Words With Lisbeth

Thoughts and words build strength like the barbell does: the strength in your mind. If you don’t have your mind right, then whatever amount of muscle and sinew you bring to the workout will never be enough. Whatever speed you have on the barbell will never be enough. Whatever fight you bring to the fight will never be enough.

So get your mind right and get your workout right. But, remember, it’s not a chicken-and-egg thing. One doesn’t always come before the other. Sometimes, you’ll need the right mindset to lift. Sometimes you need to lift to get to the right mindset. The only sure thing is that action saves. Sitting around on your ass is never the solution. Work your brain, work your body, work your soul.

Get moving … and life always improves.

(Image courtesy of Nicole Bedard Photography.)

(This image courtesy of Nicole Bedard Photography.)

No, seriously, f*** you. Those images and ads and print and video that would have us believe we all need to be addict-thin, emaciated female skeletons in order to be desirable? In order to be wanted? In order to be loved? And then you turn around and try to sell us low-quality processed garbage to eat? Do you really expect us to still put up with this?

Well, I’m not buying your screwed-up bullshit anymore.  You f***ed with my head long enough. Not buying your death-of-me-sold-to-me. What a flippin’ idiot I would have to be in order to purchase my own death. I know better, learned better, am better.

Yet people do it every day. I do it every day. We all buy shit that is bad for us, or stupid for us, or that will plain f***ing kill us. (Cigarettes, drugs, alcohol, processed food, SUGAR). We look at super-skinny runway models and airbrushed magazine photos and we listen to BS that women are “too muscular” and some of us still worry that we’ll “bulk up.”

Well, we should be more worried about dumbing down than bulking up.

See, we’re dumb when we listen to dumb. And we were actually led to believe that there is some pain of living that can be ameliorated, assuaged, or erased by the purchase of PRODUCTS. How crazy is that? To believe that there is some condition of the heart, the head, the soul that can be changed by anything but us changing inside. How stupid is that? How naive? How insecure?

Yet we do it. I do it. We all do it. We buy our own death, our own lesser beings, our own poor representation of ourselves. We put good hard cash down for someone else’s screwed-up vision of who we should be.

Well, I say no more. There are enough of us now who know better, who want better, who are willing to fight for better. And we’re called CrossFitters.

From now on, you shove a photo of a woman who doesn’t look like a CrossFitter in front of me — a woman who doesn’t look healthy, wonderful, and brilliantly ALIVE — and I’m not buying your shit.

I’m done. I’m voting with my wallet and I’m voting loud and long and powerfully. You want my cash, you better give me real and alive and strong and true, because I’m not inhaling  that other garbage.

F*** you society. I’m not eating your shit anymore.

(Image courtesy of Nicole Bedard Photography.)

(All opinions expressed herein are solely that of the author and are in no way representative of any other person, company, or corporation.)

Think of what you have to do to get there: the choices you’ll need to make in your workout, your sleep, your nutrition, your work, even think about your reactions to people and stress. How are you going to handle things?

Now, everything else in your life that is not contributing to that vision and is dragging you down and of worthless value? Get rid of it. Now. Don’t wait.

Sounds mean, does it? Might be. But you have to decide where you go from fair, into mean, or not. [box]You draw your own line. Decide what you want in your life and what you don’t want. [/box] If it’s work but you want to keep it, that’s okay. Maybe you have work to do on a relationship, a friendship, a project: go ahead and do the work … if it’s important to you. If it’s not, then get rid of it.

It’s okay to prioritize. It’s okay to decide that this is your life and you get to decide how to live it. Be responsible but chase your dream, aim for those heights. You only get this one shot at life: live now, for it will all be over far too soon. Jump.

(Image courtesy of Nicole Bedard Photography.)

If I think that you can’t handle the storm, that you might break or cry or whimper under duress, I’m going to take a totally different approach. Your work might suck but you’ll get what appears to be less criticism. I have to approach you a totally different way. Dole out the lessons slowly, in little bites, over a longer period of time. We’re headed toward the same end, just taking a different, longer road. But the destination is the same: success.

See, success in one path, or many paths, is not easy. It’s not enough to have a gift, or a talent, or a skill set. Not enough to have drive, persistence, and dedication. You need to bring it all — and at the right time. So a good coach can be a big old pain in the ass. They’ll bug you to hit the right points, the right speed, the right bar path. They know if you have the talent and the heart and the gumption and the soul — and they want to see you bring it all. Their job is to to help you reach your potential. It’s not always easy, but it’s worth it. In the end, you’ll both be better people because of good coaching, whether it’s in the gym or in school or the home or whatever. Good coaches have many names: friend, parent, partner. They’re in more areas of your life than you realize. Anyone helping you to be better is coaching you, whether you think of them in this light or not.

