Trick Question: Which one would you trust to tell you about bio markers of health and disease?

“Not since the witch trials of Salem has such an all-out campaign been launched against the innocent based on so little truth and so much misinformation as in the case of cholesterol.” -Dr. Michael Eades, Protein Power Life Plan

Here’s the super fast down and dirty on this before I get any more questions about this and before you see the doc next time around:

1) Request a measured vice calculated LDL that will differentiate between small/dense LDL, which is associated with cardiovascular disease, and soft/fluffy LDL which is correlated with cardiovascular health.
2) Ask your doctor: Does carbohydrate intake spike insulin?
3) Ask your doctor: Does carbohydrate intake affect small/dense LDL?
4) Ask your doctor: Does long chain n-3/n-6 fat intake in a ratio close to 1:1 (which you would see from a Paleo Diet focusing on wild caught and grass fed meats) correlate with soft/fluffy LDL which is, again, correlated with cardiovascular health?
5) Ask your doctor: What do you think of large scale epidemiology studies that rely on correlation over multiple variables without any clinical trials attempting to reduce those variables to specific cause and effect and/or disprove those results through further testing?

The answers to these questions are:

2) Yes.
3) Yes.
4) Yes.
5) They are bullshit.

Incorrect answers from your doc should result in you firing them.

(H/T Robb Wolf’s Paleo Solution Episode 124: Harvard Meat Study)

1) Eat Paleo

It’s strange that we are a gym that’s going to tell you: working out isn’t as important as eating right.

You can literally come in 2-3 times per week, just have fun with the WODs, eat strict Paleo, and see amazing results.

If you really want to see improvement though and you’re not eating Paleo, you’re not going to see anywhere near the improvement of the folks that are eating Paleo.

2) #justshowup.

We do a TON of gymnastic strength in our warmups. Everyday we’re doing at least 4×3 Pull and 4×3 Push. We vary this based on the volume in the previous days, but overall we’re building some seriously strong gymnastic skills in the warmup.

3) For Pullups: Recon Ron

The baseline for our more flexible Volume Training template, Recon Ron is a great way to develop the pullup. You can view the baseline Recon Ron program here.

For folks that don’t have their first pullup yet, you’ll want to do 5 sets of Flexed Arm Hang. The goal should be a relatively even amount of time for each set, with 1-2 minutes rest in between sets.

Sets might start off with one second per round. That’s fine, keep at it.

4) 100 Pushups

While Recon Ron will do the trick for this as well, if you want to keep it simple, the 100 Pushup program has shown us some terrific results.

Bev L., though a relative newcomer to Crossfit, now holds our Box Record on Murph at 38:21, which she credits to first, just showing up, and second, to her dedication to the 100 Pushup program.

Summary:

A big key here is to not overtrain. This is for folks that are either a) not coming in very often, or b) are coming in often, but can handle the extra volume and understand when to drop this in and when not to drop this in. So this is not for most people, and as always, consult a coach!

You can also post a question to comments.

Dear Durant

You ask me, in brief, what satisfaction I get out of life, and why I go on working. I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs. There is in every living creature an obscure but powerful impulse to active functioning. Life demands to be lived. Inaction, save as a measure of recuperation between bursts of activity, is painful and dangerous to the healthy organism—in fact, it is almost impossible. Only the dying can be really idle.

The precise form of an individual’s activity is determined, of course, by the equipment with which he came into the world. In other words, it is determined by his heredity. I do not lay eggs, as a hen does, because I was born without any equipment for it. For the same reason I do not get myself elected to Congress, or play the violoncello, or teach metaphysics in a college, or work in a steel mill. What I do is simply what lies easiest to my hand. It happens that I was born with an intense and insatiable interest in ideas, and thus like to play with them. It happens also that I was born with rather more than the average facility for putting them into words. In consequence, I am a writer and editor, which is to say, a dealer in them and concoctor of them.

