Blogs & Workouts
The novice's curse is manifested as excessive adornment, silly creativity, weak fundamentals and, ultimately, a marked lack of virtuosity and delayed mastery. If you're ever had the opportunity to be taught by the very best in any field you've likely been surprised at how simple, how fundamental, how basic the instruction was. The novice's curse afflicts learner and teacher alike. Physical training is no different
No matter your level of immersion into all things CrossFit, you may have heard the name Ben Bergeron. Bergeron has been a long-time CrossFit coach and owner of CrossFit New England, but in recent years has earned further CrossFit fame and success with the win of his athlete Katrin Davidsdottir in the 2015 and 2016 Games. He also trains athletes Brooke Wells and Cole Sager, owns the company No Bull, and has his hand in many other health and fitness endeavors.
Last winter I read…
We spend hours and hours honing our craft in the gym, working hard, recording our results in order to improve. We encourage each other, change our eating habits, drink less, mobilize. But most of these practices are futile if we aren't taking care of what is going on between our ears. Mindset and mental toughness are the hallmarks of progress in both CrossFit and in our lives. If we aren't tending to that in the same way we are practicing our double unders, then what are we even doing?
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As a teacher, I see every day how worried kids are about their grades. They make themselves sick over a final product; one low grade on an essay can ruin their mood for the class, the day, the semester. I see them ruminating, criticizing themselves, and talking negatively about their abilities. Many of them see one low grade as a predictor of an entire failed life: a bad grade on an essay means rejection from a good college, a good job, and as a result, a good life. They often feel their performances on these assignments now will dictate their happiness for the rest of their lives.
On any given day at the box we watch each other walk in, warm up a bit or stretch, and wander over to the whiteboard. We read the day’s workout, but also check out everybody else’s scores. We have conversations with ourselves about how many rounds we think we can get based on other athletes, whether we will scale or go Rx, which level of Rx we might choose, and how we think we can perform for the day. We often make decisions about our own training in comparison to others’ performances.
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Despite Greg Glassman’s famous statement about diet in the CrossFit Journal back in 2002, “Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat,” the whole institution known as CrossFit does not advocate a specific type of diet. For a while there was a lot of talk about The Paleo Diet and The Zone Diet, and these days, the buzzword you often hear is macros.
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We are a few days into our 5 week nutrition / lifestyle / movement challenge. I got a couple of questions earlier today that I thought would be helpful to share:
Q: I've never tried to go full on paleo before, what kind of coffee creamer can I use? I got an almond milk creamer, unsweetened, but I'm not sure it fits the criteria?
Q: I don’t eat a lot of fruit, ever, so I'm nervous about snacks. Any tips would be so appreciated :)
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January is the infamous season of new beginnings. Even though I love getting on the New Year’s resolution train like everybody else, I have also recently stolen a practice from Tim Ferriss that I love: a past year review. A PYR is simply a personal inventory of the past year’s positive and negative experiences that informs future actionable choices to ensure a happier life in the upcoming year….