So, whether you’re the one making the voodoo doll or you’re the one getting pins to the head, take heart. A message is getting through. Someone is getting better. And that’s why we’re all here.

(Image courtesy of Nicole Bedard Photography.)

Seriously. You did great today: ate clean, got a WOD, slept well. Awesome day. Or maybe you did horribly: ate crap, got 3 hours of sleep, and the only WOD was called work.

What happens tomorrow? What are you going to do then?

See, a great plan is essential, and (in a way) moronic. Yet taking everything “one day at a time” is crucial to your success and the best plan for utter failure. You can’t live only your plan — you have to live in real life, one day at a time, one hour at a time, one minute at a time — but neither can you only live in the moment.

Your physical life is kind of like driving, in a way. Lots of shit going on in your car, the engine’s humming, the radio’s blasting, the kids are yelling — but there’s lots of stuff happening on the road in front of you too. Spend too much time only looking at the bumper in front of you and you’re going to crash. Spend too much time staring 3 car lengths ahead and you’re going to crash. You have to take everything in all at once — the near, the far, the distractions, the joys — and process it all and still perform.

So, don’t fail to plan but also don’t fail to be here now. Both are essential to getting where you want to go. If you can manage to drive a car, you can manage to handle your workouts, your nutrition, your sleep, and your life. Don’t freak out. Work today but keep an eye on tomorrow, and the day after that, and after that. You can do this. Make good choices now and get where you want to go.

(Image courtesy of Nicole Bedard Photography.)

Sometimes you win. Sometimes you suck so much they should name a suckage monument after you. Kids on school trips could take their pictures in front of your crumpled, pathetic concrete image. (“This statue is in memory of the Great WOD Disaster of 2011. That extra 20lbs on the bar almost killed her. Survivors still have nightmares about her form at the end. Scary stuff. Kids, don’t let this be you.”)

Nobody will ever love you more than your mother. Not even your partner or your kids or the front squat. Your dog is sure going to try though.

You will love the barbell more than it will ever love you back. (It can’t love — it’s an inanimate object. Stay with me here, people.)

The 10 seconds of rest during Tabata are actually 4. No one’s been able to scientifically prove this point, yet we all know it’s true.

The L-Sit was used during Ancient Roman Times as a punishment for adultery. They put hot coals under the parallettes. This is how “players” first learned to get amazing abs.

When four or more people gather for a WOD, at least one person will be the Whiner. Or the Heavy Sweat-er. Possibly also The Person Who Always Has to Leave Early.

If you eat perfectly at every single meal, get 10 hours of sleep every night, and have impeccable form on every movement in every WOD and the lowest WOD times, and the heaviest weights in every lift, you’re probably a big old liar too.

All joking aside though, there is one hard truth that’s indisputable, if you do CrossFit right: No matter how bad you felt before the WOD, no matter how crappy and terrible and horrendous your day was up until the point that you walked in the gym, you will always feel better after the WOD. Well, at least once you can breathe again. (And don’t slip on that pool of sweat: the Heavy Sweat-er can’t help it, it just flows out of him like a water faucet.)

(Image courtesy of Nicole Bedard Photography.)

Did you just guess where I’m going?

Yup, to CrossFit.

What if that water was actually CrossFit? (Although, maybe it’s not all that simple. Maybe this issue of CrossFit growing bigger is much more complex.) But what if it was just as simple as more people getting the opportunity to make their lives better? Would you still pine for the old days when only you and some friends knew about it? Or would you be happy that so many more people now have a chance to live better lives?

(Image courtesy of Nicole Bedard Photography.)

When nothing else seemed to work right, be right, feel right — the barbell felt right. You could swear, stomp, smash, and get all sorts of ugly but the barbell just took it. Took all of it. All your abuse, your hatred, your ugliness — took it all and never talked back. Never made you feel small. Never told you to smile and play nice. It was okay to be angry with the barbell, even preferred sometimes.

The barbell made you feel big, no matter how short or tiny or less-than-powerful you felt. Once that barbell was in your calloused hands with some bumpers on the ends, you were ten feet tall and had an ass that could squat the world. The barbell, used well, gave you power. And you liked it.

And somewhere, in your raging and your carrying-on and your braying as a jackass about your lifts and your times and your badass CrossFit experience that you just couldn’t shut up about, no matter how much your family wanted to ignore you (“It’s just Mom, bragging about her Front Squat again”) or how glazed over your neighbors eyes got (“Holy hell, doesn’t she do anything else?”) somewhere along that way … the angry voice stopped. Vanished into the muggy night. Gone. Left. Beat it out of town.

You still pulled up the voice sometimes, conjured the edge, the grit, the bite when you needed to make the WOD happen … but your anger was a pale comparison to what it was before. A faded glory. A bon homage to the fury of youth.

