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The False Concept of Monday

12/27/2017

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I find it slightly amusing that by the time Monday creeps around the corner, everyone thinks, “New week means new opportunities.” We get stuck in this mindset that somehow, Monday is much different from Sunday. The general consensus is that it’s “a day for new beginnings”. I guess it’s kind of like New Years. It gives people a chance to make things right, and to somehow recommit to something they failed at accomplishing the previous year, or the day before.

We’ve all gone out and gotten drunk off our asses for the 8th weekend in a row, promising that “next week I’ll give it up.” Everyone has had a little too much to eat for a few weeks, or maybe a few years, and promises that on Monday, they’ll “start dieting”.

But there’s no more of an opportunity to change on Monday than there is on Sunday. Monday never comes. Monday is just an illusion. A transitory savior fashioned by reluctant minds, to create some sort redemption from their short-comings of the day before. It’s an imaginary time where we commit to doing imaginary things that we wouldn’t actually have the discipline to do in reality, and that’s why living Monday-to-Monday never works. No one ever started dieting just because it’s Monday. No one stops binge drinking just because it’s Monday. No one finishes their growing stack of paper work just because it’s Monday.

My friends, Monday is a lie that you need to stop trying to believe in.

Improving is not something that can be decided to do on one day of the week instead of the other. If you constantly live with this concept in your mind that somehow once Monday rolls around everything is suddenly better, you’ll never get anywhere. What happens if you fuck up on Thursday? Do you figure, “Oh well, there’s only 3 days left to the week. I might as well enjoy it as my last 3 days before I do better on Monday!”

Every day, you have the choice to improve yourself, and to make things right. You have to choose to dedicate yourself to life-long commitments, and follow them closely on a daily basis. You can’t care so much about what the name of the day is, since doing so implies that one day is much different than the other. If we had no emotional attachment to the names for every day, we would have no “Monday” excuse to hide behind, and we might all be making a little more progress. If you can’t decide to do something TODAY there is little hope that you’ll suddenly decide to do it tomorrow. You’ll be like every other procrastinator at the beginning of every new week.

What it really comes down to, is not whether or not you have what it takes to succeed. Your progress is determined by how much you WANT to succeed. If you really wanted what you were after, you would never make an excuse to improve yourself. You wouldn’t wait until the next day; you’d start fresh the next minute.
When it comes to change, there is no Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or Monday. There is only TODAY. It’s more than just putting in some hours at the gym, or going to work every morning. Being dedicated to what you want to get done requires sacrifice, and if you are truly dedicated, you will not make excuses to postpone your progress. Who is to say that you won’t say the same thing for the next 5 months? What happens when every week becomes a new week to “start fresh”?

Always waiting until tomorrow is no way to live your life. And chances are, if you’ve already waited until today to get something done that you should have last week, you won’t get it done tomorrow either.

​Wolfie
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Workout maturity

12/26/2017

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I remember when I first began working out, I refused to take a rest day. I loved it so much. And besides, it was only an hour a day. I started to notice a trend: by day four or five, I was lagging behind in the workouts; not performing as well as I had on workouts one, two, and three. I began resting every three days. Workout maturity…

I also used to insist on doing the prescribed weights. This was the case even if it meant the range of motion wasn’t desirable and it would take me longer to finish a workout than it actually should. I would round my back in deadlifts and press out heavy snatches. Then, I got injured. This is something I still struggle with at times, but usually, I remind myself to scale when necessary for my own benefit. Workout maturity…

I used to want to fix everything at once~get a heavier deadlift, snatch, get consecutive muscle-ups, rep out strict handstand push-ups, master the butterfly pull-up~ Then, I realized that I was driving myself crazy; never leaving the gym feeling accomplished. So, I decided to work on 1-2 goals at a time. Oddly enough, I began achieving more. Workout maturity…

I used to go like a bat outta’ hell at the “3, 2, 1, GO!” Pacing, what??? Blow my load in the first two minutes? Most definitely. Then, I learned my threshold. I learned how hard I could go, and how hard I could maintain. I learned to run the same pace for my first 800, and for my fifth. Workout maturity…

I used to mentally collapse when someone got ahead of me in a workout. Call it quits. Admit defeat. But then I learned, four rounds, five rounds, or twenty minutes is a long time…I’ll catch-up. Workout maturity…

You see, we don’t expect adolescents and teenagers to know everything, for they’re new at navigating through this life thing. Well, most of us are new to Flow (and even a couple of years is still new). Why do we expect so much from ourselves right from the get-go? Why can we not wait for our Workout maturity to naturally develop?

Sure, you should take advice from your coaches, the wonderful web-based world of twitter posting coaches, and other athletes that may know more than you, but, many times, you will learn things on your own.
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You’ll mature…
Wolfie
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Forgetting to Quit

12/19/2017

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One of my favorite quotes related to training is by Emil Zatopek: “When a person trains once, nothing happens. When a person forces themselves to do a thing a hundred or a thousand times, then he certainly has developed in more ways than physical. Is it taining? That doesn’t matter. Am I tired? That doesn’t matter, either. Then willpower will be no problem.”

When you’re new to training, especially training the way we do here at Flow, it’s shocking to your body. Your body tells you to quit, to give up and do something easier– like sit down and catch your breath, or just go slower. It’s easy to eat garbage or just not go to the gym.

But after you force yourself to workout a hundred or a thousand times, after you ignore the desire to give up every workout, you get to a point where you forget that quitting is an option. It’s not that you’re ignoring the voice in your head that tells you slow down, it’s not that you are resisting the urge to quit. It’s that you’ve ignored that voice and resisted that urge so many times that you have completely forgotten that stopping is even possible. You’ve temporarily forgotten what it means to quit.

If you know what I mean, then good for you. If you doubt, don’t worry, you’ll get there.  Just be persistent, come to the gym when you’re supposed to and make yourself finish every workout– even if you’re the last one done. Don’t let yourself be a quitter and before you know it, you’ll forget that quitting was ever possible.

Wolfie
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It’s a Fine Line…

12/11/2017

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It’s a Fine Line…
 
It’s a fine line between hard-ass and dumb-ass.
 
Working out you walk this line on a regular basis. At Flow, we try to almost always err on the side of hard-ass and not dumb-ass. This typically comes down to being smart about exercise volume and intensity.
 
I would also say, from personal experience, guys(and some gals) have more of a proclivity to want to err on the side of dumb-ass. This obviously doesn’t only apply to working out, but that’s where we’ll keep our focus. For example, things like Hero WOD’s are designed not to build your fitness, but rather to test it, along with your mental fortitude and resolve. Can you will yourself to get through this particularly grueling workout?
 
For those of you that were here, remember back to  when we did “Murph”. I love the significance of that particular workout, and the tradition we’ve developed with performing it every year. I also know that I was sore for literally an entire week after doing it. Being sore for a week might sound hard-ass when telling your friends or co-workers, but in my book that’s a surefire indicator of being a dumb-ass.
 
Experience tells me that’s inevitable to a certain extent, but we want to reduce the frequency of our stupidity in the gym over the long haul. Instead, let’s focus on simply training hard and training smart so that we are able to train with consistency and make improvements sustainably.

​Wolfie
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