REMINDERS: Sign-up for blood work retesting under the ROOTS header.  Lululemon Roots Night has been changed to include the dudes of the shop.  See you Friday from 6-8pm for drinks, mingling, and shopping.

Five rounds for time of:
Bear crawl 100 feet
Standing broad-jump, 100 feet
Do three Burpees after every five broad-jumps. If you’ve got a twenty pound vest or body armor, wear it.

Perception

Whether you’re training for life, a sport, or a competition, your state of mind plays a tremendous role in your perceived capability in a workout and that perception continuously hinders or advances us as athletes.  I had the fortunate experience of learning this first hand on Tuesday.

The coaches’ workout started off with a bang, meaning Ryan was doing his high school gym coach impression and Zac was yelling a lot.  Pumped for a session with the crew, we settled on the mainsite workout of the day – 5×1 overhead squat, 5×1 front squat, 5×1 back squat, increase the load with each rep and get to heaviest load possible.

Ten lifts in I PR’ed my last rep of my front squat.  Holler!  I confidently loaded the bar for my first back squat, excited about the last five lifts.  I was just five pounds under what I had doubled just a few weeks ago, I was definitely going to break through!  I took the bar from the rack, squatted and (oh shit this feels heavy) slowly came up out of the lift struggling to keep my chest up and wanting only to get the bar back in the rack.

I was crushed. What the shit!? How had my last front squat felt so freaking strong and a 5 pound increase to a back squat, a much stronger lift, had destroyed me?  How was I going to get through the next 4 lifts increasing the weight each time?  What had gone wrong?  Maybe my training really wasn’t going in the right direction?  Maybe I need to back squat more?  Maybe I need to train more?  Maybe I need to spend more time warming up.  Or maybe, I’m just not the athlete I once was…

Pissed, I loaded the bar for my partner’s lift.  Afterward, as I begrudgingly loaded the bar for my next lift, I screamed, “holy shit” realizing that I had actually squatted 20 pounds more than I had thought AND that the lift was just 5 pounds under my PR!!  Zac confirmed.

I was stoked.

This is the point in the story when I thank the coaches.  Thanks coaches.  I tried to cop out at this point.  I figured that the lift was good enough for the day and there was no way I had a PR in me after 12 heavy squats and a PR in my front squat, especially after how heavy that had felt – I barely made it!  I even tried to go back down!

In the end, I PR’ed my 1 rep max back squat by 5 pounds. I left the shop on top of the world, smiling ear to ear, so in love with Eric, loving our shitty 12 year-old car I was about to drive home, thankful for my great coaching staff, excited about training and life and CrossFit, and day dreaming about where my 1 rep max could be in another 3 months.  Quite the turnaround from my outpouring of negative emotion and thoughts after the first back squat. And it was all because my perception of what should feel heavy and what I was actually lifting were misaligned.

Moral of the story – our state of mind plays a tremendous role in our approach to a workout and how we feel about it afterward.  We place ceilings and limitations on our performances.  Your body is capable of so much more, it’s our mind that fucks it all up.

Dream big and believe in yourself.