Measuring Improvement – Workouts for the Week of 7/19/09
24 Jul
I had an interesting conversation with a student in my class this evening, so much so that I decided to take the long way home on my motorcycle and reflect on it (a dangerous thing on a motorcycle!).
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.