There is very little conscious volition in all this. What I do was ordained by the inscrutable fates, not chosen by me. In my boyhood, yielding to a powerful but still subordinate interest in exact facts, I wanted to be a chemist, and at the same time my poor father tried to make me a business man. At other times, like any other realtively poor man, I have longed to make a lot of money by some easy swindle. But I became a writer all the same, and shall remain one until the end of the chapter, just as a cow goes on giving milk all her life, even though what appears to be her self-interest urges her to give gin.

I am far luckier than most men, for I have been able since boyhood to make a good living doing precisely what I have wanted to do—what I would have done for nothing, and very gladly, if there had been no reward for it. Not many men, I believe, are so fortunate. Millions of them have to make their livings at tasks which really do not interest them. As for me, I have had an extraordinarily pleasant life, despite the fact that I have had the usual share of woes. For in the midst of these woes I still enjoyed the immense satisfaction which goes with free activity. I have done, in the main, exactly what I wanted to do. Its possible effects on other people have interested me very little. I have not written and published to please other people, but to satisfy myself, just as a cow gives milk, not to profit the dairyman, but to satisfy herself. I like to think that most of my ideas have been sound ones, but I really don’t care. The world may take them or leave them. I have had my fun hatching them.

Next to agreeable work as a means of attaining happiness I put what Huxley called the domestic affections—the day to day intercourse with family and friends. My home has seen bitter sorrow, but it has never seen any serious disputes, and it has never seen poverty. I was completely happy with my mother and sister, and I am completely happy with my wife. Most of the men I commonly associate with are friends of very old standing. I have known some of them for more than thirty years. I seldom see anyone, intimately, whom I have known for less than ten years. These friends delight me. I turn to them when work is done with unfailing eagerness. We have the same general tastes, and see the world much alike. Most of them are interestd in music, as I am. It has given me more pleasure in this life than any external thing. I love it more every year.

As for religion, I am quite devoid of it. Never in my adult life have I experienced anything that could be plausibly called a religious impulse. My father and grandfather were agnostics before me, and though I was sent to Sunday-school as a boy and exposed to the Christian theology I was never taught to believe it. My father thought that I should learn what it was, but it apparently never occurred to him that I would accept it. He was a good psychologist. What I got in Sunday-school—beside a wide acquaintance with Christian hymnology—was simply a firm conviction that the Christian faith was full of palpable absurdities, and the Christian God preposterous. Since that time I have read a great deal in theology—perhaps much more than the average clergyman—but I have never discovered any reason to change my mind.

The act of worship, as carried on by Christians, seems to me to be debasing rather than ennobling. It involves grovelling before a Being who, if He really exists, deserves to be denounced instead of respected. I see little evidence in this world of the so-called goodness of God. On the contrary, it seems to me that, on the strength of His daily acts, He must be set down a most cruel, stupid and villainous fellow. I can say this with a clear conscience, for He has treated me very well—in fact, with vast politeness. But I can’t help thinking of his barbaric torture of most of the rest of humanity. I simply can’t imagine revering the God of war and politics, theology and cancer.

I do not believe in immortality, and have no desire for it. The belief in it issues from the puerile egos of inferior men. In its Christian form it is little more than a device for getting revenge upon those who are having a better time on this earth. What the meaning of human life may be I don’t know: I incline to suspect that it has none. All I know about it is that, to me at least, it is very amusing while it lasts. Even its troubles, indeed, can be amusing. Moreover, they tend to foster the human qualities that I admire most—courage and its analogues. The noblest man, I think, is that one who fights God, and triumphs over Him. I have had little of this to do. When I die I shall be content to vanish into nothingness. No show, however good, could conceivably be good for ever.

Sincerely yours,

H. L. Mencken

[Courtesy of The Browser]

Got a little bit behind on consolidating these. Happy about my snatch PR above though, strength training is paying off.

