CrossFit Training Weeks 6-9

Conditioning & Strength

The most obvious improvement over the last month has been my increased work capacity and strength.  I'm consistently getting great times in WODs and my chin-ups and dips are noticeably better.  I don't see a much difference in technique to account for this other than having the capacity to maintain better technique for longer and using butterfly pull-ups whenever possible.  The exclamation point on this whole thing is my new Fran time of 4:50.

Eating/Sleeping

My daily recovery has been held back by poor sleep and sub-par eating.  I usually know as soon as I start warming up how the workout is going to go.  If I started getting fatigued on double-unders or something, it's going to be a rough one.  I apparently have a kidney stone that enjoys becoming extremely painful while I'm sleeping so that I wake up all night.  I've also been slacking on eating perfectly the last couple weeks.  Ain't nobody got time for that!

1:1 - Snatching & Muscle-ups

A few weeks ago, I had a 1:1 with John Post on the snatch.  This was largely embarrassing.  I already knew that I wasn't good at snatching, but I performed much worse than what I thought I could do.  Of course, this is all part of the deal.  I got some really great coaching on position, equipment, and what to work on.  At the time it was extremely demotivating, but in retrospect it was exactly what I needed.

I spent a bunch of extra time on snatching in off-class time that I think was useful, but I ended up hurting my hook grip-thumbs and exacerbating my lower back issues.  It has paid off in workouts for the lower weights, but nothing impressive on anything heavy.

My last 1:1 with John was on muscle-ups.  I've tried to do a bar muscle-up before, but didn't get anywhere; so, this was basically my first attempt at muscle-ups.  John lead me through all of the muscle-up progressions which I thought went well.  I could immediately see the benefit of the chin-ups and dips I'd been doing.  Eventually we got to work on the full thing.  I never got one, but I was so close a couple times I just assumed that the next time I worked on them it would happen right away.

Unfortunately that was not the case.  I've begun to take only Level 2 classes.  In the last class, I had a pretty embarrassing session working on muscle-up stuff.  This was demotivating, but it is what it is.  It's definitely just technique, but that doesn't mean I'm going to have them tomorrow.

Mental

As the CrossFit Games Open approaches, my mental game has been suffering.  I'm realizing more and more athletes that are as good or better than me in any number of areas.  The time left to improve gets shorter and shorter.  The easy gains seem to be slipping away.  I worry that I'm wasting my time, money, focus, etc on a goal that becomes less attainable every day.

This coupled with my focus being pulled in every direction by work, friends, side projects, real estate, life...  The determination to stay the course is difficult to find when it seems like I'm making the wrong decisions.

I've been in this situation before.  Doubts lead to poor diet, work ethic, focus, bad attitude etc. which just leads to lower likelihood of success.  I've decided not to do that.  Here comes a big speech about motivation and self-confidence or other such hippy crap.  Instead I'll just say, I need to stop being a pussy and get to work.