Today I dropped into a class outside my normal time at the box (where I'm still relatively new). Even though I've only been doing CrossFit for 6 months, I've worked out at a couple of different boxes and worked with multiple coaches, so I'm pretty used to having to give a rundown of my life at the beginning of many a WOD. I'm sure that I'm a a bit of a pain to coach, especially right now when I have to avoid pretty much all squatting movements, but I'm also allergic to latex and can't use the stretching bands, and I still have to scale a lot of movements, so I can't always just get the rundown of the WOD and hit the floor running. I don't mean to be a pain, but sometimes I feel like that.
It's also humbling to be in a new class and work with a new coach and train with new people. It's hard to come at the workout from your head space of 6 months of training, knowing where you were on day one and seeing your current capability as a vast improvement, only to have others think that this is your first class ever. It kinda knocks you down a peg and makes you realize that even though you know you've made a ton of progress, you obviously still have a long way to go.
One of the things I've struggled with over the last two months is motivation and drive. I've found that I can do so much more than I thought I could many times over the last few months, but usually when I've done the most work I've had someone else pushing me or cheering me on. An external motivator can be a very powerful thing. When you have 10, 5, even 1 other person standing around you, telling you "you've got this" or "pick up the bar, do one more" it's easy to keep going because you have all that added strength to tap into. You want to please others and don't want to let everyone down. When all eyes are on you it's much harder to slack off. I still get support from my new coaches, but there's always a time for everyone when no one is watching you.
The trouble is holding yourself accountable and finding all that motivation from within. Sure you can try to think back on all those times that you did have everyone cheering you on, or imagine there's a coach at your shoulder counting your reps, but in the end it's all you and the bar (or kettle bell, or rower, or pavement - or whatever it is you're up against). Today my WOD was a triplet, 3 rounds of 500m row, 25 kettle bell swings (1 pood), and 15 sit-ups. I set my mind to keeping a 2:30 pace on the row, doing the kettle bell swings unbroken at 1 pood, and doing the sit-ups unbroken, and to finish the whole thing in 15:00. The kettle bell swings were the part I really wanted to focus on, but in the minute leading up to the countdown, and all through the row I kept wavering. "Can I really do all 25 unbroken every round?" "Maybe I should do 15 and 10" "No I can totally do 25." Back and forth. Determination and doubt. Ultimately I didn't make it unbroken and my time was 17:52, and I've been really hard on myself all day because of it. Seeing the picture at the top of the post on Facebook today made me regret not doing it even more. I know I had more in me, but when I had the kettle bell overhead on the 15th swing of the first round and my arms were starting to burn, I let myself give up.
I've started to think of how many times I've given up on little things, not only in my workouts, but in my food choices, and in life in general. I've got to stop giving up. The more times I do it, the easier it is to do it again and suddenly the little "give ups" become big ones and before I know it I'm staring down failure. October has been a pretty good month for me overall and I've hit several PRs and "firsts" but deep down I feel like I could have done more and I wonder what more I could have done if I hadn't given up so many times on so many little things.
I'm really excited about November and my goal is to work on my internal motivation. To keep trying new things and going for one more rep. I can only be accountable to myself now and really the only person I need to worry about letting down is myself. I'm the one that will be stuck with the regrets at the end of the day, and who wants to sit around beating themselves up about what they could have done, but didn't?
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