My initial first-hand exposure to grappling came during a seminar at my kung-fu school years ago. We learned only a few basic things such as guard, a takedown, and a few guard sweeps, but I really enjoyed what I learned. I didn’t pursue it further for reasons that are again, beyond the purview of this blog. Over the years I picked up some knowledge here and there but never did it seriously. I always meant to take classes, but always found excuses and could never find the time. This summer, I finally decided to bite the bullet and pursue it more seriously by taking classes.

Fast forward 3 months and I’m hooked! I have always loved learning new things, and grappling is completely unlike anything I’ve learned before. The movements are completely different as are the physical and mental skills needed. The knowledge is inherently practical; either what you are doing is effective or it is ineffective. There can therefore be no theorizing or pontificating about what works or what doesn’t, what you would do in this situation or that. There is absolutely no armchair quarterbacking, and no room for “this is how I do it”, unless it works, that is.

Much of Jiu-Jitsu involves application of technique with partners in live sparring situations. This allows you to receive instant feedback as to the efficacy of what you’re doing. For instance, something you learned and performed perfectly in a drill might not occur to you at all in a live sparring session, or it might not work well or at all because of the countless positions and variations involved. This causes you to work much harder and to need to know your technique VERY well in order to be effective. In other words, you get instant feedback about whether you’re good, or you know if you’re full of shit.

What this means is that there is a distinct lack of frauds. I’m sure that we have all seen people who talk the talk very well about their abilities and training methods, yet when the time comes to DO it, they aren’t there, or offer up excuses. If you claim to have certain abilities and you do not, this is exposed either through competition, or by a refusal to push some chips out onto the table and test yourself. From this perspective, Jiu-Jitsu is much like Crossfit, a direct test of acquired capabilities with objective, measurable results.

This focus on quality and superiority of technique does mean that some of the “Art” gets lost in translation, but I am determined to translate some of the beauty and grace I gained in my Kung-Fu to the movements in Jiu-Jitsu.

It’s hard to say why I enjoy Jiu-Jitsu so much. Maybe because it’s so incredibly unlike anything I’ve done before. At some point, I ceased to grow as a person from learning a new kick or a new punch or a new Kata, things that predominately featured in many of the martial arts I have taken in my life. I enjoy feeling like a beginner every day I go to class, like there is a bottomless well of knowledge and technique to draw from. Like a game of Go, there are infinite permutations of positions and techniques and counters. It is a dynamic art.

The analog to Jiu-Jitsu “rolling” in traditional martial arts is sparring. The main difference is that the techniques while live sparring in Jiu-Jitsu are the same ones utilized in class/drills. To contrast with this, unless a class is very disciplined in practice and sparring sessions, the transfer of the art’s material used in drills and class (Katas, etc) is generally subservient to more basic techniques such as kicks and punches.

The “Kata” does not really have an analog in Jiu-Jitsu, unless a school has developed a series of practical partner drills that are taught to every student (I actually feel this is a pretty good idea to internalize mechanics and technique. Indeed, many of the sweeps and goard passes naturally flow into other techniques that form continuous loops!). The fun, prearranged movements of katas are superb at developing balance, speed, cardio, and flexibility. I believe that my experience with this beautiful art form has helped me learn the Jiu-Jitsu techniques more quickly than otherwise, as well as given me good balance and stamina during the sparring.

Tournaments are a big part of Jiu-Jitsu; They are vital because they put you in situations that involve the unknown and unknowable, that is, the skills of a person you may have never met from a place you may have never been to. Developing skills in isolation is useful, and can lead to interesting evolutionary offshoots in thought and technique, but it can also lead to dogmatism and a perverted perspective of skill and ability. It’s sort of like your immune system; The more you expose it to different environments and pathogens during development, the stronger it ends up being in the long run. Similarly, Going to tournaments supplies instant feedback about your ability, strengths, and weaknesses and allows you to address them, making you a far better grappler and martial artist in the long run.

Encouraged by my instructors, I signed up for and went to my first tournament this past Sunday, the 6th. It was a very instructive, humbling, and encouraging experience on many levels, and I’m still digesting the meaning of everything that happened. I’m always happy when I’m given the opportunity to rethink my preconceived notions, or have the chance to reset my thinking into a mode more congruent with reality. That is what tournaments really are, a big test followed by a big reality check. At least that’s what it was for me. In short, I thought I would do much better than I did.

I won’t lie – My assumption going in was that my 20 years of experience in martial arts, as well as my Crossfit training would give me a leg up on some of the other competitors. In some ways it was true, and in others it would prove to be pretty humorously false!

I could say stuff about how allergies hit me that morning, or that I wasn’t used to workout that that early in the morning, but those sound like excuses. Let’s face it, I was nervous as hell! I had no idea what to expect or how well I would do, but I was putting myself under a lot of pressure. Added to that, I discovered that few people had actually signed up for the ‘Novice’ (< 1 year experience) division. This means that they combined all the weight classes, and I was by far the lightest guy there (probably by 10-15lbs at least). Whoops! Things were about to get interesting.

My first match was against a guy who was at least as wide as I am tall, and extremely strong and muscular. In what was going to be a continuing trend for the day, he took me down (I was able to fend him off for a while though!). Although I forget how, I was able to reverse him and obtain the mount about halfway through the match, where I remained until time expired. I tried a few things, but frankly, that guy was so strong that if he didn’t want to be moved, he wasn’t going to be moved. I won on points, and was very happy, my first Jiu-Jitsu match ever ended up in victory! A pretty good start!