Wednesday 111207

I’ve used a ton of different methods to track my progress.  I had a Google Doc, then a workout log on the Crossfit Discussion Board, then a blog, then a ton more GDocs doing all kinds of crazy shit.  Now what I do is use Evernote and one Gdoc.  The Evernote App is right on my phone, so I just type it in and it syncs online automatically.  I pull up the Gdoc on Safari so I know what I’m supposed to lift for my Wendler progression.

If for some reason I don’t follow my template, I can just search Evernote anytime I need to check what weight I used last workout.  For instance, I can just search “Back Squat 3-3” and the last Back Squat 3-3-3-3-3 WOD will come up and I can see what I lifted and put more weight on the bar, which I absolutely need to do.  If I don’t know what I lifted last time, chances are I will puss out pretty fiercely.

Or if it’s a benchmark WOD, then I can just search “Cindy” or “CFT” and all my old scores will come up.

What do you use? -Brian PCF

Monday 111213

Reprinted from comments on 111129: There’s a great story from “From the Horses Mouth: Essays for the Small Unit Leader” about a Civil War General who had three Colonels under him with wildly varied personalities.

Colonel #1 needed to be told exactly what to do with explicit detail – but if the General did it, Colonel #1 would deliver exactly what the General laid out.

Colonel #2 HATED to be told what to do or how to do it – so the General would just say “I need this hill taken by this time”, and that’s all the Colonel would stand for. So the General did it that way and got what he wanted.

Now Colonel #3 was even trickier. Whatever you told him to do, he’d want to do the exact opposite. So every time the General wanted something done, he’d have to say something like “Well Colonel #3, there’s simply no way that we could attack that Confederate flank tomorrow morning and take that position – it simply can’t be done.”

On cue, Colonel #3 would say “General, my Regiment will be standing atop that hill by dawn!”

Where I see this applying most often is with the idea of goal setting. Some people LOVE goals. They love setting them and achieving them, and that’s terrific. If this gets you in the gym, working hard, eating clean, then keep doing it.

I’ve helped plenty of athletes set goals and laid out plans to achieve them. It works for a lot of people.

But for me, I can’t stand setting goals. This just doesn’t work for me. This could be nurture more than nature, as I grew up playing baseball and it’s really really hard to set goals in baseball. It’s such a mental game that if you get crazy on the details and say “I want to hit .300 this year” – the second you dip below .300 you spend all your time trying to figure out why instead of just focusing on doing your best and taking it one at bat at a time.

So for my Crossfit training, I just take things one day at a time, show up as often as I can, and work hard. Goals can make some people neurotic, they do that to me. I just want to come in, have fun, and try to get a little better.

This may not be the right way, but like the analogy above, I don’t know if there is one right way.

What do you think? Do you do better setting goals or just showing up? -Brian PCF

Monday 111220

In engineering, the term Factor of Safety is a term describing the structural capacity of a system beyond the expected loads or actual loads. Essentially, how much stronger the system is than it usually needs to be for an intended load.

Since we can’t design or build our system (us) any stronger than it is on the day of the WOD, we have to scale the load/reps to the appropriate Factor of Safety.

For our newer athletes, during the more complex lifts (Snatch, Clean, Jerk) and Metabolic Conditioning WODs, you should have a pretty high factor of safety. Meaning, you should do less weight than you think/know you can do.

During the “simpler” lifts (squat, deadlift, press, bench press) in our strength programming (3-3-3…, 5-5-5…, etc) we want you to push as close to your max as you can safely get, form being paramount. Even with more weight, you retain a high factor of safety because you aren’t as likely to injure yourself as long as your form remains correct.

For more experienced athletes, the factor of safety should be lower on simpler lifts, complex lifts and METCONs, unless you’re periodizing. Meaning you should be challenging yourself, but there should still be a delta between you absolute max and what you’re working with.

