Vlog 1

Motivation and Plateaus

I am pretty positive that I have already written about this before, probably several times, but I think it is something that needs to be constantly repeated. Motivation is not something that you get and keep, it isn't something you find and then stays with you throughout your journey to achieve your goals. Motivation is almost as fleeting as adrenaline, it's something that you catch like a high, and that you end up chasing. If you let yourself get addicted to that it's probably not something you're ever going to have enough of. So if it's what you rely on to get to where you want to go, you're going to have a bad time.

So those of us who are gym regulars, who end up in the gym day after day no matter what, you know that we have good days and bad days. It's easy to wake up on those bad days and find a reason to just not go. You're body needs the rest, you're avoiding an injury, it's cold. ect... ect.... ect... There are a thousand ways you're brain is looking to get you to stay in that bed, go home straight after work instead of the gym, or in general keep you from going after what you really want. If you are relying on being motivated alone, you're going to stay in that bed, it's fleeting. You're going to need something a lot stronger than that.

Before I go that direction, I don't want to sound like I don't think motivation is important. I am a huge sucker for the simplest form of motivation. Quotes. Give me two lines of superficial insight and I can motivate myself for a month. The little story I put at the top of this post is one I go back to time after time. I am at a point in my Journey where I am constantly hitting what feels like my limits, and whenever I feel that way I think back to this and I eventually find a way through. I refuse to allow myself to accept that I have reached a limit, because if I have gone as far as I am capable of going why keep pushing myself? Then it's just maintenance.

The problem is that it will always take me time to pour that motivation back into my workouts. In the meantime I have to rely on something more fundamental, obsessive habit. Through time and frustration I have built working out, and working out hard, into a habit that is required. To the point that if I don't do it, it is an itch in the back of mind. Unrelenting and all consuming until I feed the beast. I took my OCD, my addictive nature and funneled it into this. I have days where I know I am not pushing at 100, but I still get in there, I still grind, and I embrace all the awful. It took me years to build that habit in a way that it's just part of me. I might be taking it a bit to far, but I know this much, when my motivation meter hits E, my habits keep me going, and that meter hits a E a lot.

I have been running into that E a lot lately because of plateaus. I feel a lot like I am running into the extent of what I am capable of. I have been stuck at the same level of strength in a variety of lifts (all leg) forever. I couldn't seem to break through on them. Just kept running into impossibilities. Then I made a list. I sat down and went through everything I hated and sucked at. Every time a WOD came up that had something that made me think "Ugh, I hate this workout" I added it to that list. Then I spent some time ranking that list. When I examined that list, a pattern became clear.

After I ranked and explored my weaknesses, it became clear to me that I sucked at the things I wasn't naturally good at, or just didn't enjoy. I could be 100 pounds up on those lifts if I hadn't avoided them for 4 years because I didn't enjoy, and I'll tell you something, that makes me furious. I have left so much  potential on the table. I haven't plateaued. I have let so much of what I could be just sit there because deadlifting is way more fun that front squats. While that makes me angry it wakes up that animal in me that says, oh I cant? Watch me.

New Diet thing

I have been working with my mom on trying to find some sort of diet and exercise plan that will work for her for awhile. She's tried a million things, I've tried a million things, we both have trouble sticking to them and we both have issues when anyone or thing tells us what we can and can not have and or do. We fall off wagons a lot.

I have managed for the most part to keep my weight under control, and by that I mean I haven't been anywhere near the 300 pound mark that I was at when I decided to lose weight. But I have never been sub 190, and my goal for a long long time as been 180. It's a bit frustrating to keep getting so close then derailing.

Last week I say a weight on my scale that I said would be my warning weight. I hit 210. Which means that I have gained 20 pounds since my lowest weight. When I saw that I panicked a bit. I remember talking with my wife when I was solidly under 195 and saying that I just didn't want to gain weight anymore. I was liking how I looked (that is a huge deal for me, I mostly hate myself, it's a problem, but therapy is expensive) and in a somewhat panicky voice I just kept saying how this was good I just want to stay here, just not get heavier, ect... Welp, I failed, again, and again. and again, and managed to gain 20 pounds.

