1. Better rest and recovery- When you are physically and mentally recovered you can hit your workouts even harder and see better results. Lack of sleep, stress from work, poor nutrition and/or not enough fun time you will be limited to your performance output and normal everyday activities.

2. Diet- Eating the proper foods (paleo) and proper quantities (not too much or too little) will give you optimal energy for your best workouts and help you reach your weight goals.

3. More stretching- Work on your flexibility everyday. Movements are easier to learn, injuries will be a rarity and your body moves more efficiently when you have great flexibility.

4. True goal setting- If I ask you what is your goal for doing Crossfit, many people would say to lose weight. I would then ask, “Why?” You might say to feel better or gain confidence. Cool. What is your true goal then- to lose weight or feel better? People get too caught up in the frame of mind that they will only feel better when they lose a certain amount of weight. Realize that you can start feeling confident about yourself instantly. You should feel good when you hit a new PR on a lift or when you increase your push-ups. Enjoy more of the daily victories and before you know it the weight will be gone.

5. Injury maintenance- Do not let an injury stop you. Train around it. By training you will heal faster. Take care of your injuries no matter how minor they may seem. Use ice, rest, compression and proper stretching recover as fast as possible.

6. Focus on weaknesses- We love to do what we are good at but we will get more bang for our buck by working on our weaker points. Step out of your comfort zone.

7. Technique over result- We all do it. We want a faster time or better score. To get that we might cut a ROM down or lose proper technique. One that is not safe and two, we are only cheating ourselves. Focus on what will improve you the most- proper technique.

8.  Push someone else in class- By encouraging others to bring their best they will do the same for you. With our community anything is possible.

9. Intensity equals results- Intensity will be the factor to improvement. We need to push ourselves to our physical and mental limits so we can break through and reach new heights.

10. Refer a friend- By having a friend train with you, it will help you stay on track, give you an extra push, create a great community and even save on gas.

Justin Scarsella

The GOAT

CrossFit specializes in not specializing. Think about that for a second. We do workouts with movements from many different athletic endeavors (i.e. sprinting, endurance running, gymnastics, powerlifting, Olympic lifting, kettlebells, etc).

Why?- Simply to be the most well rounded athlete that we can be in all aspects of fitness:

Strength
Flexibility
Endurance
Stamina
Power
Speed
Coordination
Balance
Agility
Accuracy

If you look down that list, depending on your fitness background and current activities, there will be a few things that you know you are lacking. Again, CrossFitters are not trying to the best in one domain, but the most well-rounded in all domains. It is our job to strengthen the weakest link in our “chain.”

There in lies the problem: It goes directly against natural tendencies. No one truly likes to do the things we are not good at. It just doesn’t make us feel good. If you are right-handed, go throw a ball a few times with just your left. How fun was that? I know it sucked. You feel funny, silly and possibly embarrassed. Everyone has the same feelings about doing certain movements.

UNTIL- you get enough practice that you start to improve in that skill. I like to use the phrase “like what you don’t like,” because soon enough you won’t mind doing it and eventually you might even enjoy doing it. The biggest improvements you, me or anyone else will have in CrossFit is not with your strengths but in your weaknesses. Doing things that you like to do is fun, but doing things that you don’t like will pay bigger dividends down the road for you in your pursuit for elite fitness.

There is a side effect to this though. When your weaknesses get stronger, magically, your strengths start getting stronger as well. And with that in mind, it is your job to attack your “goat” (thanks Brian Mackenzie and Kelly Sterrett for the terminology). Attack it hard. Crazy hard. Even though you might look like a fish out of water trying to do kipping pull-ups or have to use a PVC pipe for those Overhead Squats, DO IT ANYWAY. Become a fighter, fight over and over again.  Just keep reminding yourself that when, not if, but when you do improve on your “goat” it will be just that much more rewarding. I can coach people to do certain things and help with special cues to give guidance. But for some movements you don’t need extra coaching, you just need to do it. For most of our goats, there isn’t a trick to a technique, it is just a matter of letting yourself perform what needs to be done, even when your body and brain whisper and possible scream that “you can’t do it.” Yes you can.

The best part is still yet to come though. When you let it sink in your brain that the things that you are not good at, or don’t feel good at are possible to do better, a whole new world opens up. You start seeing things differently. The dark skies look brighter, the dirt looks like grass could grow any minute and you look forward to doing all of those burpees. You now have a mentality that nothing is out of your reach.