The goal of this is to build our system stronger than before over the long haul. If we don’t address Factor of Safety (e.g., Scaling) properly in Crossfit or Engineering, then we have a much higher risk of catastrophic failure. -Brian PCF

Wednesday 111222

I think we instinctively understand the idea that hard work in the gym produces great results. I am consistently wowed by athletes like Jen Navarro and Andrew Zwerner when I see them work out. They keep working hard, and they keep getting better.

I also think there’s something instinctive in the human psyche that always wants to find an easier way to get better. That’s true of top athletes and beginners as well.

That latter desire can be a great asset for someone that needs to tighten up nutrition, sleep more, work on mobility, or get more experienced in competition. But it can also be a terrible burden for someone who thinks they can avoid hard work.

Whether you are a top athlete or a new athlete, your results will primarily be from showing up and working hard. -Brian PCF

Tuesday 111227

You can think of nutrition a lot like fixing your car. You can go totally DIY and really get into it by reading up, buying the right tools, and doing a lot of trial and error. You’ll mess up a good amount and it’ll take a larger time commitment, but you’ll also learn a lot in the process.

You can get instruction on how to fix your car (like the Paleo Challenge). We’ll equip you with all the basics of nutrition and be there to provide feedback on how the fixes you’ve implemented have worked and what you need to continue to tweak. Also, learning with a group is a huge benefit.

You can also just get somebody to fix your car for you, and that’s where 1:1 Nutritional Counseling comes in. This option focuses on fixing the exact issues you have with an experienced and knowledgeable mechanic. -Brian PCF

Wednesday 111228

I was listening to a recent Robb Wolf podcast where he was answering a question about primal/paleo lifestyle and relating it to his stint on the reality show “I, Caveman”. The question was a from a listener who wanted to do a kind of caveman trip into the woods, just take the bare necessities and then hunt and gather food, water, shelter, etc.

Robb’s big point was that a) you really need to respect what nature can do to you, and b) every little bit of technological innovation that you will allow yourself will make the process easier.

These points actually got me thinking about training. When we tell athletes to scale, what we’re really saying is: respect nature. Meaning, you’re only able to do so much – and if you do more than that, Nature in the form of what Mark Rippetoe calls “Mean Old Mr. Gravity” is going to fuck you up.

Survival experts can go into the wilderness with a pocket knife and some matches and survive because they know what to expect, they know their limitations and they know how to get help if they need it.

If you are new to Crossfit, don’t convince yourself you’re invincible. Respect nature, learn what you can and can’t do, ask for help and always have a good factor of safety in whatever you try. -Brian PCF

Thursday 111229

“The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.” -Chuck Close [H/T Bryan G.]

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit.” -Ira Glass

Your “taste” is driving you to look/feel/perform bette. If your fitness is not where you want it to be, you will improve your product (you) by coming in day-in and day-out and practicing being better. It’s a long process and it’s not easy.

If somebody is trying to sell you easy fitness, challenge them to a burpee contest. If (when) you win, tell them about our free class on Sundays. -Brian PCF

Monday 120109
Crossfit is much like investing. You need to contribute capital, meaning you need to put in time. But you also need to be wise in your investments.

If you’re a new athlete, you need to invest with minimal risk: fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals. No intensity without consistency.

For the intermediate athlete, you should accept some risk and step out of your comfort zone occasionally, but your portfolio should still be mostly rock solid long term investments.

For the high level athlete, you should push out of your comfort zone regularly. You’ll have the hindsight of years of investing that will kick in if you’re really doing something stupid, but if you’re not a little scared of your workouts, you’re probably not pushing the limit far enough.

And since we’re on the subject, buy gold. -Brian PCF

There is no difference between a WODaholic and a Non-WODaholic. They are both still addicted, it’s just that one actually shows up.

Today we explore ways to set yourself back on track and #justshowup with a new 12 Step Program.

