami sandwich.  In all honesty though, any time I eat that stuff now, I really notice a difference in the way I perform, think, and feel.  It's increasingly not worth it to me to eat highly processed, salty, sugary crap.  I want to feel, perform, and look great, which is much easier when I eat reasonable quantities of foods that are intended for consumption by humans.

Would I like to look more chiseled (think Andrea Ager, Lindsey Smith, Talayna Fortunato)?  Unequivocally yes.  Have I figured out how to do that in the context of my life?  Absolutely not.  I work at high intensity 50+ hours every week.  I work out at high intensity 5-6 days per week.  My life is really intense.  A lot of times I don't have the energy to even think about what to make for dinner, much less make it, and the unfortunate thing about Paleo eating is that eating raw chicken is really not a good idea.  Do I still need to eat whatever I feel like on occasion just to stay sane?  Yes.

Here's the thing.  I believe that people have to live in their own context.  I have a family history of weight issues.  I've struggled to find my own happy medium where my self acceptance, genetics and lifestyle match up.  But in the end, I've realized that though I was once proud of a semi-flabby 170 pound body, I can now accept a leanish, muscular 175 without falling into a death spiral.  The several times a week college runs to Jack in the Box to eat the highest calorie/dollar order on the menu to sustain my weight (ha!) have become regular home-cooked meals and somewhate frequent treats at natural/local/organic restaurants funded by the high stress job I show up for every day.

It's all a balance.  I hope to eat better, look better, and perform better next year, but in the meantime, I'm thankful that I eat better, look better, and perform better than I did last year.  Only in the context of gradual improvement can I maintain a healthy perspective (and that's how I got away from the eating disorders too - day by day focusing on the one thing I could do better on that day).