The barbell took that angry voice and gave you a new one. And everyone wondered why you sounded so happy. Well, except those who had met the barbell too …

(Image courtesy of Nicole Bedard Photography.)

The workouts? The nutrition? The commitment to proper sleep and work and discipline?  The CrossFit Life? Not easy. CrossFit is hard. It should be hard. If it feels easy, you’re probably not going hard enough.

So, honestly, you might not be strong enough for CrossFit. You might be struggling. You might not be ready. You might not have what it takes. But in those reasons why you shouldn’t do CrossFit or why you shouldn’t stick with CrossFit are the reasons why you should.

Huh?

Maybe you need CrossFit because you need to build strength. Maybe you need CrossFit because you need to improve balance, or coordination, or endurance — in all aspects of your life, physical and mental.

[box]Maybe you need CrossFit because you need to learn to commit, to make right choices, to improve yourself in those exact moments when you just want to give up and do “good enough” for the rest of your life.[/box]

Sometimes you have to chase who you’re not right now in order to find out who you are. And sometimes who you are is way stronger than you ever realized.

Maybe somebody in your life needs you to be better, stronger, faster, and more complete of a human being. Maybe that somebody is your family or friends. Or maybe that somebody is you.

(Image courtesy of Nicole Bedard Photography.)

I was observing a CrossFit Level 1 Course last year and I heard CrossFit trainer Denise Thomas say this to someone in the middle of a workout. In the middle of a workout. “Expect more of yourself.” It struck me enough to stop and write the note down in my phone. I’ve heard a lot of things yelled by a lot of people during workouts (including some of the choicest, most creative use of swear words ever) but I had not heard that phrase said in a WOD before.

The gentleman she was talking to was doing a circuit of sprints, kettlebell swings, and push-ups. But Denise wasn’t just pushing him to go faster or to do more: she was pushing him to be more. Think about that. When’s the last time someone (outside of your CrossFit circle) nudged you in the back like that? Psst. Hey you, you’re better than what I’m seeing here.

We get so used to this attitude in CrossFit: the prevailing notion that we can improve our bodies, our minds, our spirits, our lives. But it’s not necessarily how the rest of the world operates. I get the feeling that a lot of non-CrossFitters think it’s okay to aim low. Or it’s okay to underachieve. To underperform.

But it’s not okay in our CrossFit world, not if you’re doing CrossFit right. We’re really not interested in making the WOD easier for you, but we are interested in adjusting the workout so that you are working as hard as you possibly can. [box]Life isn’t going to take it easy on you, so why should CrossFit?[/box]

Change your own expectations of what you can deliver, of what you can do, of what you can be. But you can’t do that with easy. You can do it with hard.

Expect more of yourself.

(Photography courtesy of Nicole Bedard Photography.)

2.) Start reading the words of Josh Bunch over at Practice CrossFit. Your life will be better for them. Stop reading the words of complainers and fools: they only make your life worse.

3.) Stop thinking that just because you’re going heavier means you’re a badass in CrossFit. It doesn’t really work that way. Going heavier just means you went heavier, and, depending on the workout, that actually might be the wrong thing to do — especially if it negatively affects your intensity. Learn to scale the WOD to you, not to your ego or anybody else. If you have trouble with this (and many of us do), get a coach.

4.) Ask your coach what you need to do to get better at CrossFit. Go home, ask your partner what you need to do to get better at your relationship. Ask your kids how you could be a better parent. (And don’t believe them when they say “Give me a bigger allowance.”) Then, evaluate and implement. Act. Stop sitting on knowledge that you don’t do shit with. (Like mobility: watching videos isn’t going to make you more mobile. Do the work.)

5.) Stop worrying about things. Change what you can and press on. Laugh big. Bitch less. Smile/think/love more. Go hard. Good things will come.

F*** resolutions. If they worked, we wouldn’t have to keep making the same ones. You know: Eat better, get more sleep, WOD more, work harder, etc. Instead, resolutions are all too often just a bunch of empty promises we make to ourselves. We’d like them to hold true, we’d like to be that person we see in our mind when we make all those resolutions. But, all too often, we simply are not. But that’s okay — because once we can identify our problems, we can start to solve them.

(One caveat though: If resolutions work for you — truly work — then keep making them. Use what works for you.)

But if your resolutions don’t work for you, then why make them? Instead, just act. There’s no law that says you have to think, decide, plan, and then act. Sometimes, in some cases, you might be better off just acting.

Less talk. More walk. Less planning. More results. Skip to the part where you can make things happen.

If your life is not where you want it to be, the easiest way to change it is to change it.  Really. So, maybe it’s time not to talk. Maybe it’s time to just do.