Why settle for your basic shitty Paleo Challenge run by some hack. Coming soon from Brian PCF: MindFuck Challenge. You’re benchmarks are:

• How scared are you about not showing up? Not enough! We will send former Russian Spetsnaz to your house, kidnap you, claim to be Chechen’s, drive you around in circles for miles (you live 7 minutes from the gym, it’s not dramatic if they take you straight there), and tape your hands to a fucking barbell.
• We will break into your home, and force you to watch every episode of Mad Men and whenever anyone pours a drink or lights a cigarette we will pepper spray you in the fucking face. If you don’t have the DVD’s, don’t worry, we’ll get them from your roomate, who at least has Season 2.
• And in extreme situations: indefinite detention, enhanced cheese-deprivation techniques, and subliminal word association (bread=yucky poopy), in order to scare the living shit out of you.

The Brian PCF 12 Step Mindfuck Non-WODaholic Program (thanks AA):

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol not showing up — that our lives had become unmanageable really busy because my job sucks and TV and Clarendon are awesome.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves our newly rehired and somewhat passable, when sober, coach Brian PCF and the Crossfit Community could restore us to our sanity previous pant/dress size and modest feeling of fucking eliteness.

3. Made a decision to turn our will credit card number and our lives five hours per week over to the care of God said passably competent coach as we understood Him even though we don’t understand most of his strange blog posts.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves frantic search for old clothes because my “three months of Crossfit” clothes don’t fit anymore.

5. Admitted to God our coach, to ourselves, and to another human being a random stranger at Spider Kelly’s during happy hour the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. We are entirely ready to have God our somewhat passable coach and the Crossfit Community remove all these defects of character make us walk around like we just had an appointment with the angriest proctologist on earth for at least the first two weeks back.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings for our old membership rate.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed non-paleo foods we ate at the office Christmas Party, and became willing to make amends to them all at least try Paleo-brownies versus the real thing.

9. Made direct amends deposit and a long term contract my preferred payment option to such people Crossfit gyms wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others jeopardize my paying for my share of yacht week at Lake Havasu, which is totally rad.

10. Continued to take personal inventory thrash myself mentally and when we were wrong done promptly admitted it started drinking mojito’s at home, alone.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation frequent posts with exclamation points on the comments section rather than showing up to improve our conscious contact with God my mostly passable coach and the Crossfit Community as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out that some stupid workout with [insert: Squats/Not Squats/Box Jumps/Pullups/Pushups/Running/Not Running/Rowing/Not Rowing/Double Unders/etc] wouldn’t come up on the day I swore I’d come back, but if it did I’d have the power to carry that out, or at least not get caught shaving reps off the last round.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening a simultaneous shitting/puking episode in the one bathroom at the gym as the next class is showing up and them totally hearing/smelling this as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics non-Crossfitting co-workers, friends, and family, and to practice these principles in all our affairs so they know what a fucking badass I am, or at least will be if I can stick with it this time.

The Specific Generalized Template seems to be doing ok. Did Power Clean/Split Jerk 4x1x225 and Back Squat 3x5x300 yesterday.

First off, big ups to our Cold War Teams, they did great this weekend.

Tuesday 111129

A quick note about consistency and goals: I had an athlete lay out a plan for me via email that included 5-6 days of training per week. There was a lot of stuff that was outside of the normal WOD that he saw as a weakness and that he wanted to work on. I didn’t think that his extra stuff was too bad an idea, and I noticed that when I saw him in the gym, that he wasn’t progressing too much on his weights during strength sessions or METCONs.

We had some back and forth on what we thought was the best approach, then randomly I looked at the number of times that he’s come to the gym in the last six months. He had averaged 1.8 visits per week.

Lesson is: Master the basics before you throw them out. The basics in this case means: show up. That will fix pretty much every issue that you are going to have. -Brian PCF

This one started a spirited discussion on the blog, check it out here.
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Wednesday 111130

I try to get every athlete who has just graduated Foundations to understand this analogy:

Foundations is like listening to Spanish on tape. It’s confusing at first, but not too hard to get the basics. After several hours of this, you think: “hey, I’m getting this!”

