Landmines, I love you.

Decided this was formidable enough to bring over here from ye olde instagram.

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A post shared by Erin Farmer (@erinleefarmer)

Landmine Appreciation Post:

I’m slowly trudging my way back to feeling like I know my body (this is 5 1/2 months post partum) but really have been so grateful for all the landmine work @megsi072 has been gracing me with.

A short list of reasons landmines are your post partum frenz:

1) ego-less strength training - most humans don’t have landmine PRs in their heads and especially post partum, this helps!

2) anterior core emphasis (i.e. the part of you that just got blown open…)

3) loads of rotational stability in all the planes happening depending on what movement you’re crushing (the bar is always trying to roll down or away from you…)

4) stability training with just the right amount of reference to give you instability with a weird constant perception of symmetry (and, as @tonygentilcore has noted in his post on landmine training, an easy reference for beginners starting to hinge or press)

5) SPEAKING OF PRESSING - post baby shoulders are hellaciously tight and tired - landmine presses buttress you against anything truly uncalled for during this time of high shoulder stress

6) as shown in the second vid here - the lever arm can change easily which makes landmine training lovely for grip training (you can hold the sleeve or the shaft of the bar), simple and slight variations in load, and HEY you too can use your old self-embroidered lifting straps like this

7) accessibility: I use a poor man’s landmine set up here - barbell on a very used Airex pad and I’ve honestly never missed the fancier set ups.

Anyway, landmines, I love you.

Encountering Silence: 10 Ways to Cultivate Mindfulness as a Habit (Part 2 of 2)

In the (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction) MBSR courses I have been a part of there is always a point in the eight weeks of 3-hour long classes that students are asked to pick a part of their daily life to practice mindfulness. Within the course students have been asked to practice mindful meditation for 20-30 minutes at a time every day. Introducing mindfulness into a daily task is suggested because - and I hope you’re ready for this harsh reality - but if you can only be mindful when you’re perched on your meditation cushion in a cloud of sage, you haven’t quite reached the heart of what has made a mindfulness practice really powerful.

As a reminder, being mindful is not a mysterious nirvanic achievement. It is “paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally,” (Jon Kabat Zinn). The present moment is just that: wherever you are, whenever you are - fleeting by nature. Your quietest times of meditation are always worthwhile as a practice, but if we cannot bring this spirit of paying attention into our sleepy mornings, rainy Mondays, and hurried conversations, we’re missing out.

Some of the suggestions below may seem crazy to some of you who haven’t even touched a mindfulness practice and some of you may already be on your 300th day of one hour a day mindful meditation (seriously, you guys are mystifying to me). These ideas come from people I have studied under, students I learned alongside, and my own need to create space when life starts to feel a bit too tight. Whoever and wherever you are, I hope these ideas inspire and sustain your moment-to-moment practice.

1. Meditate while moving. The first is for those of you who are horrified at the idea of meditating in silence. In one of my first courses, a fellow student was struggling (as I still do!) with the body scan variation of meditation. This meditation is often recommended for people who struggle with falling asleep - so that should tell you why it can be problematic. My classmate said she had started using the body scan meditation when running. This practice changed both her outlook on the length of her run and the content of her meditation. Another person in this same class said they had started doing it on their commute - you know, without closing your eyes. Imagine how different traffic might feel?

2. Listen while you walk. The second practice comes from my mindfulness mentor, Aleezé Moss. There is a meditation called loving kindness or metta meditation that is often practiced in the final sessions of MBSR courses. One of my favorite samples of it can be found here. She mentioned in one class that she sometimes uses this (by memory) when she is walking from place to place in the city. Imagine your walk with the following phrases rumbling about in your head: “May you be peaceful. May you be happy. May you be as strong as you are able. May you live with ease of well-being.”