From then on, my opponents got more skilled, and I got more tired. As I was entered in two different divisions, I was being called from mat to mat without too much of a break. My

*ack* *gag* *coff*

second match started much like the first, getting taken down after fending him off for a while. I also managed to reverse him while he was improving position and take his back! Unfortunately, fatigue set in, and I hadn’t practiced what to do in that situation. It was just a matter of time. My opponent calmly did the right things, and a quick reversal of fortunes resulted in the picture over to the left, of me getting the daylights choked out of me. Good times!

One thing I would like to note at this point is that every single one of my opponents was very very gracious, friendly and welcoming. I received a lot of positive compliments not only from my opponents, but from some of my opponents’ coaches, one of whom told me that I “definitely did not look like just a novice out there”. I take that as credit to my instructor and to my attitude towards training, and a sign that I’m going in the right direction. During my time at the tournament, I didn’t once run into bad attitudes or inflated egos.

My third match was against an absolutely huge, shredded dude who calmly picked me up like a small child, deposited me on the mat, and proceeded to, despite my fiercest protests to the contrary, crank my shoulder to hell and back. Tap tap tap and it was back to the drawing board.

I had two more matches after that, both of which resulted in victories for my opponents on points. I learned a great deal about what to do and what I should have done. My last match was actually against a two year veteran who also complimented me on my technique and performance. Those compliments from coaches and other competitors meant almost as much to me as victories would have. As a Kung-Fu instructor I several times saw great potential in beginners, and never hesitated to let them know. It felt good for positions to be reversed, and for me to know that I had potential.

I ended up with 4th place in Novice no-gi, and 4th place in over 30 no-gi (out of 4 competitors, it should be noted!)

So, what did I do well?

• I didn’t beat myself up about losing as much as I usually do. I was humbled, but not crushed. This tells me that I have the right attitude.
• My defense was quite good, with bigger, stronger, more experienced competitors facing great difficulty in passing my guard and establishing position without me scrambling (I received the comment “fantastic grappling” from one of the coaches there)
• I handled myself incredibly well given my experience level in the art. This was a very good start for me!

The bad, and areas for improvement

• I was a little timid. I feel that had I pressed for takedowns more, I would have gotten one and been able to use my quickness to establish good positions. I was too passive and waited for the fight to come to me.
• I suffered a lot of “paralysis by analysis”. This tells me that I do not have the techniques and strategies internalized as well as I could. If the conscious mind enters the thought process, you have lost a huge advantage in speed and reaction time.
• There is no substitute for experience. I can’t take a pill or read a book or watch a video that gives me that. It is part of the journey, and one to which I greatly look forward.

Overall, I left the tournament with the same sense of excitement that I had my first Jiu-Jitsu class, one that I hadn’t felt sone starting Crossfit. That alone tells me that I’m on the right path. I will try and apply one of my favorite Dalai Lama quotes:

“When you lose, don’t lose the message”.

The announcement I made to my Friday class was somewhat spontaneous; I have always believed that the best way to make yourself accountable for a goal is to announce it publicly. I knew that if I announced nothing, that I wouldn’t have the heart to leave, and I would always be telling myself “next week” or “next month”, which would drift into “next year”, with the underlying problems never getting better.

I really do have the bedside manner of an iceberg. I made a very short, blunt, unambiguous statement about it near the end of my class; as I said, it was more to solidify it in my mind than anything else. I regret now not making a statement that was more sensitive and caring, one that communicated how I really felt about the class I taught for going-on-ten years, and the people who have meant so much to me over my 14-year career in Kung-Fu. Part of the purpose of this post is to rectify that.

It was very difficult for me to leave a place where basically grew up, from the ages of 16-30, leaving people who helped define who I am as an adult, and something that was for me a way of life at least as much as it was a martial art. Very difficult indeed. But that didn’t make it any less of a right decision.

Besides the discipline, material, katas, and sparring, the thing that added the most to my life was teaching. Learning how to communicate ideas and physical movements to people of all ages and fitness levels has been invaluable to me. It taught me patience, communication skills, and it honed my own material to a razor’s edge (it really is true that you don’t know much about a particular thing until you’ve tried to teach it!) Seeing the light bulb go off above a students head as they made a breakthrough or figured out a difficult physical problem never got old, no matter how many times I saw it. It was the joy I received through that process that ignited in me the passion for helping others become healthier, and started me on the road to finding the best ways to do that. Ultimately, if I managed to influence a student positively even a fraction as much as teaching them influenced me, I would consider myself a success.

I think that if you asked anyone, they would tell you that my real passion was the Friday conditioning class that I ran from 2000 to just last month. Throughout the years I guided the evolution of the class from a potpourri of sparring, conditioning, and material, to a class focused on specific skill acquisition, to utilizing Crossfit-like protocols to turbocharge the fitness and sparring of the students. I am proud to say that I feel we worked out and sparred longer and harder than any other class in the school, and I am even more proud to say that I worked out with such fine people who put up with me for so long!

I will (and do!) miss all of my friends and colleagues, and if any of you are reading this, you really should know that I haven’t gone anywhere. I’m just an email or phone call away. I’m moving on to different and exciting things, but will always remember everyone fondly.

Finally, I am truly proud knowing that I touched people’s lives in a positive way though a vehicle about which I feel great passion. Really, what more can you ask for out of life?

