Push Press
5-5-5-5-5
Push press 5×5 is part of the Yearly Benchmark Series. Log your score!
Suppose that everything you needed or wanted to accomplish in a day (or week or month) had a finite total. In other words, you had a 5-gallon bucket from which you had to fit all of your work and life responsibilities as well as your hobbies, long term goals, personal relationships, obligations – everything.
With a finite total capacity for all of life’s demands and enjoyments, there has to be a give and take in each area so that it all fits in the bucket. For example, if you spend more time working, you inevitably have to pull time from another area – say, working out or cleaning your house.
Oftentimes when people want to improve an area of their life, they first think that they need a bigger bucket – a 10 gallon bucket for example. While growing your productivity and efficiency is a good gradual goal, too much too fast and it’s a recipe for failure, frustration, and total energy implosion. An overfilled bucket is not the answer.
Fitness training, and the industry’s history of more is better, leads individuals to believe that the space in their bucket allotted to fitness should always be increasing. We are made to believe that without a constant increase in the time we commit to fitness – we will stop improving, or even go into reverse. We’re here to tell you – that’s not the case. 
One of the elegant beauties of CrossFit is its efficiency paired with its proven immediate and long term results. Individuals who train consistently and with intensity, will benefit from the CrossFit method for their entire lifespan.
We have many athletes who are beautiful examples of this. They are busy professionals, parents, activists, and friends – they have committed five hours per week in their bucket to fitness – and they thrive. They look great, feel great, they’re happy, and they’re content with the role that fitness plays in their daily routine.
What’s their secret? They don’t waiver, is one. They commit to those weekly hours with intensity and conviction. They know that when they are not happy with their results over a given week or month, that they must evaluate the other areas of their bucket and how they are impacting their results in the gym. For example, they may have 5 hours a week to commit to food prep. If those five hours are decreased, then it affects our productivity and results in the gym. The rabbit hole is when one forgets this piece and turns to more as the remedy. This then turns into more total hours, an overflowing bucket, and lots of extra energy expenditure (i.e. stress).
The CrossFit method allows one to commit a reasonable amount of their bucket space to fitness, derive incredible and ongoing results, and move on with your day. This should be liberating. Knowing that you can walk into the gym, give it your all, and move on with your day allows you to commit more mental energy to the other areas of your life.
Do you know someone who is looking for their fitness sweet spot? Have you experienced this in your own fitness endeavors or other areas of your life?