3. Lose the headphones. I can remember a time when I always had headphones in my pockets because I could never go from place to place without listening to music along the way. I’m not here to condemn or judge those of you who, like me, just enjoy when life looks like a musical. I have totally done that thing you do when you’re having a dead-in-the-eyes day and you put on your favorite beats to psych you up for a gym session that you don’t really want to go to. But really, I am here to question our habits and to tell you that I haven’t the faintest idea where my headphones are right now. It can be healthy to take a break from the norm of blocking out the outside and instead, letting sound (and maybe even thoughts?) in. I’ve been heckled too (seriously - even while very noticeably pregnant). I know these can sometimes be a protective measure. But I don’t want to reduce music to a defense mechanism anymore than I want to miss out on the birds that sometimes sing behind the hecklers.

4. Notice your transitions. This comes from a mentee within my mindfulness program at Jefferson. This one is pretty simple: when you get somewhere new in your day, take 1-minute to “check-in”. Checking in can be as simple as taking a few mindful breaths or seeing what’s in your mind (Anxiety? Excitement? Nothing much?) or even simply listening and looking with the intent to really see where you are.  This practice could have a huge effect on how you meet your day, your meetings, or your family. In my own past life as a business owner, I would often schedule my times of formal practice for mindfulness around transitions - before or after often stressful meetings or conversations. This checking-in doesn’t need to be formal though, it can happen in a breath; it’s the pause that makes the biggest difference.

5. Eat mindfully. It’s not the first time you’ve ever heard it, I’m sure, but eating mindfully cannot only “make” your food taste better, ease your digestion, and automatically reinforce better nutrition choices - it can also give you an opportunity to be present in your normal everyday life. I love this short pithy video from Thich Naht Hanh on mindful eating: “Breakfast is an opportunity to practice.” This means you have to be doing just what you’re doing - eating. I, like the rest of 21st century humanity, often “unwind” by eating with technology, a book, a friend, etc. If the idea of going without these mechanisms for an entire meal sounds crazy to you, I might recommend beginning with a mindful cup of tea or coffee. Abstain from obvious distractions for a full cup, and watch the never-before-released present unravel before you.

6. When you walk your dog, walk your dog. This one’s obviously going to play to a more specific audience but it’s been mentioned so much in my classes that I’ve got to include it.  In the first mindfulness class of the 8-week course we are asked to place stickers (STICKERS!!!) in individual places where we might find it useful to pause for a moment of mindfulness.  One of the first places that came to mind for me was our dog leash. Maddox is a gem (as most of you know) but walking him can still feel like a chore sometimes as he likes to exert his maleness over every single solitary tree in Philadelphia. It’s amazing how different a walk feels when I try to walk like he does versus the other way around. I like him so much more! Mable on the other hand is a bit of a trigger for my stress-levels as of late as she can be a little leash-aggressive and tends to walk more like a sidewinder than a dog. At the end of the day though, she walks with slight paranoia paired with a slight amount of joy. I try to let myself enter into the joy bit to actually appreciate walks with her. She notices everything. I notice nothing. Isn’t it the ideal mindfulness habit to take walks with your dog where you try to actually walk like your dog does anyway - in the present? Something tells me having a kid is going to double my need for this type of practice.

7. Brush your teeth mindfully. You need to brush your teeth for at least two minutes anyway. Why not really embrace those two minutes in silence?

8. Do your best noticing in the shower. You know those times when you’re in the shower and you suddenly realize that you can’t remember if you’ve conditioned your hair yet? This is for you guys. And for me. Full disclosure: I shower only every three days or so (long story for another time) so this habit does retain a bit of its novelty when I give it a go. I find it best to ask myself some questions: What do I feel like? What is the feeling of water on my skin? What are the smells I am smelling? What is the sound of water falling like? There’s even a whole New York Times article about this one!