As you can see, I have a brand new layout for the blog. The old one was too cluttered and “personal” looking. I like this one because it’s bright, clean, and professional. Who knows, I might even start blogging again. But, let’s not get ahead of ourselves!

Now to find a suitable logo. Not that this theme isn’t “Bueno” or anything…

We can beat the running analogy to death. I strongly believe that in all areas of life (I despise running, but since that was the analogy…) If we don’t learn new gaits or at least examine what we do or why we do it, we miss countless opportunities to learn new ways to do things, learn that some of the things we were doing were – at best – ineffective or – at worst – harmful

When we make this last strategy the one by which we life, we exist in a bubble of our own unjustified certainty in an ocean of knowledge, the pressure of outward ideas and research pressing in on us, causing us to press back with as much force, and in the process expending more energy than we would were we to merely open up and consider new ideas. This is called being willfully ignorant.

We should always try to be open minded and willing to consider new ideas, something completely different than being gullible and adopting every new idea that comes along. In fact, we owe it to ourselves to be that way. Even if we examine all these new gaits, weigh them, measure them, and find them wanting, we’ve still learned something, haven’t we? we’ve learned one or more ways not to gait. But what we haven’t learned is if our gait is the right one. That is why examination and growing is a constant, endless process. Not examining any new gaits means that we’ve not given ourselves a chance to get better.

As I’ve shown above, people DO learn new gaits and benefit from them. What are we to think of people who scoff at those who adopt new gaits, and blithely continue along with their old ones, even in the face of conflicting evidence? In many spheres of life, we call these people irrational, stubborn.

I’m not trying to say that practicing things that aren’t brand new is wrong, I feel the exact opposite (however, I DO believe that one reaches a point of diminishing returns from concentrating on old skills) My point is that it is misguided to demonize someone’s enthusiasm and desire to get better, misguided to discourage people from their search for effective and efficient ways to do so, and insulting to hold the opposite attitude as a virtue.

So you decided to do something completely new, and you made the decision to do it right! You crossed your t’s and dotted your lower-case j’s. You fulfilled due diligence, did  your internet research and got the best instructor and purchased top-dollar, top-quality equipment. Thanks to your winning strategy, the next few months of your life are going to be a dizzying spiral upwards into the stratosphere, marked by continual, measurable improvements in skill, right? Right?

Well, not necessarily.

Instructors are guides. We facilitate learning (and hopefully eventual mastery) of a subject by guiding you along a path invariably lined with pitfalls, dead-ends, false finishes, and false prophets. You see, we’ve fallen in those pits, followed those dead-end paths and false prophets, and arrogantly cried out “I’m finally finished” only to find out how humiliatingly wrong we were. We’ve done it all so you don’t have to. As instructors, we genuinely want you to be better than we are, and we’re there for you, to show you what to do and how to do it. After all, as we learned from the G.I. Joe cartoon, knowing is half the battle. However, the other part is far more important, and that is the doing.

Knowing at an intellectual, conceptual level what to do and what not to do, knowing the movements, the equipment and the vocabulary, all of that is well and good, but it is not the same as that knowledge being a part of who you are, as merely having that knowledge is not the same as experiencing its truth. The finger that points to the moon, as the old saying goes, is not the moon, and the map of the territory should not be confused with the territory itself. All of the accumulated knowledge from the classes we take and the research we do, it is merely the map to where we are going, and it is worthless if we do not use it to get there.

That requires work.

We instructors cannot perform that vital part of learning for our students. It is up to them to do the same move tens, hundreds, or thousands of times to make it second nature. It is up to them to find within themselves the hunger for improvement, the vision to see their potential, and the strength and determination to actualize it. Learning properly is a hard task, it’s not always fun (for an excellent treatment of this subject, see the amazing book “Talent is Overrated“) and it is up to each individual student to find their own motivation and dedication they’re willing to put forth to improve.

There is an old saw about writing that says that the author should open up a vein and bleed on the page. I think that is true about teaching as well. In order to be a successful instructor, we must convey our passion and love for the subject we’re teaching. In return, the most successful students must display that passion and love as well, and we instructors appreciate most those who unabashedly display that love openly. Detachment and cynicism have no place in the classroom, the gym, or the kwoon, in either student or instructor.

In the long run, we get out of anything exactly what we put into it. In martial arts, Crossfit, or anything, there are varying levels of skill, physical ability, sophistication, dedication, enthusiasm, drive involved for everybody. We have to expect a Gaussian distribution for each of those attributes for each student we teach. We instructors cannot control any of those things. All we can control is our own output, our manifestation of our enthusiasm for our art.

We instructors want nothing more than for the students to succeed, but the bulk of the battle is up to the individual student. I love nothing more than to teach a student who has boundless enthusiasm for learning, who constantly bugs me for details on this or that, or my view on how to get better. It’s running into these firebreathers that rewards an instructor the most. At the same time though, we have to be respectful of the people who may not desire perfection in this one particular thing that we do. Perhaps they have other true passions, about which they are the master and we are the neophyte. A different level of dedication on their part doesn’t make them bad, lazy, untalented; it makes them differently motivated, and we have to accommodate and respect that.

We absolutely cannot judge anyone for a perceived lack of effort, even if we know that they are capable of more than they are displaying. Instead, we have to look at it at worst as a problem to be solved. Part of our jobs as instructors is to help our students realize and actualize their potential. We cannot do that from a mental and emotional place of negativity.

