The Truth Hurts…

So I’ve been having issues with pain in both shoulders on and off for the last 2 years, and today I went and saw the 3rd orthopedic doctor about this extremely annoying recurring problem, as the last 2 doctors were unable to come up with any answers. I already underwent physical therapy and still do the stretches and exercises on my own at home, and while they have helped my range of motion improve, the pain persists. In many cases, it also prevents me from reaching my full potential on certain crossfit movements. Well I finally got an answer today…

The diagnosis? Impingement Syndrome. That basically means there’s not enough room between the bone on the top of my shoulder (the acromion) and my rotator cuff, so when I raise my arms, the acromion rubs against/impinges on the rotator cuff tendons and the bursa (small lubricating sac between the acromion and the rotator cuff), causing pain, irritation and inflammation. Woohoo.  The treatment? Each shoulder got an extremely painful shot of novacain, followed by shots of cortisone, a steroidal anti-inflammatory medicine – which were equally painful despite the fact that my shoulders were supposed to be numb from the novacain. And if you know me, you know I have a very high tolerance for pain, so you also know those shots really friggin’ HURT! Now I’m supposed to ice heavily for the next two days, followed by little to no overhead movements or lifting for the next 4 weeks. That’s right, 4 whole weeks. If you’re a crossfitter you know how long that actually is. Ugh. Which also means that if you’re a fellow crossfitter, I’m expecting you to hold me accountable to not pushing myself and focusing on lower body movements for the next 4 weeks, so my shoulders can actually heal. Guess that muscle-up is just going to have to wait….

It’s all in the family

So I was perusing facebook this morning, and I noticed an interesting trend. Pretty much most, if not all, of my friends who are crossfitters either have a picture of them at crossfit as their current profile picture, a past profile picture, or at least a decent collection of pictures from crossfit in one of their albums. My friends who are not crossfitters have the usual social pictures, cute head shots, etc, and many of my rugby teammates do have rugby action shots in their collection – but not one picture from the gym, whether it’s Gold’s or Best, or Planet Fitness – nope, not one. A little bizarre don’t you think? Why is this? It’s actually pretty simple – crossfit is not a gym. What, you say, of course it’s a gym, you work out there don’t you? Well yes, but it’s so much more than a gym. For one, I would actually consider it to be a sport. I don’t just go there to workout, I go there to compete, whether it’s in a daily WOD where I’m competing against myself for a good time on a metcon, or for a PR on a heavy lift, or whether I’m competing against my fellow athletes in an in-house (and maybe someday a regional) competition. Notice I said athletes, not gym-goers. It takes an immense amount of dedication, determination and mental strength to be a crossfitter – there is no such thing as an easy workout here. So of course when I go and I bust my ass to be the best athlete I can be, of course I’m going to be proud of my efforts.  Secondly, and actually more important to me,  crossfit is a community, and in many cases, close enough to be considered family. Not only do I look forward to seeing my fellow crossfitters, coaches and trainers, I know what people go to certain classes and who coaches which class, and I know who I want to workout next to because I know we’ll push each other during the WOD. I’m not just happy when I hit a PR, I’m happy when my girlfriend hits a PR, I’m happy when my friends hit PRs, and I’m happy when the guy or girl next to me that I may or may not know very well or even at all hits a PR. I am proud of my family and who they are, what they put themselves through on a regular basis to be faster, stronger, healthier – but never getting cocky or arrogant about what they are capable of.  They have supported me from day one, when I didn’t know a thing about crossfit and had to unlearn all my old bad gym habits. They support me at my worst, when I’m in a bad mood, or when I was sick and barely able to train, and they support me at my best.  And I know for a fact that my fellow athletes feel the same way. So it makes sense that they all have pictures up on facebook of crossfit. Call it a cult if you will, people have, but we know what we are a part of and we are proud to call ourselves crossfitters. Truth be told, I’ll probably eventually retire from rugby, as other people will probably retire from their current sports or move on to another, we’ll all move different places at some point, meet new people, make new friends – but I know that no matter what, no matter where we go, we will never stop crossfitting.