9. Laundry. This one has become all the more real to me as my pregnancy-related insomnia has increased. I wake up around 4am and since I can’t sleep, I fold laundry quietly in our bathroom. Usually this is about the same time that the baby decides to let me know it’s awake too so I enjoy sitting there with nothing to do but fold and feel. It’s kind of precious. I don’t know that I get to this moment in the same way when it’s Sunday night and I’m hurrying through a load that’s been chucked on our bed before it’s time to change the sheets and hop in them before the week begins. I’d encourage you to give it a go. Fold in the quiet and see how different it feels.

10. Dishes. Every now and then when I wash the dishes, a quote from Thich Naht Hanh’s book, The Miracle of Mindfulness pops into my head: “If while washing dishes, we think only of the cup of tea that awaits us, thus hurrying to get the dishes out of the way as if they were a nuisance, then we are not "washing the dishes to wash the dishes." What's more, we are not alive during the time we are washing the dishes. In fact we are completely incapable of realizing the miracle of life while standing at the sink. If we can't wash the dishes, the chances are we won't be able to drink our tea either. While drinking the cup of tea, we will only be thinking of other things, barely aware of the cup in our hands. Thus we are sucked away into the future -and we are incapable of actually living one minute of life.” You guys, it is SO hard to just wash dishes! From the other end of the spectrum, I love the writing of Brother Lawrence, a 17th century French monk on this topic:

O Lord of pots and pans and things,

Since I have no time to be

a great saint by doing lovely things,

or watching late with Thee,

or dreaming in the dawnlight,

or storming Heaven’s gates,

Make me a saint by getting meals,

and washing up the plates.

Warm all the kitchen with Thy Love,

and light it with Thy peace;

Forgive me all my worrying,

and make my grumbling cease.

Thou who didst love to give men food

in room, or by the sea,

Accept the service that I do-

I do it unto Thee.

I think it’s important not to forget the whole point of my practice of mindfulness and silence in the first place: I want to be alive to my life. I want to show up. This picture for this post was taken directly after my week of silence in Taizé. Look how not silent my mouth looks! After spending a week without speaking to anyone I ran into a boisterous college student from Chicago named Isaac while waiting for the bus in the midday sun for a serendipitous two hour stint. Isaac had been at Taizé on the speaking side of the fence. I hadn’t met an American in a long time. It was refreshing and weird to hear my meandering sounds make their best efforts at answering his many questions. What was silence like? Did I want to speak? Was it hard? What did I learn?

I’m still learning, Isaac. I love silence… most of the time; much more than I thought I would as someone who loves talking and words. But sometimes silence is hard, empty, dull, or frustrating. I want to speak first. I want to listen to music. I want to distract myself. All of these times will still happen, and do. But intentionally placing times of silence and mindfulness in my life keeps me aware of how much I’m coping with versus how much I’m choosing the texture of my attention. When I want to break silence, I want to know it’s worth it.

If you made it all the way to the end and you’ve still not been struck by any of these practices as resonating with you, I’d encourage you to check out David Geller’s fantastic series of articles on Meditation for Real Life.  And of course, if I can be clearer or helpful to you anyway, please feel free to reach out!  Thank you for reading!

To read about my experience at Taizé, check Part 1 of this post out.

Encountering Silence: Away from Home, Part 1 of 2

If you are reading this now, and you have the opportunity to take pause, simply listen. Wherever you are - it’s clear that what you are hearing is not the lack of sound, or presence. Silence is loud. There is always something living in it. It is the way we begin to really hear what is happening in the world around us, in the movements of those near us, and in ourselves. A week in silence is more about fullness than absence.

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to spend a week in silence in Taizé. Taizé is a community in Southern France run by an order of monks who choose to devote their lives to creating a space for young people to encounter silence, song, and the sacred. On any given day in the summer, the small town is overrun by five thousand young people and a small assortment of people older than “young”.