I noticed that pull ups and muscle ups we're getting tougher a few weeks back and decided it was injury, or shoulder underdevelopement. Then hand stand push ups started to really suck. Guess what? It wasn't a shoulder problem. Don't believe me? I didn't either, so I went to my car pulled the 20 pound vest on and went to garage to do some pull ups. Want to know what's way harder with an extra 20 pounds? Everything is, you thought it was pull ups, but it's everything. I am killing my performance with food. I love food though, it's delicious and gives me an immediate satisfaction in a way that I assume only cigarettes could replace, or drugs. Though I am not really into that idea.

Enter this weird diet. I have done all the background research on it. Frankly I know very little about it honestly. Some of the concepts seem to mesh with a lot of what I've read over the years about our modern metabolisms, but my Mom has done a lot of the background and I've decided to just give it a shot. It is both massively restrictive and not restrictive at all. With the huge reduction in calories 2 times a week you are obviously restricting, but as the guy says "You're only a day away from being able to eat". So It seems really doable. This is what I am going to call day 1 for me, it's  my first fast day. It's about 10am right now I haven't eaten anything yet, but I have gone through a period of that level of hunger that makes me want to throw up.

I will keep tracking my weight and measurements throughout this and see how this goes. I think my main concern is the impact on my lifting and workouts. If it seems to adverse for that I'll make changes accordingly, but until then we'll see how this goes.

How to do a Kipping Pullup

Will Power is not finite, You gotta batman that and prep for the failure.

I've been exploring why after all this time, and after all this self explorations, realization, and reflection I can't seem to finish my journey. Part of it is I don't think I really have a perfect handle on what it is I ultimately want. However one thing I know is that my will is something that is on a sliding scale, and understanding how your specific will power scale slides and what it is that helps you out and what hurts you is so important.

So I first noticed this with my general mood. Some people end there day and find themselves energized and feeling great. I basically start at a full tank of good will and cheer and as the day goes on and I keep interacting with people that ability to be in a good mood is constantly chipped away. I am not an extrovert. Interpersonal intersection is draining for me. This isn't because I don't like the people I am with or the interactions are bad, it's because I refuel in solitude. I don't just like being alone I need it. Like most people after a long enough time I want some interaction, i just want less, and certainly don't have to have it. My wife is typically on the other side. Give her the right people and that tank fills right back up, but start talking to me late in the day after I've had to deal with people then you can get out of my face.

The thing that sucks about this is that the dial on all my negative habits tends to get turned up at the same time. I should stretch, I should lift, I shouldn't eat garbage, but as I sit here I know that when I hit a certain point of frustration it doesn't matter how much I know what's good for me, I am actively going after that bad stuff. I am mad, I am in a dark mood, and I am ready to be self destructive. Part of that destruction is my constant battle with sugar addiction (I wont go full blown side plot on that now, but I think I need to hash that out at some point). So knowing that I am like this what do I do?

First things first. Have a preventative plan. Always plan for victory, if you know your enemies weaknesses draw up a plan and combat them in those areas. The enemy in this scenario is me. There are a lot of studies out there that point to working out in the evening being one of the best times to really push yourself to see the most benefit for your effort. However, if you find that it is hard to get motivated later in the day, so you skip 3 out of 6 of those workouts, or you dog it so hard you might as well have, you, like me, are probably going to get more for your time if you get your butt out of bed first thing and just get that workout behind you. If I waited till the afternoon to workout that is like 8 hours of time I have given my brain to convince me I need another rest day, forget that crap, get up, get moving, and get it in the bank. You can argue with yourself about that afternoon workout when it consists of auxiliary lifts and mobility.

