Skill
Rope climbs
3 assents each
WOD
"Annie"
50 – 40 – 30 – 20 – 10
Double-unders
Sit-ups
Post time and how much you love/hate double unders to comments.
Tyson throwing the grenade during the CFT – great form!
How Do You Deal?
What we do is hard. Make no mistake about it, we all understand that what happens in the box seems borderline insane, at least to the uninitiated. Have you seen the look in your friends' and families' eyes when you tell them what your WOD was? It's a mix of confusion, disbelief and maybe a little fear! But that's why we do it. We understand that by virtue of the difficulty, we become stronger.
And some days are harder than others. This varies by the person because we're all different. There certainly are some WODs that all of us look at and know right away will suck. And then sometimes there are WODs that you look at and say, "I got this". Those are good days. It's good for us to come in and know you're going to crush the WOD because every movement is "in your wheelhouse". As people, we need these WODs. We need to come in, blow it up, and walk out feeling great. It's good for the ego. It validates what you're doing. Though sometimes rare, these are beneficial feelings.
Somedays are not that way. Some days are the opposite. Some days you look at the WOD and you say, uh-oh. So how do you deal? Do you think about it all day, knots in your belly? Do you nervously walk through the door, re-confirm what you saw posted is actually on the whiteboard, and feel your heart rate pick up and your palms get sweaty, that twinge in your legs? Although maybe not as good for the ego as the situation discussed earlier, these too are beneficial feelings. On the other hand, you could look at the WOD and say, this is the perfect rest day. Or decide that there's too much going on today to get in the box. So you avoid that uneasy feeling. Maybe tomorrow's WOD will have some moves I'm more comfortable with, and then I'll get in there and blow it up. Our hope is that this type of reaction is a rarity.
You know by now, and if you don't yet, you soon will, that what we do is as much a mental game as it is physical. We train our bodies, there's no doubt. But we also train our psyche. When you see that dreaded WOD and you come in, and regardless of your time or load used, you complete that WOD, there's a sense of accomplishment. I would venture to guess that this feeling sticks with someone much longer than a WOD that comes without those strings attached. You thought about this thing all day, it impacted your mind, maybe it even impacted your body a little bit – tough to concentrate with butterflies! But you came in and gave it all you had, left nothing out there. You stood up to it and you succeeded. Life lesson? There are certainly things in this world and in your life that are more important than a single WOD. But I would like to think that consistently challenging yourself in one venue, for example the box, prepares you for other challenges you might see elsewhere. We train for life, right? Functional movements that translate to the movements we see in everyday life. Take it a step further. You're making yourself more confident, which translates to how you tackle things at work, at home, in life.
So when you see those movements that are not on your top 10 love 'em list, or you hear about how tough that WOD is from other folks, how will you deal? Embrace it, use it to make you stronger. Face it down and learn to enjoy that feeling because, as we say, that's where the good shit happens.