Taizé was originally created by Brother Roger in the aftermath of World War II. Prejudice abounded in France towards Germans, and Brother Roger chose to set up in a part of France specifically designed to encounter “the enemy”. This spirit of reaching out to the stranger and the outcast has continued to this day. The week prior to my arrival Taizé had bravely hosted a series of workshops on encountering refugees in Europe. 

A week of silence for most meditation instructors is a bit of a rite of passage. Up until this, I had done retreats with evenings of “companionable silence” (i.e. nod hello, say please and thank you, but don’t speak until after breakfast). I have also done days of silence through Jefferson’s Mindfulness Program. I wanted my first experience with prolonged silence to be in the contemplative Christian setting. I hope to do another week soon in a more ecumenical setting. 

For those not familiar, although most conventional American church services today will bear no more than thirty seconds of silence before feeling pretty squirmy, the Christian tradition as a whole has a contemplative meditation practice going as far back as the first century - only roughly forty years after the writing of the latest composed Gospel. Taizé provided me with a chance to see what one interpretation of meditative silence could look like. 

Every morning I wake in a tent on a French countryside. Most mornings it has just rained. About fifty visitors are sequestered in a corner of Taizé’s property specifically designated for silence. Morning prayer takes place seated in a large, modern auditorium at 0815. There is singing in more than four languages, yawning, and communion. The first food you have every day is the sacrament - that is - if you want to receive it. After morning prayer, I wordlessly meander through a crowd of young people to find my fellow silent sojourners under a tent. We eat a piece of bread, butter, jam, and powdered hot drinks looking out over the countryside. 

Once the dishes have been stacked and sent away, we stare out at the field in front of us until Sister Croix arrives. The sister rides in on a bicycle. Her hair is cropped. She has glasses. She usually wears an orange sweater which she inevitably removes about twenty minutes into meeting. She smiles as she speaks. And she speaks at least three languages: German, English, French. Sister Croix arranges for translators and within no time, her words are - sentence, by sentence - being transformed into Korean, Polish, German, and French. She explains that silence is more about learning to listen than it is about learning to cease talking. She says we will be silent unless we need to speak, or unless we would like to sing. She gives us a few passages to study, some suggestions about a style of reading scripture called lectio divina but she doesn’t call it this - she simply tells us to read, to listen, to write down what we think, pray the ‘Our Father’ “and then Basta”. 

We mosey away from this meeting a bit stupefied. When she says, go be quiet and pray, we think, ‘But how?’ When she explains these passages of the Bible that we have heard a thousand times, they sound different: new. She says of the paralytic brought to Jesus, ‘We are all paralyzed sometimes. But healing does not happen because we ask for forgiveness, it happens before forgiveness occurs, and then we - in response - wake up, and carry our stories home with us’. 

In front of my tent, I have set up a hammock. I sit in the hammock occasionally waving away the bees, reading, writing, listening - still stupefied. I am surprised what comes from nothing. 

Midday prayer is at 1220. The bells ring again and the whole of humanity in this small place is drawn in our hungry stupor to the chapel again. Midday prayer is songs, kneeling, the reading of the Bible in six different languages. Then lunch happens. Lunch is bigger; mostly vegetarian. There is always a way to squirrel away a bit of extra cheese or fruit. There’s also time to indulge in that most revered of silences: the post-lunch afternoon nap. This is good because it’s a long time until dinner. This is also glorious because silence is sometimes sleep.

In the afternoon we are encouraged to be active in some way; to wander out into a field, stretch our legs, or in my case, find some movement to be doing. Every day I’m there is an adventure in navigating the humans in Taizé finding my penchant for intensity a bit out of place and trying not to set my workout on top of an anthill. There are horses, sheep, cows, and geese wherever I go. It’s grand, beautiful - about twenty degrees celsius - and sunny. 

After being active, I sit down in my tent with both vents open, eat my squirrel snack, and start reading and listening again. My breathing is elevated and this makes meditation easier in some ways. I am less tempted by the surrender of sleep. Instead, I walk out into the sun, and feel the warmth of the day, the din of the green world around me, and distant voices. 