When you start attending Workout of the Day Classes, that’s like being dropped into a dive bar in Jaurez, Mexico, at midnight on a Saturday. Your first reaction is “Holy Shit, is this guy talking to me going to stab me or is he asking me what time it is?”

Like language, immersion is the key. Give WODs about six weeks and you’ll understand movements, terms, logistics, and how to get in and out without getting shot. -Brian PCF
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Proper nutrition is the single most important thing you can do for your health and fitness. Seriously, you can stop working out, quit the gym, eat super clean, and be generally healthy.

You’ll be much better off adding functional movements (aka movements the body is designed to do) with some degree of intensity, but if you just eat clean, you’re going to be doing great.

Don’t look at your nutrition and exercise as two sides of a scale. You don’t get to eat grilled cheese sandwiches in the morning, workout at night and get “balanced”. Eat clean, work hard in the gym. -Brian PCF

Tuesday 111122

Are you ready for the Crossfit Games Open? The Open starts 23 February and runs for five weeks, ending March 25.

Again and again we see the folks that compete make huge gains in their fitness. It’s almost like cheating, because you’re going to get better faster than the folks that are putting the same amount of effort in the gym.

We have several options for competitions coming up, to get notified about upcoming events and compete as part of the PCF Team, email aaron@potomaccrossfit.com. -Brian PCF
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Wednesday 111123

“The single biggest thing you can do to improve your fitness is attack your weaknesses head on.” -Greg Glassman

If your weakness is you don’t write down your loads/times/rounds, then freaking do it. -Brian PCF
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Thursday 111124

We harp on range of motion because it is both the simplest detector of mobility issues as well as the simplest fix. Can’t get to the bottom of the squat? Squat more. Can’t extend your arms during pullups, do more pullups with more extension.

We can and do get sexy with it by employing the wall stretch, bench stretch, pray for pain, lawyer stretch, etc. But we want you to be able to move a load (bodyweight or external) through an “effective” range of motion. That’s how you’re going to demonstrate and improve power output, and it’s also how you’re going to get more mobile.

This gets trickier with folks that have practiced with less than full ROM for extended periods of time, but it’s also pretty easy to fix in 95% of athletes. If you have an issue, just talk to a coach or post to comments. -Brian PCF

I enjoyed the discussion by Dr. John Berardi on the Crossfit Journal the other week. I don’t agree with his “calories in/calories out” model of nutrition, nor do I buy the original theory of somatypes that he uses as his model to explain diet and training, but I thought in a broad-brush stroke he explained carb/fat intake and body type pretty well.

It certainly gave me a better prospective on looking at athletes who lean towards endurance or weightlifting more predominantly and how his model would, in a very linear way, describe the same kind of trends we see with athletes at PCF.

Everyone wants to be “good” at something. So it’s pretty natural for a relatively skinny person to want to run and a relative (ahem) “unskinny” person to want to weightlift. Now Crossfit came along and everyone could (more or less) be “good” at it because nobody else was doing it. Crossfit was a great way to short circuit the predominant model of either being able to run for a really long time or (look like you could) lift heavy weights.

But unfortunately for me, really good athletes are joining Crossfit faster and faster. So while I will still lord my 36th place finish in the 2009 Crossfit Regionals over Chris Karas (39th at the 2010 Regionals), I still want to be “good” at something, which is why I tend to mainly lift weights and 2-3x/week do some running or METCONs.

But I still do Crossfit, as I truly believe that a therapeutic dose of high-intensity functional movement makes you a better athlete no matter what your specialty.

What do you think? Should we play to our strengths, our weaknesses or just do straight up Crossfit? -Brian PCF
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111115

Things to worry about after you have a 1000 pound Crossfit Total, a Sub 3:00 minute Fran, and a sub 35:00 min Murph:

• Should I wear Skins?
• Should I take the Progenex Whey Protein or L-Glutamine?
• Should I visualize my WODs before I do them?
• Should I limit my exposure to potentially estrogenizing plastics?