When the student is ready, the teacher will appear, but we teachers also have to be ready.

5 Rounds for Time:

• 50 Walking Lunges while holding a dumbbell (45lb RX)
• 30 Dumbbell Swings with the same dumbbell

Apparently the ‘elite’ version of this workout was with the dumbbell held in one hand with the arm extended overhead. That lasted about one round for me, then I switched to both arms holding it overhead, then to both arms propping it up at my chest. I did not finish this workout, but I don’t think I should have scaled it from RX. I actually do think it was within my capacity to finish, I just gave up too early and took too many breaks.

I finished 3 full rounds, plus all the lunges and 20 swings of the 4th. This was a beast.

Tuesday

A mini-workout before the pre-test at my Kung-Fu school

• 5-rep bench-press sets starting at 45lb and ending at 185lb. This is definitely a weakness of mine. My shoulders are still feeling the pinch of previous injury.
• 5-rep deadlift sets starting at 135 and ending at 285. The bar at my school has poor knurling and started to slip out of my hands. That’s an excuse. What really happened was my grip wore out.

Wednesday

An absolutely amazing workout. This WOD worked opposing sets of muscles, and added in a rest period. The effect of this one me was such that I could enter each round refreshed and ready to give my best! I felt like I broke past a barrier today; I didn’t give up as easy as I usually do, and I pressed myself harder.

Five Rounds for Reps:

• One minute pull-ups
• One minute squat cleans @135lb
• One minute rest

My score was 116 RX, which was one of the better scores posted that day! I felt strong and solid on all but the final two sets of squat cleans. Next time I need to bust out more reps! My rep breakdown between Pullups/Squat cleans was 24/7, 15/6, 16/5, 17/5

Thursday

And now for something completely different.

The first half of the week we seemed to work on strength and explosiveness. So why not throw in a metabolic WOD to end the week?

Five Rounds for Time:

• 500m Row
• 400m Run

I’m glad to expose and work on my weaknesses, namely endurance/cardio-type exercises. JDP put a 25-minute cut off on the workout, something I was determined to make. My time was 23:55, which was not as fast as I would have liked, but better than I expected! I stopped to rest only rarely, and I actually think I gave it everything I had to bring it home and finish in time!

It’s been a busy and stressful few weeks for me, yet I have largely been able to continue my diet and workout routine, and I’m healthier, more productive, and stronger/faster/more flexible than ever.  This might not sound like a big deal, but it’s Crossfit and the desire to constantly improve that has given me the mental strength to overcome situations that might have broken me just a few short years ago.

I’m about to go into a period of time that’s going to be very difficult for me emotionally, and it will be the things like Crossfit, Kung-Fu, and the healthy, nurturing way of life that I’ve chosen for myself will form the bedrock of my life while it changes.

Monday (08/03)

For a month or two after I started Crossfit, on my drive from my house to the Gym, I would get a knot in the pit of my stomach. It was a foreboding feeling, like I was heading into a trap. I believe that it was my body’s homeostatic system attempting to dissuade me from doing such foolish things as putting myself under extreme discomfort in new and awful ways, or exceeding my limitations, or putting myself “out there”, or preparing to fail. It was my ego’s attempt at self preservation before it got crushed time and time again in my quest to remake myself.

I remember one workout where I was hit with a particularly acute bout of this feeling. I remember standing on the box, preparing for the start of the workout, listening to JDP count down from three to one, and literally thinking to myself :

“Oh my god, this is really happening. This is fucking brutal, but I’m already standing here and it’s too late to do anything about it. I’m really going to do this.“

Well, times have changed. Now I look forward to almost every workout with a sense of perverse glee and I anticipate competing against the lesser part of me that urges me to rest (and who still too often wins). However, there are still some workouts the fill me with that same sense of dread, and those are the monthly benchmarks.

It’s not so much that Crossfit Central’s monthly benchmarks (Total, Angie, and Fight Gone Bad) are incredibly difficult (well, Angie and FGB are true beasts. I find Total enjoyable as hell), it’s that the first class of the month is time to prove myself, to apply what I’ve learned and apply the improvements I’ve made to myself over the month. And sometimes it’s scary having no one but myself to hold accountable for my improvement.

This month’s benchmark was one of my favorite workouts: Fight Gone Bad:

Three Rounds:

• 1:00 Row
• 1:00 Wall Ball
• 1:00 Sumo Deadlift High Pull
• 1:00 Box Jump
• 1:00 Push-Press

The score is the number of calories burned on the rower plus the number of completed reps on the other four exercises. My very first Fight Gone Bad turned out very well, with a score of 259 over the three rounds (as RX!). The past few times I’ve done FGB, it was two rounds, due to not having enough time or equipment, as well as schedule changes at the gym. Don’t worry though, just go more intense.

Long story short, my score was 239 over two rounds. This was the first big milestone for me this week, and it puts me on pace for a score well over 300 for the fundraiser in September! More impressive to me was almost attaining my 3 round total in two rounds. Now THAT’S improvement! What made me prouder was the fact that it was the best score made that day up to my class time. Anyone wanna bet on a 300+ two rounder for me next time?

Wednesday (08/05)

Ah, now I remember why I didn’t blog this week in depth; it was the week that crushed me to dust with my worst exercises and skills, and the followed up those brutal workouts with brutal followups.