-Justin Scarsella

Many CrossFit Affiliates are posting a blog about 10 things that they believe in. I will do the same with ten things I believe in pertaining to CrossFit.

• I Believe everyone should and can do CrossFit. Not everyone will, but everyone can and would benefit from training. Everyone should enjoy being an athlete.
• I Believe I can learn more about you in a 5 minute WOD then someone can learn about you in hours just from talking to you.
• I Believe eating “right” is one of the hardest ongoing choices we make as human beings. We are constantly in a battle between the instant gratification of what tastes good now and what will pay dividends in my workouts, performance, health and longevity.
• I Believe CrossFit has made me a better man, husband, teacher, trainer and human being.
• I Believe you should attack life as if it were a  CrossFit WOD. The biggest gain from CrossFit is not increased physical fitness and capacity but the mentality that it builds.
• I Believe in making the most of every moment in life. Enjoy the suckfests and the PRs along the way.
• I Believe that we shouldn’t take things for granted and we should all be more thankful for what we do have. You never know when you will break your foot.
• I Believe comfort is overrated. We should all get more familiar with uncomfortable. Like what you don’t like.
• I Believe we should fail more. If we are not failing, we are not really trying. We should always try and push ourselves to the next level. We are never good enough. The best is yet to come.
• I Believe that someone that wants quick, easy, instant results and is not willing to put in time, sweat, pain and pride in what they do, then they are weak.

-Justin Scarsella

_________________________________

What do you believe?

The only weight you should care about is how much are you lifting.

Get off that damn scale. Matter of fact, pick it up and put it away. Put it in the place next to the Christmas ornaments, or have some fun and throw it around the backyard like a frisbee into the concrete garage wall. That will at least make you feel good for a little bit. Don’t let it be in your sight. Out of sight- out of mind. The only time I would prefer anyone to go on a scale is when they feel awesome about themselves. Only when you feel you look good, feel good, have tons of energy and are performing workouts and “other activities” well. Then, when you look down at the little whitebox of evil, realize this is the weight you should like and is good for you, NO MATTER what the number is. Try it- only weigh yourself when you feel good.

The next part of this blog I will explain my idea of why the scale is junk. I hope no one gets too offended by the following remarks; if you, do i’m sorry that you don’t feel the same way and can’t see my perspective. First I will start my answer to why the scale is junk with another question- What does the scale do, really? Does it tell you how healthy you are? NO. Does it tell you how to change the number it gives? NO. Does it tell you that maybe you drank a lot of water today and that’s why it is heavier by 2 pounds? NO. Does it make you feel bad about yourself when it’s not what you were hoping for? YUP. Don’t get me wrong, it is a tool, but that is all it is - a tool. It doesn’t tell us how we look, feel or perform. Society has screwed people’s minds to base their enjoyment, quality of life and confidence by that stupid number that blinks when you step on it. It is a tool that, in my opinion, is the most overused and manipulated number in society today. It is a tool to tell us weight, not how we should feel about ourselves.

Everyone has an ideal weight, but no one can tell us what that is by a chart of height, frame and size of your pinky toe. You have all heard of body mass index (aka BMI or BS). According to that chart, I am underweight for my size and frame which would make unhealthy. What a load of crap. The way you should find out if you are overweight or underweight is by looking at what you can do. Can you lift, throw, jump, run and do everyday activities? How well can you do them? Would losing a few pounds help or hinder your overall level of fitness? Once you decide if losing or gaining weight will increase the majority of your ten physical fitness attributes then you know what you should do. Why base everything off your level of fitness and performance instead  of the number on the scale- because fitness directly effect your quality of life. The better your fitness, the more you enjoy playing with your kids and hiking through trails. The longer you live and are able to play with your grandchildren and show the young-ins that grandma and grandpa have mad skills. That is what life is all about.

Here is an example that drives me nuts- The person who smokes to lose weight or stay skinny so they feel good about themselves. They might lose weight, sure, they most likely will die younger and live a lower quality of life because they aren’t healthy and can’t walk up a flight of stairs without coughing up a lung.

As extreme as this is, it’s truly not much different when people eat very little or try to starve themselves to lose weight. They might do it and they might even feel good because a scale says they lost weight, but how good is that person feeling about themselves. They a fragile. Over time if they trip on a curb they may break like a glass vase. It might even look good but you have to be sooo careful not to break it.