Then, at 1800, it’s time to wash the bathrooms. With a chorus of Italian, Brazilian, and British women I am staring at my reflection in the mirror, scraping hair from the sinks - for a blissful moment - discussing the correct translation for ‘squeegee’.  I figure out how to refill soap and paper dispensers with humble glee. The work is wonderful. We feel for a moment, I think, that we have an occupation, a service, some great thing such as this - a clean bathroom - to offer our fellow pilgrims. We serve each other without a word. We smile softly and communicate relief and satisfaction when we are done. We take down our makeshift “closed for cleaning” sign with redemptive fervor. 

I walk through the dust to dinner. I sit on the grass and think over, and over, about how the trees really do look like they are clapping their hands. I clap my hands for dinner at 1900 too. Dinner is about as big as lunch - with an occasional surreal piece of fish or sausage. Occasionally, we run out of food. Occasionally, I notice someone chewing. One night, there is only yogurt for dinner and since we are silent - we just sit and eat in spite of ourselves. I think often on these nights that it’s incredible how much of our lives are spent complaining or wishing for things that just won’t come. 

If I have skimpy dinner, though, I lean heavily on the jerky that I have trekked from the U.S. to Switzerland to France. I eat this in the gloaming before evening prayer - my favorite service of the day. At 2030 there is a sense in the chapel that we are dying to the day, that we do not know that we will resurrect to our mornings filled with bees and bread. It is all up to chance. There are candles flickering, and my soul feels peaceful. The light of day leaves the windows and we walk out of the chapel into the great quiet of the night. 

I sit in my tent, nursing a pocketed piece of chocolate reading a novel, or checking on the world outside of this canvas. In the distance, I hear a throng of young voices singing. They are more than a choir; they are insistent. A bit closer, I hear a violin playing out Taizé songs; simple melodies that sound like you know where they are going or where they have been even if you are hearing them for the first time.  I can hear my neighbors rolling over in their beds, rustling in the leaves, the thoughts in my head. 

This is what a day is like. And there’s more than this to say, but I think the silence is meant to be a bit of a secret. You must go there to find what it says to you, what you are always saying to yourself. 

What I have learned about a week in silence is that the first few days are a relief.  By the third day, everyone wants to laugh: about the flimsy benches that we all keep forgetting to measure when we sit down and fall over, about the way the men have decided to clean the bathrooms shirtless because it is insufferably hot, about how we are filled with so much but saying so little. By the fourth and fifth day, we are a bit more somber, with revolving doors for brains, praying without ceasing.

On Saturday - the last day many of us are there - we are bowled over with love. We are the poor in spirit, and we have seen God. We cannot contain ourselves, though we do not know each other’s names. I hug the women I clean with. I smile at the vegan who gave me all her protein all week long.  A man I have never spoken with gives me a card and a candle and blesses me with a saying from Teresa of Avila. Sister Croix says, ‘Maybe tonight, and all nights we can just think of three things we are thankful for, say thank you, the Our Father, and then Basta?’

One man cries out for the rest of us at our last meeting, “What should we do at home? What will we read?”  Another says, “Why does everything you are saying to us sound so different than what is sounds like at home?” Sister Croix grins, and says, “Who said it was supposed to be easy?”  

I sit in the glow of the day waiting for the bus thinking about what I could say about silence (ah, the irony...). The truth is even now, I feel that my words can’t speak for silence. The silence is ineffable - shouting at us that all of the burdens, business, and bullshit that we throw in the way of “what is” chokes what surrounds us. We can love in action more than we think. We can hurt with words more than we would dream. We can hear more in the quiet than we have spoken into it.

Hypertrophy and Weightlifting: Y u do this?

We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones.

- Henry David Thoreau

Does hypertrophy play a part in training for and competing in Olympic weightlifting? If so, how does it support those goals?

In short, absolutely.