Overhead squats are probably my worst skill, and workouts ladders (where the reps go down but the exercises stay the same) probably exhaust me more than anything else. How about a WOD that combines them both?

For Time:

• 10 Overhead squats: 95lb, 30 Knees-to-elbows
• 8, 24
• 6, 18
• 4, 12
• 2, 6

I am not particularly good at high volume output of things like K2E or Pull-ups, and I’m bad at Overhead Squats. At 95lb I didn’t get anywhere near the RX weight of 135 on the squats, and ripped my hands terribly on the K2E. This was not a good day for me! I finished in 11:40 which was ahead of most of the field, but not exactly elite. However, it was the heaviest sustained series of overhead squats that I’ve done (my previous best was 65!) Therefore, my second big milestone of the week!

As if that workout were not hard enough, the followup sucked out of me any energy I had left: an 800m run followed by three sets of Burpee Broad Jump Relays (up and down the gym floor).

Thursday (08/06)

The Texas Hand Skin Massacre continues with a pullup-centric slice o’ hell:

The clock continuously runs; each minute do:

• ‘n’ pullups during minute ‘n’.
• On pullup failure, do ‘n’ kettlebell squats during minute ‘n’.

I got to n = 11. The heart and body were willing, but the hands said “fuck no”. Starting at the 12th minute I did kettlebell squats and gassed on minutes 19 and 20, completing minute 18. I still owe JDP 39 kettlebell squats.

I feel that had my hands not ripped, I could have gotten to round 15. I felt strong, but I was bleeding like a stuck pig on the bars. Nasty.

Of course there was a followup; It was more bodyweight relays:

• 3x Rabbit relay
• 3x Spider relay

My martial arts and kata training came through for me again; The rabbit relays were trivially easy for me. It seems that on at least two or three of Crossfits 10 physical skills, I get high marks (agility, coordination, flexibility).

Monday (08/10)

Another killer. The volume has been relatively low lately but the weight has been high.

5 Rounds for Time:

• 21 KB Swings @ 24kg (32kg RX)
• 14 Burpees
• 7 Back Squats @ 155lb

My time: 18:42, one of the better finishers that day (almost no one did it as RX. It seems that given my time and the 20-minute cutoff, 24kg was just right for where I’m at. I’m impatient to move on, but smart enough to avoid injury. I have my whole life to do this).

Wednesday (08/12)

A truly horrendous WOD.

3 Rounds for Time:

• 10 Man Makers @ 45lb
• 500m Row

The order was originally inverted, but because we didn’t have enough rowers, some of us started on the Man Makers. This marks a personal record on weight for the Man Makers for me (for those of you playing at home, that’s three milestones set!)

18:45 RX (how I love typing “RX”!)

Thursday (08/13)

Deadlifts are my favorite movement. They just feel right and powerful and I love the big numbers I’m able to put up, yet today I just didn’t feel strong at all. The 225 I pulled felt more like 350, and I felt sluggish in general. Yet I showed up and persevered. When I saw the workout, I groaned inwardly; Muscle-ups are one area where I just don’t feel competent. I feel like a fish out of water, and like the muscles required to do them just don’t exist on my body. Meh! Well, I surprised myself…

For time:

• 25 Deadlifts @ 225lb
• 500m Row
• 15 Muscle-Ups
• 25 Deadlifts @ 225lb

My Time: 15:59 Almost-RX.

What does “Almost-RX” mean? Well, it means that on that day, I did more muscle-ups in a single WOD that I had cumulatively done previously in my 30 years of life. That is a huge milestone and I was thrilled to have done what I did, which was 10 real, genuine muscle-ups! I did 5 by scaling various ways (knees, jumping), but 10 muscle-ups was a huge achievement for me. I still have form work to do (such as locking out fully between reps, and doing some reps unbroken), but I am very happy with what I accomplished.

Friday (08/14)

As fellow Crossfitter and Kung-Fu instructor Cindy came to my class, I decided to make the workout Crossfit’s benchmark “Cindy”, which also happens to be one of my favorite workouts in general:

AMRAP 20 Minutes:

• 5 Pullups
• 10 Push-ups
• 15 Squats

A workout deceptive in its simplicity. and devastating in its effect! My record is 12 rounds with bar pull-ups, but all we have at the Kung-Fu school is the ability to hang rings for pullups, etc (more difficult!). I did 13 full rounds and one scaled round (jumping pull-ups). That’s yet another milestone set for this series of workouts! I am not sure what inspired me, but in spite of being tired and stressed, I’ve felt like a million bucks and ready to take myself on. What will tomorrow bring?

As a last note, we should always appreciate the special people who add color and meaning and beauty and happiness to our lives, and let them know how much they mean to us. We sometimes take them for granted, and when they depart, their absence is palpable.

A pure strength day. I need these the most, especially for my upper body. I am satisfied with almost all my lower-body movements except my squat. It’s time to meet some goals here!

• Shoulder Press 1-1-1-1-1
• Push-Press 3-3-3-3-3
• Push-Jerk 5-5-5-5-5

This was good for me. For some reason my shoulder is feeling awfully good lately, so I decided to cautiously step on the accelerator today. My reward was a 20lb PRs in the shoulder press!I am sure that the other two movements would have resulted in PRs as well, but I don’t think I have ever done them as part of a weight tracking workout. I’d have to say that I’ve probably never push-jerked more than 135, so I’ll consider that one a hefty PR as well!

