Workout of the Day:
5 Rounds for time
10 Turkish Get Ups, 5 each hand (15Kg Dumbbell or 16Kg KB)
20 Pull Ups
Post times to comments. Compare to December 31st
Is the Goal or the Whole the Best Motivator? Inside Influence Report
Add your thoughts on Motivation to comments.
Compare to Dec 31st? Man, my hat’s off to all of those that came in for a WOD on new year’s eve!
Interestingly if you were to peruse through the comments of that day, you might notice a discussion of Cindy. See if you can spot the interesting assertion Colm makes…
I’ll give you a hint, Colm hates having his own words used against him.
I think about motivation a lot. Since getting into the fitness thing, I’ve had a whole bunch of friends come to me asking for help with this stuff.
At first, I was naive enough to think that explaining what you need to do and why you need to do it was enough. I duly sat down with them and explained the basics of feeding yourself, taught them how to squat and deadlift, explained the concept of progression and showed them where the crossfit website is.
Out of about 20 people, exactly 3 of them went on to actually do anything with all this information (good on you guys, btw). Kind of a pain in the ass when you’ve invested 6 hours or so per person…
I’m forced to conclude that either I stink as a teacher, or that approaching this stuff with the right attitude is overwhelmingly more important than just knowing what to do.
I think a few of Chris Shugart’s articles go a long way towards addressing the psychological hurdles you need to overcome to be successful with this stuff. Notably Phoenix Theory and It’s Sabotage [WARNING: These are t-nation articles, which means there are lots of pictures of steroid-abusing flutes in their underwear, scantily clad females, ads for silly over-hyped supplements and a general obsession with being HYUUUUUGE BRO! Don't open the links if you don't like that sort of thing].
A lot of the time, particularly in the early mornings, I turn up more or less on autopilot.
Even before I started CrossFitting I was got into the habit of doing at least some kind of training most nights of the week. After a while, it just became ingrained and now I feel a bit uneasy if I don’t make it down to train.
Is habit the same thing as committment? Does it matter?
When I’m actually in the gym doing a WOD there are a few factors that get me going:
-Competition, to some degree, with whoever else is there
-Fear of regressing stops me being lazy to some extent
-Goal-setting. Short term ones like doing pull-ups in bunches even when I’m very tired, rather than going to singles, and long-term ones like doing Fran as RXed in a good time.
Tangental but related, lately I’ve read some really stupid articles in the mainstream media about “dangerous fitness addicition”, and they usually have a symptom of how you know if you’re addicted to going to the gym. I guess most of us would fit the criteria. But who cares- There’s something incredibly perverse about complaining that people are too obsessed with becoming fitter in an era when we’re facing major public health crises.
Good posts so far. I find my motiviation to be similar to what Rauri calls a habit. I call it inertia-when I’ve been hitting CF WODs consistently for a while I find it really hard to take a day off. The flip side, of course is that when I’ve taken enough time off its really hard to get back into a steady routine. You know, what difference is one more day going to make…?
So given today’s topic (and the fact that I recently ticked off the first of my goals–30 40k OHS) I’m wondering what goals anyone has for this year.
I Hadn’t thought about this in a while. The thought of not doing something on a given day rarely occurs to me and rest days are now a bit of a necessary evil! MUST. SLEEP. MORE! Right, back to the milk.
Aye, goal setting and fear of regression tie into the whole concept of being performance-focused. If you get to the point where you actually care about about your workout performance then I think you’re set.
If you’ve spent six months working towards doing a muscle-up and then all of a sudden find you can’t do one after a week of eating like a bridge troll, you become an awful lot less likely to fall off the wagon again. I know I did.
Another big motivator for me is just being aware of how hard other people out there are training despite major obstacles. Look at guys like Matt Scott orDustin Carter. These guys are out there giving it everything they’ve got in spite of major adversity, and I’m sitting inside not training because it’s cold and wet outside and I’m tired? Not bloody likely.
Will, I’ve no idea why your comments keep on getting stuck in the filter.
Anywho, another inspiration is Kyle Maynard, check him out on youtube.
Forgot to take a photo of the white board tonight so scores will go up tomorrow.
Kudos to Shane, who suffered through a ripped callus just to get in honest pull ups today – Outstanding work my man!
Deirdre – 20:22 (2.5Kg, Ring rows)
James – 33:02 (5Kg, jumping pull ups)
Jeff – 33:07 (5Kg, 1/2 jumping, 1/2 honest)
Kyle – 27:13 (10Kg, Ring Pull Ups)
Shane – 40:12 (5Kg, honest)
Tom – 29:29 (5Kg)