• for competitive and recreational weightlifters alike, hypertrophy training also acts as a protective measure against injuries caused by the inherent imbalance of sport specificity.

• for recreational weightlifters, physiological symmetry is a means to better power production and positioning. Most of these athletes have sedentary jobs (like the rest of us) and/or come to the sport from a largely untrained background. This means that creating mass in the right place is a huge part of longevity and productivity in the sport.

• for weightlifters of all types, hypertrophy work can also provide a means to fixing weaknesses in weightlifting, i.e. a poor Split Jerk receiving position can be corrected by better technique but also by a better glute and hamstring balance to quad-dominance, better midline balance created by lower back symmetry, and the presence of more upper back mass to support the load overhead.

• for competitive athletes that are under in their weight class, it is an opportunity to "fill out" their weight class fully by adding mass that will add to their performance (muscle, not fat).

How do you best like to incorporate hypertrophy training?

For most of my weightlifting clients, when I incorporate hypertrophy training depends on the client. For primarily competitive athletes I implement hypertrophy dominant cycles and back away from this extra demand on the body as we get closer to competition. For recreationally lifting clients that train in the morning (and generally for my more mobile and less stabile clients), I find that supersetting accessory work specific to hypertrophy prior to heavier lifting does not take away from their big lifts and instead allows them to be more thoroughly prepped for the work to come. For clients that lift in the evening, I prefer to include accessory work specific to hypertrophy after conditioning pieces for those who have them, and even as a substitute for conditioning pieces for clients who don't typically want conditioning pieces. Yes, it’s a tad sneaky, but it works very well! I find this allows the body physiologically and mentally to cool down and promotes good recovery which is critical in a sport this neurologically demanding.

What are your some of your go-to moves?

For most weightlifters, the opportunity presented in accessory work is to correct imbalances presented by sport specificity (i.e. single sided movement in the split jerk and spending the majority of their time in the sagittal plane). The most common weaknesses I see inform the modalities I use for hypertrophy work but of course, every athlete is different! That said, most athletes need thoracic extension work, low and mid-trap strength, multi-directional mid-line stabilization, and a strong emphasis on single leg stability and posterior chain strength.

Though many of the movements I prefer come from the wide world of bodybuilding, a lot of them come from traditional gymnastics. For instance, every weightlifting athlete should be able to hold a perfect hollow and a perfect arch hold for at least a minute. But ownership of these basic gymnastics positions isn’t necessarily the limit for weightlifters. I am a firm believer in the power of pull-ups to buttress the shoulders and trunk for weightlifting. Every grip is important for the weightlifter as we spend the majority of our time pronated. One of my earliest coaching mentors was a body-building coach who used to scream at me from across the gym every time I would do pull-ups: “Pull-ups make your back like a map!” Besides being a little outspoken, he was also correct!

For low trap and mid-trap strength I prefer challenging the strength of these smaller groups beyond what a conventional physical therapist’s prescription might be, but with movements that are often thought as solely “corrective” in nature. For athletes being challenged by movements like the Snatch and the Clean and Jerk, more strength is needed in these peri-scapular muscle groups than simple un-loaded work. Movements like lying t’s and i’s, and bottoms up turkish get ups seem to yield excellent advances overhead when progressed to the point of load at higher rep ranges. This is just as critical for competitive weightlifting athletes - as shown here by Lu Xiao Jun himself, PRing your accessory work is no small matter. The more competitive the athlete, the more opportunity there is for making the work sport-specific as in the example of the Behind-The-Neck Snatch Squat Press. If weightlifters do not start out confident for high reps in this position, they should eventually get there.