Second. Food. I hate diet. There was a runner (might have been an Iron Man dude, but whatever) who said "That if the engine burns hot enough it doesn't matter what you put in it." This is both true and false on a lot of levels. From a straight up weight gain metric, yes if you burn enough calories to be in a deficit you are going to lose weight regardless if if you eat 4000 calories of kale (kill me) or McGangbangs (this is a thing and it's delicious and it's not what you think), however you are not going to perform well on either of those diets. Balance and nutrition is what you need, not to much not to little, blah blah blah. That runner had to find that out the hardest way when he ended up very injured and unable to run for a long time. He radically changed his McDiet to something more nutritious to maintain weight while he was bed ridden and when he started training again he noticed a marked difference in performance.. Screw that guy. I want to eat McDoubles with no bun, call myself full Keto and Power Clean 315. It's not going to happen, but a man can dream. Wow, I went all over the place there. To get back on track, what I am saying is be mindful of what you are putting in your fridge as much as your body. I am really good about eating really good until 2 things happen. 1st, if I am angry and it's late I just suck, I think that is honestly going to require therapy, my latent masochism manifests in all sorts of destructive ways. The second and very manageable problem arises when I let my quality options run out. I know when i am running low on eggs, I should buy more before I am out, same with kale, and whey, and broccoli, and all the simple options I keep handy for when I am lazy. So muscles need fuel to grow, that's a fact. What my brain is really great at doing is deciding some fuel is better than no fuel, and if all I have at 9pm on a Thursday is a bag of pizza rolls, and frozen chicken breasts, I am eating those pizza rolls. It's late I need sleep, chicken takes time, I'm tired.... I am an expert in self deceit, make sure you keep quick options around and don't just eat them all first. I do that a lot too.

3rd, get mental with it. I wont tell everyone to meditate, but take time to build up your mental programming. Take time to go over what you want in your head. When you fail take the time to examine why. In the realm of food safety (my old job, and a big part of my current job) there is a concept known as corrective actions. It's pretty much a given in that field that things are going to go wrong, it's not about being perfect it's about what you do when something happens. I think the same methodology is valid here. Ok, so you failed, maybe you failed a lot. Why? What happened? What lead to it? Find the root cause, figure out what lead up to it. Was it conflict with a person, was it fighting, was it not having the right food options available, was it not scheduling the workout? Then react to it. Find solutions for the failure, find new ways to combat your failings. It's not about being perfect, it's about being better. Not being better than me, or a super model, or Rich Froning, but being better than who you used to be. Find a way to take the you, you knew last year at make that person better. Then just keep doing that.

The bright side of being over connected.

This has been a weird year. I lost a very close friend when I was 15, Brett Robert Buurma. So this year when it got closer to the anniversary of that loss I think it weighed on my mind more than normal. I have now live as long without Brett here as I did with him. It's a weird thing to realize. I was driving around on the day and not really knowing where I was going, just knowing I was in a terrible mood. Angry, frustrated and sad and not really aware of why.

After driving around I wound up at the cemetery. We recently lost my Grandfather as well, Jordon Holthouse. So I went over to his grave, he didn't have a headstone yet, the grass had just started growing over dirt. Just a small plaque with his name on it. I took my phone out of my pocket and opened up facebook. My family had all been contributing to a giant photo album of all the pictures we had with him over the years. A huge catalog of memories and lives he had been part of.

Just a little South West of where we laid my grandfather to rest, one of my best childhood friends was laid to rest far to early. Now I have two children of my own. I just put them to sleep. They found there footy jammies, both to big, but both terribly excited to get to put them on again. We laid in the bunk beds I built for them last year watched videos of pigs. My youngest loves pigs right now. I spent a lot of time pretended to be a pig, tickling them, squeezing them, typical bedtime nonsense that is sure to get me in trouble with my wife for riling them up. I am ok with that because they wont always let me play with them like that, and I am going to take what I can get when I can get it.

I am way off track. I always am, so anyway. I have thousands of pictures of these children. Pictures, videos, gifs, audio recordings, some printed out, many posted to various social media sites, some on this blog, and a boatload on my computer, that is then split between multiple offsite and on site backups. These children are written in the ink of the internet. With google photos i can search for them based off there faces, and scroll back through a timeline of their lives. Watch them go from infants to the children I see every morning, and you may have issues with the little devices we all carry around that keep us connected 24-7, but I am so grateful for all it.

I am not one to take a million pictures of everything either. I prefer to experience things most of the time and keep the phone tucked away, but during the years I was putting in crazy hours and not seeing my children till sunday, I loved that my wife could snap a picture, or turn on a video chat. It's no replacement for the real thing, but it's so much better than nothing.