• Shoulder Press: 85-115-125-135-140 (fail) (up from 115)
• Push-Press: 115-125-130-135-140
• Push-Jerk: 130-135-140 (ran out of time at 3 sets)

This workout again revealed a weakness of mine. At this point I would like to have at least a 145 shoulder press and 155 push jerk. At least now I know where I stand in relation to those goals, and at least I’m getting stronger.

Wednesday

I thought I was safe, since my birthday had actually been on Tuesday, not a workout day for me. However, JDP let my birthday workout age like fine wine, albeit only for one day. I was actually looking forward to the day’s workout (a beastly combo of pull-ups and C2 Rowing), but instead to celebrate my birthday we did the ‘30 Candles’ workout. For Time:

• 30 Deadlifts (135lb)
• 30 Burpees
• 30 Front Squats (135lb) (PR)
• 30 Pull-ups
• 30 Push-Jerk (135lb)
• 30 Calories on C2 Rower

I finished in 18:27. This was a brutal fucking workout, since two of those three lifts (deadlifts are my bread and butter) are two of my worst movements. The front squat puts the bar square on the acrimons that I separated (shoulder is doing better every week!), and the push-jerks were the heaviest I’ve done in a sustained matter (and exposed my upper body weakness yet again). I will go ahead and call the 135lb front squat a personal best, even though I’m pretty sure I’ve done heavier, and could do heavier. This is just my ‘official’ Personal Record.

All in all I pushed myself very hard on this workout, maybe because it was custom made for me. However, I have noticed that I am able to more comfortably push myself to my limits on a daily/weekly basis. That’s what tracking workouts has done for me. Every workout I get a sense of satisfaction from increasing what I do a little bit more, and also a sense of having been able to do more. It presses me onwards.

Thursday

A workout that seemed to hone in on several of my weaknesses. For Time:

• 800m Run
• 10-8-6-4-2 of:
  • Dumbbell Squat Clean (45lb)
  • Dead-Hang Pull-up
• 800m Run

My time was 16:24 as RX. The best time in my class (and I believe almost the best of the day) was of a very well-balanced athlete who got 13:00 straight.

As I’ve said other places, I consider my overall upper body strength to not match that of my lower body. It makes sense; 20 years of martial arts has trained my flexibility, static strength, and dynamic strength (if not absolute strength) of my legs through katas, stances, kicks, movement, etc, while doing not-too-much for the strength of my upper body. Of course since starting Crossfit, I’m far, far stronger in every way, but my upper body is still lagging behind somewhat.

The squat cleans were not very hard at all (I still give up too easily though!), but I found myself doing the pull-ups in 2 rep sets, and even had a few incomplete reps. Seeing as I can do 26+ kipping pull-ups in a row, it is easy to see that it’s the lower body movement and impetus that’s propelling the success of that endeavor! The secret then: do more strict pull-ups!

To add to the thoughts of a previous post: That’s another reason that timing one’s workouts is useful. It lets you know (with coarse granularity) what you need work at, and that really is the interesting thing about all these workouts. Depending on the skills and movements involved, one person can get the best time on one day, and fall far behind the pack on the next.

Friday

No class on Friday; I am attending a good friend’s wedding!

“High/short calves are excellent for jumping and sprinting but have little potential for growth, they are simply too short.  [bodybuilders] who have a short/high gastroc with a long tendon will make fantastic jumpers and sprinters; but great calves they will never have“

Sorry, I suppose I am under the impression that calves which are useful for something like jumping and/or sprinting are, by definition, great. I realize he was probably referring to the vernacular of the members of an athletic subculture which truly puzzles me (alongside marathon runners and curlers), but… c’mon.

A newsletter by my martial arts instructor once described my Friday conditioning class as being for the “edge-seeking” students. Obviously took it as a serious compliment, as I feel that everyone should be seeking the edge of their current abilities, a necessary step if one is to leap past them! The problem for me for many years was finding out exactly how to find where one’s “edge” is.

I have taken a page from the Crossfit manual and for the past six months or so, directed my students to write down their times (on set goal workouts) or number of sets (on time goal workouts). My rationale for doing so was the same as for Crossfit itself; For the movements that we perform in conditioning class, we are moving a certain amount of weight, a certain distance, a certain amount of times, over a certain period of time. Doing this, we can obtain an objective measure of our power output over time (and get actual, albeit not 100% precise horsepower calculations if we take the proper measurements!)

Obviously, such a scheme is useful in the light of finding one’s edge; If one performs at their peak effort, and completes workout X in 10 minutes, and then three months later, performs the same workout in 8 minutes, then their ability to generate and output power over time has increased, objectively (with other factors held the same) and presumably, their health probably has as well.

The student to whom I referred above had failed to write numbers on the board for their time, and it had seemed to be a recurring theme, so I inquired as to why. Obviously my place is not to bully someone into doing it, but it has been such an excellent tool for progressing myself (and the class) that I was genuinely curious as to why someone would not want to utilize it as well!

Aside from the purely personal reasons (it is hard to argue with “what works for some people doesn’t work for others”. Its definitely a discussion ender!) the most interesting objection raised was that the numbers involved are not truly objective, which is most definitely true; My Friday class is certainly not a double-blind placebo-controlled study! Obviously, “time taken to X sets” or “X sets done in Y minutes” are each only a single axes on the workouts to which they are relevant. What about:

• Diet
• Personal Crisis
• Time of day
• Amount of sleep

The single figure that I look for is a crude aggregate for total performance. However, what it does measure, it measures well: power output over time. It is simply not meant to encapsulate other things.