When mind over matter doesn’t matter

So we’ve all heard it – think before you act, mind over matter, it’s a mental thing…. but what happens when your brain actually gets in the way? I’m starting to discover that when it comes to workouts, sometimes you just have to let go and stop thinking – because when you do, that’s when you find out what your real limits are. You’d be surprised at how much stronger your body is than your mind lets you believe. That 20 minute AMRAP from hell? Yes, you can finish it even though you think you can’t. That 20, 24, 36 inch box jump? Yes, you can make it. That heavy deadlift or squat might look intimidating with all those plates on the bar, and it’s heavier than you’ve ever lifted…. and yes, you can lift it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve completely psyched myself out because I let myself think too much about how heavy or how hard something was. So in this case it is a mental thing -  too mental. Most of my PR’s have come when I just shut my brain off and went for it. If you fail, you fail – what’s the worst that can happen? But you’ll never know if you don’t push yourself. Like I said, you’ll be surprised at what your body can actually do if you let it.  So against most conventional wisdom we’ve been given, here’s my advice – for however long your workout is, STOP THINKING. Don’t let your mind underestimate your true abilities. Don’t let fear get in the way of achieving your fitness goals. Just go for it. Go for that PR, go for Rx in a WOD and use a weight you’ve never used, conquer your suck list. And then after you’ve done whatever it is you’re trying to do, only then, go ahead and turn your brain back on – so you can think about what a kick-ass job you just did and bask in your awesomeness. Because you are awesome, no matter what you think.

Tis the Season…

…to step it up and rock some PR’s before 2010 is over!! We had the opportunity to do a CrossFit Total yesterday, hitting 1 rep max’s on the backsquat, shoulder press and deadlift. I did my first ever CFT back in January, almost a year ago, wow time flies! On that CFT I squatted 165, pressed 75 and deadlifted 205, for a CFT score of 445.  This time I squatted 220, pressed 80, and deadlifted 245, for a CFT score of 545. In all honesty I might be able to get 5lbs on my squat and DL, but I’ve still got 3 weeks before I start making my New Year’s resolutions for 2011. One of my 2010 goals was to backsquat 250, so I’m still 30lbs short, but definitely a lot closer than I was in January! :-)  Becca had an impressive CFT as well, hitting 140 on her backsquat, 80 on her press, and 250 on her deadlift – which btw was a 25lb PR for her! Total CFT score 470, up from her January total of 375 (125 backsquat, 70 press, 180 DL).

We also have a couple other PR’s to boast about…. for me, I got a new maximum height box jump on Monday – 43 inches! And Becca stayed after the CFT yesterday for ladies night where they worked on the split jerk, and she rocked a PR with a 130lb split jerk  – good work babe! :-)

It’s interesting to note that neither of us have really been doing strength programming since we stopped doing Wendler at ACF, until very recently when Becca started doing it on her own again. I personally feel that if you want to improve your strength in specific areas and specific lifts, the strength programming makes a big difference – makes me wonder where we’d be on our CFT if we’d been doing programming all year! But you know, every day is a new opportunity to grow and push yourself, and we’re ready for the challenge :-)

Albany Crossfit gets a new look!

The last couple weeks big things have been happening at Albany Crossfit. We recently acquired a 4th room (we’re slowly taking over all of the Court Clubs racquetball courts), and instead of leaving it as a separate room, our beloved leaders, in their infinite wisdom, decided to combine it with our 3rd room to make a new, bigger workout space. So the power tools came out, the wall came down, and amid the cloud of dust and the noise of construction, the transformation began. Over this last weekend Albany Crossfit closed it’s doors to finish construction, and in the place of their usual WODs, our athletes and trainers came in and dedicated their time to building, painting, cleaning and organizing.

I myself was very honored to have the job of painting the ACF logo on the new back wall – which also meant I got to use the awesome automatic lifts we got this time instead of the ladder, woo! In the process of painting the logo and helping out around the gym, I realized just how proud I was to be able to be a part of Albany Crossfit and this important new addition. I joined the ACF ranks almost a year ago when there were only 2 rooms, I helped with the 3rd room when we got it, and here I was, watching ACF grow yet again, and this time with a beautiful new WOD room and a whole new, sharp and professional paint scheme in the hallways.