This picture I have at the top of this blog is one of my favorites. I have a copy of it that has been on almost all my fridges since college. I blew it up into a poster that has been on the walls of all the places I have lived. I have no idea what was going on that day, I don't remember anything from then, but I just don't have much more. I have one other pic from when we we're older, and somewhere in my moms basement is a video tape that we made where we made up commercials and had a "demolition derby" and I'll be backing that up to my hard drive as well. I was not blessed with a very good memory when it comes to people or interactions of my own life. I can't tell you how often my sisters and mother let me know that something I thought happened only happened in my head. Same with my wife. I forget voices, events, even faces. This media we all generate is something I cherish.

Sure it can swallow you up, but as I stood in front of his grave I wished facebook was a thing then. I wished we'd all had smart phones in junior high. I wish he'd had a blog. We we're all just discover AIM and ICQ. Social media consisted of the smart kids angel fire pages and hamster dance. We loved our video cameras back when they took a VHS, had we come up a few years later I know that we'd have a huge catalog of incredibly stupid videos we knew we're awesome, and no matter how dumb and cringeworthy they would be to me know I would love to have them.

I still miss my friend. One of the few I'd call a brother. I mean there's a very short list of humans I can get into a fist fight with and then go over 2 hours later to play basketball with. I wish I could've seen the man he grew into, I wish our kids could have met. I wish he could've met my wife, I think he'd approve. He was a great friend.

Love you Brett

Lets talk about my fun run.

Last Saturday at some point during the day I decided I wanted to run a marathon on Sunday. Anyone who has ever run anything over a 10k can probably understand how ill advised that was given the fact that I hadn't run more than 2 or 3 miles at once in about a year, minus the spartan run, but that is a completely different thing, I don't know why it just is. So yeah, I get a wild hair about running 26ish miles and wake up Sunday, fill a camel back with some food, Water, MCT oil, Maltodextrin powder, BCAAs and various other capital letters and compounds, stretch, and just go for it.

You can see from the pic above my times we're not great in the first half of my run, *Spoiler* it didn't get better. So Given my various problems, recovering from an ankle problem and a long term knee issue, I was taking it slow and steady from the start, trying for 10ish minute miles, playing the long game. That actually worked out really well through the first 9 miles, then my KT tape came off. Whether or now KT tape works the wonders people attribute to it, it is pretty solid for stabilization for my particular flavor of runners knee. Basically my knee typically develops a wobble around the 3 mile mark, and by mile 4 the tendons are so inflamed it becomes almost impossible to maintain a running stride. This was hugely frustrating when it happened, because back then I was averaging 7 miles a day. That injury caused me to gain back some weight and nearly derailed all my work. It also lead me straight to the type of fitness programs I do now, and that I have grown to love so much, so I'm not that bitter anymore, just a little bitter.

All "athletes", and I am going to be referring myself as one even if I don't always look like one, have something they define themselves with. For some it's squatting heavy, for many it's bench, for me for a long time it was the ability to put close to 100 miles on my feet a week, turn around and do again week over week, no excuses, no gaps it was a point of pride, not with anyone else but with me. I knew that I was overcoming all those voices that kept telling me to sit down, sleep in, and take the day off. That's powerful, finding that pride in yourself, it's a way to build strong habits that carry you through those times that motivation just isn't available, and often when you reach for motivation you're going to find it missing. So having that bit of ego and pride in yourself isn't a bad thing. It almost killed me then because I didn't know who I was after I lost the ability to run.

For awhile I biked 30ish miles every morning, but winter, rain, and a whole bunch of other factors eventually made that difficult, and I can not do the stationary bike for an 1 and half, my brain breaks. So eventually I found my way to HIIT training and then into Crossfit. Now crossfit is something I came to enjoy very quickly. The particular gym I follow is very careful about how they write workouts, always with a goal in mind, so the workouts are varied, but not directionless, which I think is the biggest pitfall of crossfit.