It is certainly true that power output over time can be influenced by some of the other factors that I mentioned above, but over time, such things become statistical anomalies, not statistical rules. I always stress that my students should not take a single number with any weight, as we are running a marathon, not a sprint. We are looking for gradual increases over time, not to navel gaze and obsess over each week’s individual number. Indeed, it is certainly a failing of mine that I have not yet emphasized this. Other students may be scratching their heads wondering “why do we do that?”.

As I said to the student, the number on the board represents performance at a certain time under certain conditions. The number is a reflection of that performance. A fixation on getting lower numbers (time taken) and higher numbers (sets done) is certainly harmful. The number comes after the fact; during the workout, we should be focused on the workout, the movements, on becoming a better athlete, a better martial artist, a better person. The number is a checkpoint along that path.

Even if we do concentrate on the number and lowering it, is that so bad? There are a multitude of ways to improve that number, and consistently improve others, if that is indeed your quest:

• Stop smoking
• Eat healthier food
• Work out smarter
• Experiment with new and exciting exercises
• Recover properly
• Work on efficiency of movement

The number is, in a crude way, a snapshot of how you are in a certain way at a certain point in time. While lowering the number might not be a noble goal in of itself, many of the steps one can take to better the number most certainly are noble! As Pascal (I believe?) said about his famous wager in favor of converting to Christianity, even if you’re wrong about god existing, the things you would do to become a better Christian would make you a better person in general, and is that so bad?

There is, of course a more sinister side to improving one’s number, one of the better points brought up by the student. It is certainly possible to view the time/sets number as a goal to be consistently bettered at any cost. This point of view puts the number as the goal, and completely misses the forest for the trees. Someone like this may very well consciously compromise the correctness of their technique and form, to get things done more quickly. This, in my mind merely results in a corruption of the way martial artists are supposed to be. In the short run, such a person would receive ephemeral ego gratification. In the long run, it leads to merely being a fraud.

The Pollyanna in me wants to say that things such as martial arts would tend to not attract the type of person with the tendency to do that. Indeed, if my class is any example, this is true. There are certainly people with less natural range of motion than others, but everyone I see works out as hard as they can and busts their ass. I’m proud of them all!

However, I am still careful to explain the ideal movement standards for the various workouts before we begin, that way people know what is expected from them: their best! And it might be another failing of mine that I haven’t stressed that more.

The above point has been one reason that I did not introduce katas into my conditioning program earlier: Movement standards for katas are fuzzy at best, and it is indeed easy to compromise correctness in order to get a better time. When combined with a workout with more “objective” movement standards, however, this problem is amortized into nothingness over time.

Ultimately, our discussion boiled down to me saying that time taken/sets done was the standard that I had chosen to measure student progress, and the student basically saying that it was an unsuitable progress rubric. Agree to disagree, but one thing that I want to stress is that it is vital that some methodology for improvement and progress must be utilized; records of some sort must be kept in order for someone to say that they have made progress.

To me it doesn’t matter if a student goes home and writes in a diary about how they felt they did. Indeed from a life quality standpoint that may be even better (it amuses me to compare my journals from a few years ago to my newer ones). However, that is completely subjective and something that I cannot easily keep track of. I can keep track of only the things that I can observe, like the amount of time it takes students to do exercises.

As Daniel Gilbert laid out in Stumbling on Happiness, We humans are very bad at accurately recalling the past. We are liable to talk about the “good old days” where we were miserable, or “the hardest conditioning class ever” which may be cake compared to what one does now. That is why it is impossible to progress meaningfully or consistently without keeping accurate records of one’s performance. Sets done/time taken is just one that is stupendously easy for me to implement class-wide with minimal fuss and equipment.

The student brought up a few more interesting points. The first one being that they stressed just showing up to class and doing the best that they could at that exact point in time. I am absolutely in favor of everyone showing up and doing the best that the can. In fact, as I have stated numerous times, that’s all anyone ever has the right to ask of you. However, I do believe that without some form of record keeping, you have no frame of reference for your current actions. You have no idea if your current best is better or worse than yesterdays or last weeks or last year’s best.

It is possible (I have seen it in others and lived it myself) to live your life as a reverse teleology, convinced that every year is worse than the last, that you are doomed to a meaningless existence. But as soon as you start writing things down, figuring it out, looking at where you’ve been compared to where you are and where you’re going, you see that things have gotten better. It’s also possible to get worse.

We have to have a context for the world in which we act. Every day we go to class or work is an opportunity to do a little bit better than you did last time. If you know you did your best last time, and you know what you did, how you did it, and how you felt, or even how much time you took, maybe your best can be a little bit better today. For conditioning, that’s what the all-powerful number actually is. It’s the context in which you expended effort, and it can be compared to previous contexts. It’s a powerful tool.

The second point was in bringing up something that I wrote last week regarding another student’s objection to the format change in class, saying that the old way of counted sets worked better. This was an interesting argument; One man’s meat is another man’s poison, and all that. I did not actually have much of a response to this argument at the time (damn you! I hate being caught flat-footed!) but it did not sit well with me anyhow. After some reflection I figured out that while I do believe that it is true that not everyone will react positively on a personality level to the same set of standards or stimuli (I wish I could communicate the derision that I get over enforcing movement standards in the first place! It is a sore spot to me) I do believe that the methods are empirically proven to work irrespective of the person.

