Habits and Motivation

Life has a lot of sandcastles in it.

Projects, jobs, relationships, fitness pursuits… Things that you must put work into that may fall over at any moment.

Have you spent all week (all month... all year) building a 'sandcastle' only to have it crumble right before it was finished?

The beauty of a real sandcastle is that it is temporary and that the finished product isn't as important as the process of building it.

Are you spending all your time fixing a failing sandcastle?
Are you learning/enj…

We’ve all experienced it.

Everything is going well.

We are sticking to our plans and making progress toward our goals.

Then…

We hit a wall.

Our motivation runs dry.

Unexpected obstacles keep getting in the way.

We lose focus.

This is something that happens during long workouts, but it also happens with our goals and routines.

We set new routines for our Resolutions. We try to forge habits that will take us toward our goals.

“The Wall”, or “The Dip”, is almost guaranteed if you are sign…

Be Careful with Diet Changes and Training

It is that time of year when many of you have been cleaning up your diet.

The Issue: When you drastically drop your total calorie intake (more than 10-15% generally) and/or you reduce your protein intake while upping your training volume. Dropping your total calories too much WILL affect your energy and your training. It may not be noticeable the first couple of weeks, but it will catch up with you eventually.

• You will be more sore than usual.
• You …

If you want to work out more, you should consider being bored more.

Have you noticed that even when many things are ‘shut down’, and you can’t visit other people, you still have plenty of stuff to do?

That time is in short supply.

That you still feel tired all the time.

That you aren’t motivated to get things done (like work out).

Strange as it sounds, the ingredient you are probably missing is boredom.

In our hyper-connected world, designed by companies incentivized to keep you online as …

As we go through the holiday season, most of you will probably eat foods and drink drinks that your body isn’t used to processing (especially in quantity), and more than likely you aren’t going to get the best sleep because of it (especially if you had more than your usual amount of booze). You will not be feeling your best. You may even have some flu-like symptoms during and after your workout because your body is dealing with a lot of inflammation that it isn’t used to.

There is also going to…

Halloween tends to be the beginning of a series of holidays that are determined to make eating well, consistently, almost impossible.

The haul of candy (or left-over candy that didn’t get handed out), sits around. Tempting you every day. Allowing you to graze on peanut butter cups and sweethearts for weeks or months.

Those weeks turn into Thanksgiving celebrations (in the US anyway).

After Thanksgiving, we have holiday parties and family get-togethers before hitting Christmas and New Year.

K…

Humans are adaptation machines.

Our bodies are unique to most animal species in that we have a series of systems that allow us to adapt to a wide variety of environments.

Hot, cold. Not a lot of food, too much food. Low stress, high stress. Low physical activity, high physical activity…

You get the picture.

The thing that makes us totally unique among biological organisms is how our brains can speed up (or slow down) this adaptation. We do this by communication, learning, technology, and cha…

Breathing is like walking, sitting, or sleeping.

We do it every day and never think about it.

And like walking, sitting, and sleeping, there is a lot more going on than we realize as we perform these unconscious tasks.

Fixing your gait can help you with that knee, ankle, or back pain, that seems to persist.

Fixing your sitting form and sitting less can help you lose weight, fix your posture, and make you feel better.

Fixing your sleep will make you a happier, leaner, more awesome, human.

F…

Dear 3+ year CrossFitters (and especially 6+ years and beyond),

After the ‘newness’ of all the fun workouts and experiences starts to wear off, there comes a time in all CrossFitter’s lives where doing a WOD, even just lifting, seems like an insurmountable task.

“I’m just not feeling it today.”

“I’ll go tomorrow.”

“I am too busy right now.”

Having these thoughts occasionally is normal. Ideally, you’ll be able to see through your own bullshit and determine if you are just making excuses or i…

Hey Everyone!

One of the best parts about CrossFit and trying to be good at everything:

We learn to appreciate everyone’s unique strengths and abilities.

“Sally may not be the leanest, but have you seen her deadlift?”

“Joe has trouble squatting, but he can do pull-ups like nobody’s business!”

“Did you hear about Katie’s 5k time? Unbelievable.”

“Steve is so jacked!”

“Melissa has such a crazy schedule; I don’t know how she finds the time to make it in!”

“Mike’s burpees are insane, I don’t …