Sometimes the anticipation of a thing is worse than the actual thing. You may spend hours, days, week obsessing and over analyzing what to say or what to do, and when it comes time do actually doing the thing, you're exhausted. That's because you've worked yourself up over something that you can easily control.
I sometimes do this when I'm at the gym. I'll be in the first 5 minutes of a 30 min AMRAP and freaking out because it's already hard and I'm not sure how I'm going to get through the entire workout. Worrying about the future is called anxiety, and anxiety does us absolutely no good. We can't predict the future, we can only control ourselves right now. You have no idea whether the thing you want to do in the future, e.g. compete in an event, have a difficult conversation, attempt a 1 rep max, etc. will be successful or not. There are thousands of factors that can influence the outcome. However, there is one thing for sure, one hundred precent, you unequivocally have control over and that is your thoughts and actions. If you worry and allow yourself to go into the dark hole of "what if," you will certainly stress yourself out. Your stomach will hurt, your hormones will get out of whack, and you will probably have a difficult time with that thing when it finally arrives. If you control your thoughts by recognizing that they are just things and are not the truth, then that thing in the future might not be so big and scary. Your thoughts are like clouds, just a thing that comes and goes. Just because you think something doesn't make it true. This holds for negative and positive thoughts. You can help achieve a positive outcome of future events by focusing on your actions, your words and letting go of your thoughts. If you have anxiety about a thing, take 10 deep breaths then visualize yourself successfully doing that thing. When you're faced with doing something difficult, lean in. Take some deep breaths, let go of the worry about "what if," do the work and you might be surprised at how fantastic you feel when you finally get to that difficult thing. Good luck!
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By Coach Nick It’s Wilderness medicine Wednesday again! This week I am going to be writing about map reading. I know that this does not seem directly related to medicine, but I think this is useful for a lot of reasons. Today will specifically be about contour lines which help us look at a map and understand the terrain that we will be dealing with. Knowing how to understand this can be useful in trip planning, and emergency situations. Primarily, in emergency situations we can look at terrain and make a route for evacuation that avoids dangerous areas and will help us get out of trouble faster. You may be thinking, what are contour lines and where do I find them? Well, they look like this and around found on pretty much any topographical map. An important thing to look at when it comes to contour lines is the contour interval. This tells you how much elevation change each line represents. The way to find this out is by using two known points, counting how many lines are in between and then dividing the difference. For example, in the picture above we can go to the line that shows 5600ft and count 5 lines between that and 5800 ft. We know that the difference between the 2 points is a total of 200ft, when we divide that by 5 we can see that each line represents a 40ft change in elevation. It’s important to know this scale and what units we are working with because not all maps are the same and it can be very misleading. Now that we know this information let’s talk about what it means to use. When lines are closer together, for example on the East side of the picture above it means that the elevation is changing very fast compared to when they are further apart. By using the elevation we can tell which direction that is going. So, if the were walking East on this map we would be going up in elevation, therefore heading uphill on a very steep grade. Obviously if we were walking West we would be going downhill very quickly. This is important to understand especially if we are carrying a patient or experiencing weather like snow or ice. Let’s talk about recognizing important terrain features just by looking at contour lines. Of course, recognizing mountain summits, fingers, draws, and saddles is extremely important in route planning as they can tell us where to go, or maybe more importantly, where not to go. Rather than type about it I’m going to show you a bunch of pictures of what these look like on a map and in real life. Obviously these are not all of the terrain features you will come across but these are most of the important ones. Remember, even if you are in an emergency the fastest way to get somewhere is not always in a straight line! It is vitally important to take out your map and utilize terrain to your advantage in an emergency situation!
As always I hope this post was useful and interesting to you guys! Thanks for reading and have a great week! Usually on Tuesdays I highlight the transformation story of an individual member of our gym. Today, I'm highlighting our collective amazingness.