Ok, I am seriously wondering, but it ties in so bare with me we're heading back on track. So, how do I define myself athletically within the crossfit space? I strive to be relentless. I love collapsing after a workout. I love the feeling of knowing that I pushed my endurance right up to the red line and left it there. There is very little worse than leaving the gym knowing I went at something with anything less than everything I had. I also like crossfit because it allows me to find all my weaknesses. The wide range of workouts lets me know pretty quick what I suck at. Then you have to have the mindset of attacking that thing. If I see a movement come up two or three times and each time I think "yuck, this is going to suck" I know what movement I need to work on (*cough squats*cough rowing*cough anything with a stupid sled*). I realized about 2 months back that anytime I saw a run over 800m I was just bummed. Distance running, something that used to be therapy to me had become something I dreaded. I had let a strength become a weakness. That is a crappy thing to do to yourself. I already put in the work to make that something I was good at, then I just let it become a weakness. I was pissed.

So I had been increasing my running, and found something pretty interesting. Running distance was not hard. By that I mean it was not taxing on my conditioning. I wasn't getting short of breath, in fact at a slower distance focused pace my heart rate wasn't even getting that high. So this crazy conditioning seemed to transfer to endurance running pretty well, which was nice. What I seemed to have lost was the mental toughness to make it any appreciable distance. I would just keep talking myself out of the run.

I would be 2 or 3 miles in, then convince myself my knee was a problem, or my feet hurt, or my shoulder, or my hip, or sometimes I'd just stop. My body was fine, my brain wasn't able to hold focus. So all of this lead up to last Saturday. This wasn't about trying to get a good time, it was about whether or not I was mentally strong enough. Another spoiler, I didn't get a full 26.2, only made it 21 before my knee was having no more of it.

So circling back to somewhere up there^ around mile 9 I lost the KT tape and all the knee support (if anyone knows something good for runners knee please contact me) and the knee started to wobble. I had done some pretty extensive research and practice to try and correct my striking and stride to help stabilize, but but mile 10 my knee was locking out completely. Thus began the horrible process of walking out my knee for a few minutes, stretching, then jogging till it locked out again. I wanted to quit immediately. I hate that feeling, but I had challenged myself, not on the grounds of physical fitness but on whether or not I had the mind to do it. If I lack the strength, oh well, if I lack the will, well, that's something that keeps me up at night. So I went on. The 13.9 mark was my dads farm. I stopped in used the bathroom, stole a pack of peanut M and Ms and reapplied the baby powder (it was mostly effective). Then I sat down and started to stretch.

This is when I also started to do my best to convince myself I needed to stop. Not that I wanted to, but that I should. Gave myself all kinds of reasons, some good, most focused around my knee. I think I was there 10 or 15 minutes, before I found myself walking out and heading back down the road. I do mean found myself. I was still trying to find a way to keep myself in that office till my wife could come get me, when my legs picked me up and took me back down the road. Thus began a very 2 sided argument that lasted till my wife picked me up.

See at this point I was a little loopy. I had a large amount of pain coming from my knee, I was exhausted, and I just really didn't want be out there. I knew my wife wouldn't care, she'd know that I did a half marathon on a whim, and she always finds me super impressive anyway..... really... she does.......:(.... but she wasn't going to care that I quit. No one else really knew what I was up to, so they weren't going to care. So what kept me rolling? No matter what I said to myself a little voice in my head kept whispering back "you'll know", the more desperate my arguments got the louder that voice got. "You'll know, move, keep moving, you'll know" So I kept going, got loopier, started talking out loud, but I kept moving my feet. I know that some people put marathons away like it's nothing, but I am 200 pounds and it wears on you.

I am still not sure about when I stopped. I am pretty proud of 21 miles, but I wonder if I could have pushed through for the other 5.2. I think I could have done it. I also think at that point I was seriously risking injury. It's hard to be objective when you're that tired, but my right leg was getting hard to bend, and even my walk was developing a serious limp. So I think I did the smart thing, but I am going to get those 5.2. I am going to find a way to heal this knee and I am going to run that thing unbroken.

That little voice in my head "you'll know" is something I think we all need to cultivate. It's the will to get out of bed every morning when you really dont want to, its the drive to pick the bar back up when every muscle in you body is on fire and you just gotta have one more thruster, that little voice is the difference between feeling pretty good about getting a workout in and basking in the glory of knowing you pulled everything out of yourself you could, and that's good feeling. Pursing that on a regular basis is something worth doing.