To wrap this up- Get off the damn scale and feel good about yourself because of what you do or what you are working on doing, not because a stupid piece of plastic blinked 5 pounds more then you expected. Ask yourself how do you look, feel, perform and what’s your quality of life. If you need to be lighter or heavier to achieve the fore-mentioned, do it through healthy nutrition. Don’t cut corners.

Oh yeah, when you get to the point of feeling in tip top condition give the scale the finger for me.

Justin Scarsella

I am assuming everyone is still strictly Zoning? Ha! You aren’t the only one that has been slipping. We are all in the same wagon, many of us were in the driver’s seat but now we are holding on to the side being dragged along hoping not to let go. I want to give evryone three ways to help you stay on the Zone and get back to good eating.

1. Study the Zone. 

If you haven’t bought a Zone book, you should and you should read it. Just by constantly reading about the Zone and what the Zone does for you, will help you stay strong and motivated. I recommend reading “Mastering the Zone” and “Enter the Zone” by Dr. Barry Sears. They both are very in depth but do help you feel the need, not just the want, to Zone hard. For a few other recommendations, visit here. This is an article from the CrossFit Journal that gives brief explantions of why nutrition is so important.

2. Keep a nutritional journal.

Everything you eat, everything, write it down. Write down when you eat it, how you feel after, how you feel an hour later, how much did you eat. Be specific. This way next time you see the Oreos you can go back into the journal and read about how bad you felt last time you ate 1/2 the bag.

3. Write down why you should eat well.

I know what your list will look like:

• lower body weight
• decrease body fat
• health and longevity
• more energy
• blah, blah, blah

That list is CRAP.

Your list should look like this:

• I want to lose X number of pounds by this date.
• I want to be down to X % Body fat.
• I will set an example for my kids so they develop good healthy eating habits to prevent diabetes and obesity.
• I want to be around and functional as long as possible to watch my kids grow up, graduate, get married and be there for my spouse.
• I don’t want heart disease or other chronic illness that could be a result of my poor nutrion. I don’t want family and friends to see me in that kind of condition.
• I want to be able to deadlift X#.
• I will recover from WODs faster and stronger.
• I will compete with so and so.
• When I go to the beach I want people to stare at me with their tongues hanging out.

Read your list daily, no 3 times, no every chance you get until it’s a constant reminder of why you should eat good. Add to it, know it, believe it.

Do these 3 steps and I promise you will be able to stay motivated. We all just lose sight of what we wanted. We need to always refresh our minds on how come nutrion is so important. If you fell off the wagon, you can easily jump back on. With the great people in our community buddy up and get an accountability partner. Help each other to help yourself. (Bikini season is coming, Abel are you ready for it. I heard he has a new pink poke-a-dot one). 

J-constantly-needs-to-re-motivate-himself-as-well-Scars

I just want to make it very public how incredible it was to watch everyone do today’s WOD. Every single person lit it up (pun intended for Denise). You guys were thowing big weight around like it was a cat in the yard (I don’t like cats).

To watch everyone do those heavy deadlifts, many doing bodyweight and more for 45 total reps put a huge smile on my face. Then to see what people choose to do for the push-ups and stick with them for the whole WOD. AWESOME. Many ladies did 45 push-ups on your toes. Many people couldn’t do one push-up from your toes when you started. For the guys and girls who choose to get inverted on the push-ups, you are crazy and I like it, HSPU are not far away. Kick ass job everyone.

After watching you guys today and yesterday, I have been pumped up all day long. I am incredibly thankful for being a part of this community. Thank you for making CrossFit Scars what it is.  Keep it up guys.

WU: Stretch out

Running Drills with a partner

Do a timed 200 m run with Med Ball in hands

WOD: Run 100 m

30 push-ups

run 100 m

10 deadlifts at bodyweight (scale as needed)

3 rounds for time

Synchronized Kettlebell Swings

Post time of Med Ball run and Time of WOD to comments.

Check out this video from the CrossFit Journal. (No one will ever have an excuse again)

http://journal.crossfit.com/2009/03/wounded-warriors-part-1.tpl

WU: Stretch, review running drills

Skills: Basic CrossFit Running Drills

WOD: “Running Cindy”

AMRAP in 20 Mins of:

200m run; 

5 pull-ups or rows

10 push-ups (scale as needed)

15 squats

Everything is harder to do after a sprint

Here is a great article about how CrossFit is helping the wounded. (you won’t ever complain about a WOD after reading this)

www.againfaster.com – Again Faster Articles – You’ll Be Fine.

Post rounds completed to comments.