Things to worry about before then:

• Did I eat Paleo today?
• Did I sleep 8+ hours?
• Did I work hard without being stupid at the WOD today?
• Did I try to eliminate the things in my life that cause me stress?

What did I miss? -Brian PCF

There was some good discussion about this in the comments section as well, and had one question from an athlete about his attitude being the thing that holds him back the most. My response is from a blog draft that I’ve had sitting around for a while and not sure what direction to go with it:

@Lou – this is probably the hardest question to answer as a coach, bar none. I tried to discuss it on my “Life Coach or Just a Coach” post here:

http://brian.potomaccrossfit.com/uncategorized/life-coach-or-just-a-coach/

I think this varies a ton between each athlete. I feel like there are two spectrums here, on one end you have the “Power of Positive Thinking” people:

Greg Amundson – “Your thoughts will become your words. Your words will become your actions. Your actions will become your habits. Your habits will become your character. Your character will define your destiny.”

Eckhart Tolle – “The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it.”

Tony Robbins – “Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy. Human beings have the awesome ability to take any experience of their lives and create a meaning that disempowers them or one that can literally save their lives.”

On the other end you have (and I don’t know how to classify these in one group, but they share characteristics):

David Chang, Owner, Momofuku Restaurant – “I run off hate and anger, it’s fueled me for the longest fucking time.”

Captain Kirk – “I want my pain, I need my pain.”

Achilles – “Sing, O Muse, of the Rage of Achilles.”

So like I said, I think it’s going to vary a lot with athletes.

Anybody want to chime in on what keeps them moving forward?

I think there’s a ton to unwrap here. I’m certainly not a “power of positive thinking” type of person, but I don’t think I’m totally self-destructive either. It appears to me that a lot of folks can be “good” at what they do (sport, business, military success, etc.) by very linear thinking, setting and achieving goals, etc.

I’d love to dig in to this some more, especially with respect to art imitating life: Holmes and Cocaine, Maturin and everything, Thompson and everything.
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111116

I was talking to one of the top male athletes at PCF last week about how to move from consistently top five to consistently number one on the leaderboard.

This athlete is doing all the right things, but has only been training for about two years.

I told him that at the high ends of performance, it’s not necessarily two-a-days or scaling up, it’s certainly not supplementation or Skins. It’s simply doing the little things better than your competition. Whether it’s sports or combat or CrossFit, if you are paying attention and executing the fundamentals consistently better than your opponent, you will win more games/battles/WODs than you lose. -Brian PCF

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From PCF 111110:

I had a good question the other day from an athlete: When should I go into the pain cave?

My answer is always “never do something today that will keep you from training tomorrow.” I feel that keeps people from flipping on their “stupid switch” and risking injury to get an Rxd next to their name.

Also realize, this was a dude. Dudes tend to want to push weights a little heavier than they should, and many women tend to go to light. Make a note when you make your scaling selections and as always, ask a coach.
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Just want to expand on this by referencing one of my old posts on the difference between a “therapeutic dose of functional movement”, training for the elite athlete, and what I colloquially call “fucking elite” training.

If you are generally moving your bodyweight and external objects through basic functional movements with some level of intensity, you’re getting fitter.

If you are doing this safely, consistently, and improving the intensity (both in terms of load and time) by both training and proper rest, then you are closing in on “elite” levels of training.

If you eat like shit, don’t sleep, have a ton of stress in your life, booze it up on a Friday and come in for your once a week WOD on Saturday and slap the Rxd weights on the bar – you’re probably going to fuck yourself up pretty bad.

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For my other moderately useful stuff and Aaron and Erika’s actually useful stuff, check out our daily dose at Potomac and Patriot.

For competent advice only (rather than the mostly drunken ramblings above) you can also follow PCF coaches blogs here: Aaron, Erika, Liz, and Jon.