Simply put, if you do the work and follow the methodology and make a concerted effort to improve, the improvements are ripe for the picking, even if something inside of you screams for you not to do it. Indeed, that is probably a sign that it’s what you need the most. Taken from my own experience, I had a literally petrifying fear of putting myself out there and seizing opportunities to improve myself (indeed, this amounted to self-sabotage in many cases). I read a paragraph while back (incorrectly, as it seems) attributed to a speech by Nelson Mandela:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.’ We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we subconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we’re liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Although an atheist, I agree with the spirit of what is written. We often put on a cynical face and dismiss things that would give us benefit for whatever reason. We would rather be ‘right’ than happy, it seems. Throughout my life, I learned that I could not trust my feelings of how to do things. They would inevitably steer me the wrong way, much like a pilot who has lost orientation, who believes he is guiding his aircraft correctly, but is instead steering it toward the ground. I had to learn to trust instruments instead, things I intellectually knew were accurate, but that my emotions and instincts screamed at me to ignore. Guess which were right?

To close, I want to put forth my feeling that those things which are measured and observed will improve, and those neglected will get worse. This stands for everything in my life I have tested it on, conditioning, driving, motorcycling, programming. Everything. So I pose the questions:

• If you do not believe the above (that observation facilitates improvement), what does facilitate improvement?
• What are valid ways to measure progress?
  • For an individual measuring him/herself
  • For an instructor observing students
• Should one even attempt to measure progress, or is it just too nebulous a term?
  • What if one defines exactly what one means by progress?
  • What are valid definitions for progress in the context of a conditioning program? The non-conditioning portion of a martial arts program?

All in all I’m always grateful when someone challenges my assumptions and makes me think about why I do things the way that I do them. I am not convinced that I do the best thing, and I haven’t and would never make that claim. I do make the claim that my methodology is effective, but I’m always ready to adopt another one that proves superior. Thanks for challenging me.

Now, the workouts:

Monday

For some reason, my shoulder was feeling better today. I decided to do this workout completely RX without scaling the HSPU. I did a good time, but could have gone better. I love deadlifts!!!!

“Diane”: 21-15-9 of:

• Deadlifts at 225lb
• Handstand Pushups

Done at 6:06 RX. I want to give a shoutout to Mike A who did this in a little over 3 minutes. He scaled the HSPU a bit but holy shit what an animal! I felt absolutely exhausted after this workout, in a good way (did I mention that I love deadlifts?), but like all short workouts, JDP had some followups. It was sprint work, that I seem to have blocked out of my memory it was so traumatic. I believe we went in three heats:

• 5 Burpees, 30m sprint, 30m sprint, 100m sprint, 5 burpees
• 30m sprint, 30m sprint, 5 burpees, 100m sprint, 5 burpees
• 5 burpees, 30m sprint, 30m sprint, 100m sprint, 5 burpees

Jesus, it looks even worse when I type it out. I sadly don’t remember my times, but I know that I was a little below a minute on the first heat, and a little above on the second two. My running gas tank is very very small. Room for improvement!

Wednesday

This was one of the hardest weeks in general I’ve ever enjoyed at Crossfit Central. I don’t know if it is me, or if the workouts were just targeted toward my weaknesses by chance, but I’ve felt absolutely drained every workout, yet filled with a sense of accomplishment as well. This was a workout that used a movement I’ve not done before, as well as a rep scheme I’ve not done before:

20-10 Reps:

• Burpee Box Jump
• Dumbbell Thruster @ 45lb

A Burpee box jump is a burpee, but you jump on a big ass box afterward. What kind of fucked up person thinks up this shit?? I actually made it a point of pride to do the burpee sets unbroken. The thrusters are what got me.

My time: 6:22 RX

Thursday

Holy shit. AMRAP 20 Minutes:

• 10 Kettlebell Snatch (each hand) at 16kg
• 10 Sprawl-to-Sumo-Deadlift-High-Pull
• 100m Run

It might have been the run. It might have been the CoG displacement, it might have been the alignment of the stars, but I almost ralphed again. This was seriously one of the most metabolically difficult workouts I’ve ever done I felt pushed to the breaking point immediately and it never stopped, but then again neither did I. I managed 7 rounds and 10+5 snatches. I did the snatch sets all unbroken, never switching arms. I didn’t rip, either, although I have a large blister on my hand.

Friday

Week two of my experiment. For reasons I detailed above, I decided on two workouts, one involving kata work. I am attempting to simulate the stress load found when students test by giving them a hard conditioning set first, then intermittently switching between a CoG displacement functional movement (CoG displacement figures heavily in katas)

For Time: 50-40-30-20-10

• Double-Under
• Sit-Up
• Push-Up

My time: 12 something. I expected faster, this was a VERY hard workout. Without the pushups, this is a Crossfit benchmark, one I could probably complete VERY quickly.

5 Rounds for Time:

• Kata x 2
• 10 Sprawl-to-Sumo-Deadlift-High-Pull

As I explained above, I want the students who are testing to have the opportunity to do their katas in an intense exhausting environment, and it would seem that I succeeded. I got positive reactions to this workout; Katas are an intellectual process which is one factor that has been missing from my class. I like how this is going but I am still not quite satisfied with my implementation. I let the students pick their own kata. I believe that part of the problem is the newness of the idea of integrating kata work with the other aspects of my Friday class. I really can’t wait to see how people start looking in a few months.