The best part for me though – realizing that while our space and overall look may change, the people are still the same. The community that makes Albany Crossfit what it is has stayed strong, and new upgrades are only going to enhance it by giving us more resources that will help us become better athletes. There’s going to be more opportunity to push ourselves and in turn, to push and encourage each other. On Thursday we got to hit our first WOD in the new room – a welcome-back-to-crossfit, brutal 25 min AMRAP. It was awesome to be able to have 16 athletes working out in one room at once, and it as just as awesome to have my fellow crossfitter next to me keeping me on track. It’s great to have the new space and see the other two rooms re-arranged to get the best use out of our equipment, and I am definitely looking forward to what other exciting things the future holds for Albany Crossfit. Not to mention, hitting a muscle-up on those cool new rings in our WOD room…. :-)

Aloha from Lahaina Crossfit!

Just a little over a week ago Becca and I were lucky enough to get to take a vacation in beautiful Maui, Hawaii. Of course the week was filled with fun activities such as snorkeling and surfing (well, attempting to surf), and plenty of relaxing on the beach and watching one spectacular sunset after another. But of course, what would a vacation be without our usual dose of Crossfit? So we took a little trip (including a 15 minute walk to the bus stop, consider it our warm-up) down the road to Lahaina Crossfit and dropped in on their 8am Saturday WOD. We met head trainer Anthony Bianucci, who was very welcoming, and happy to have visitors from another Crossfit, as were all the other athletes there. Turns out there were a total of 5 different Crossfits represented that morning, including some local island affiliates, Crossfit Zone in British Columbia, and of course, Albany Crossfit. Lahaina Crossfit is a relatively new gym, having only opened its doors this June, so their facilities currently consist of one room, similar in size to the rooms at Albany Crossfit. However, despite what one might consider limited space, they definitely make the most of what they have, and lucky them, they are fortunate enough to have year-round access to the beautiful outdoors.

One of the interesting things about Lahaina Crossfit is that since they are still a growing community, their numbers can be somewhat unpredictable. So certain days, such as Saturday, Anthony doesn’t create a WOD until he sees how many people show up, at which point he can decided if it will be an individual or a group WOD. On the day we went our group was 12 strong, so Anthony worked us up a team warm-up followed by an individual WOD. So after some group dynamic stretching, we split into 3 teams and did the following warm-up: 10, 9, 8 …. 3, 2, 1 of jumping jacks, chest-to-floor pushups, and air squats. Once the entire team was done with the 10! series we were told to grab a sand bag and run up the hill to Star Noodle, which of course us non-locals had no idea what that meant, but it turned out to be a little restaurant just about a 600m (maybe 800?) run there and back. Once we were done with our “warm-up”, we set up our stations for the WOD: 7min AMRAP of 7 kettle bell swings and 7 burpees. They actually had a limited equipment selection so while some people grabbed KB’s, some grabbed dumbbells to do modified dumbbell swings. Becca grabbed a 35lb KB and I grabbed myself a 40lb KB, a little heavier than I usually go, but I was feeling up to a challenge. Anthony started the clock and 7 minutes later, we were gasping for air, drenched in sweat, and vying for space in front of the portable fans. It’s amazing what a little extra heat and humidity will do to you! Regardless, I felt pretty good afterwards, I managed to bust out 6 and ½ rounds, and Becca rocked out 5 and ½ rounds. We got to chill afterwards and take some pics with the Saturday crew and chit chat with Anthony a little, and then one of the regulars was nice enough to give us a lift back to our hotel and give us the scoop on island living. Overall it was definitely a very positive and enjoyable experience, and it was really cool to see how another Crossfit was run. Becca and I both agreed we were very glad we took the opportunity to check out Lahaina Crossfit.

Becca hits some PR’s!

Becca (my amazing girlfriend) hit some new PR this week! On Monday she hit 105lbs on the overhead squat, and yesterday she hit 110 on her hang clean. Good job baby! :-)

…and as for me, I can’t remember the last time I did overhead squats… hmmm…