During our quarterly Check-ins we measure body fat and weight. For some of us this produces a bit of anxiety followed quickly by surprise and happiness. That's because the majority of us are making really fantastic and healthy changes to our body composition. There's no easy way to say this, a high body fat percent correlates with a high risk of several dangerous metabolic problems. Heart disease, Type II diabetes, hypertension, and a few others are all linked to a high body fat percentage. Collectively, these problems are called Metabolic Syndrome X, and this is one of the most common and serious co-morbidities for COVID related death. All of these problems are completely preventable through diet and exercise. It's our lifestyle choices that make us healthy or unhealthy, and I'm super thrilled to say that we are a healthy group of happy people. Since our last Check-in we have collectively lost 47.5 pounds! Our men have lost about 21 pounds and our women have lost about 26.5 pounds. We have collectively lost 12.5% body fat! We have collectively gained 22 pounds of lean muscle mass! WOW! There is absolutely no question that we can change our bodies, lose weight and get lean through diet and CrossFit. WE HAVE THE DATA! This is so fantastic! Here's what I know watching all of you amazing people take charge of your health to become lean and happy. - There is no magic pill, shake or cream. - You can't out-exercise your diet. - Calories matter. - Hydration matters. - Sleep matters. - Exercise improves mental health. - Nutrition improves physical health. The folks who have had the most significant changes are working with Coach Audy (mostly women, we have only ONE MAN in the entire gym who's working with her). It's no wonder that our ladies are outpacing our men at making progress and getting learner and healthier. Most folks who are making the biggest changes are also using some kind of wearable technology be it a Whoop, FitBit, Garmin, Polar or Sunto device. These devices place our lifestyle choices front and center and we are making healthier choices in response to the data. I look forward to seeing what our Fall Check-ins bring. I will be excited to report continued positive changes to our body composition and hearing all of your happy stories of improved sleep and performance. Until then, if you want to change your composition and get your nutrition habits in check. Book a nutrition consultation with Coach Audy ASAP! If you are interested in joining us on our Whoop journey, use my link to get your first month free. If you're already a Whoop user, join our True Spirit Whoop Group with the team code: COMM-AD6416. Today is the second workout of our 3-week September Showdown. We have divided the gym into two super teams based on our median weight. Everyone below the median weight is on team WOD SLAYERS and all of us above the median weight are on team RIG SHAKERS. You can earn points for your team in the following ways: 1 point for showing up to do the workout on Monday. 2 points for getting a PR. 3 points for doing something for the first time, e.g. pull-up, toes to bar, etc. 3 points for being in the top 3 Rx or Scaled. So - all you have to do is show up and do the workouts for the next 3 Mondays and you earn a point for your team. How cool is that? Competitions are a great time to test our fitness, smash through plateaus, and expand our boundaries. Competition is culmination of our training and practice. “I hated every minute of training, but I said, ‘Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.'” - Muhammad Ali Eight WOD Slayers finished in the Top 3 Rx'd and Scaled and only 4 Rig Shakers finished in the Top 3 in last week's September Showdown Workout #1. This gave the WOD Slayers a 12 point lead. However, 3 of the 4 first place finishers are Rig Shakers. Each team had 3 people who got a PR earning 6 points for each team. Here are the top scorers for each team. Sixteen WOD Slayers completed last week's workout compared to 14 Rig Shakers. Last week's workout scored extra points for barbell weights. You earned 5 points if you deadlifted your bodyweight, 4 points for 3/4 BW, 3 points for 1/2 BW and 2 points for 1/4 BW.
Seven WOD Slayers deadlifted their bodyweight, 5 folks deadlifted 3/4 BW, 3 folks deadlifted 1/2 BW and no one deadlifted 1/4 BW. This gave the WOD Slayers a 10 point lead for a total of 67 points. Six Rig Shakers deadlifted their bodyweight, 4 deadlifted 3/4 BW, 3 deadlifted 1/2 BW and 1 deadlifted 1/4 BW for a total of 57 points. Will the Rig Shakers make up their 24 point deficit today? |
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