One of my current mentors, Coach Mike McKenna, believes that all athletes should have “hamstrings that look like they have VW beetles parked on the back of each leg.” While it’s obviously very popular to champion glute-dominant posterior chain hypertrophy (and I do!) I think single-sided hamstring strength is just as vital to the weightlifter. Because weightlifting is almost 100% concentric, creating symmetrical strength between concentric and eccentric control is paramount. Specific to the hamstrings and single leg work this means spending a lot of time with single leg banded eccentric hamstring curls, super slow single leg romanian deadlifts, single leg hip extensions, holds, and negatives on the Glute Ham Developer, and getting really good at keeping a neutral spine in hamstring dominant positions. Louie Simmons said, “Remember, it not quad-dominant, it is hamstring weak,” and this mindset has inspired my emphasis.

Goal-setting for New Years: Where's your ladder headed?

Make sure your ladder's leaning up against the right wall. 

Drilling holes for a new pull-up bar in the basement of the second CFCC space. 

This is a piece of advice that has been extremely compelling to me in the last year or so. Truth be told, I can't even remember where I heard it. 

I think it's a very common thing to believe that excellence, the pride of a thing done well, and generally working hard is an inherently good thing. There's a part of me that has both taught and truly believed this in the past. But today, I think I hear the admonition to work hard with a caveat: work with the end in mind. 

As people settle into January, our collective tendency (mine included) is to start fresh, to break ties with old habits, and to begin remaking ourselves all over again. Before you are bogged down with the rush of it all, I'd invite you to take a second and really think about why you want something. 

Do you want that success at work because you feel that this will make you happy? Do you want that budding relationship because you feel that this will make you happy? Do you want the house or car of your dreams because you feel that this will make you happy? Do you want to fit into that size pant because this (yes, this!) will make you happy? 

Let me be frank: I have lived through phases of working tirelessly at a business, working hard to make a name for myself, gritting my teeth to make everyone happy, and working hard to look and feel a certain way. For a long time, I thought: "One day when I am done with this I will stop and love my family, reconnect with my friends, and provide time for myself to do other things that I enjoy - then, I will be happy." 

Over the summer, I was challenged by a mentor to think of my personal values from an entirely different perspective than I had been used to. I was always told to think of what I wanted right now to understand what my values were. If you had asked me three years ago I would have said: creating a thriving business that supports my staff and members, and physical excellence through CrossFit and weightlifting. Honest to goodness, I don't know that I would have said a thing about my family or my friends.

I was asked often through this time, "what do you want?"  And told, "follow that thing!"

This became a kind of infuriating prompt to me. 

I want to go out on a limb and say that there may be a problem with following after "what we want".  What we want, is not always what's best for us in the long run. I don't think we are as wise as we think we are. We are all two year olds. "I want what's in front of me." "I don't want to go to bed." "I don't want to eat my vegetables." "I want more."

Simply put, I don't buy that happiness is as basic as getting what you want. The big question is, can we re-align our loves? How does this happen if so? Is it even possible? Can we want to want something? And for me, can we want to want what is best for us instead of what is easy?

This past summer I was asked instead to think about my values the other way around: to think instead, "At the end of my life, when I look back, what do I want the high points of my time on earth to be?" This shifted my gaze from my slightly muffled present, to a hopeful future version of myself. I thought, "If I lived all my life, and never felt that I had time to learn to love to my friends and family, I would die with great regret." This has nothing to do with clean and jerks, you guys! 

I shocked myself with my answer. 

Here's the greatest illusion of all: none of us knows how much time we have on earth. We don't know if we will live to a ripe old age of smarmy sooth-saying or walk out our doors to trail our dogs behind us and keel over mid-step. Therefore the time to know what you want to live for, the time to lean your ladder against the right wall is now. In fact, it is more than now. It is always now. It is every day when you wake up, every breath you breathe, and every moment you are able to become conscious of the chance to lean towards what you want to want. 

I've been reading Walden during my Sabbatical and this passage has been specifically inspiring: 

“The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred million to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.

-Henry David Thoreau”

I don't believe the perfect opportunity to take time to really care about what we say we care about ever comes to us - we have to wake up, and claim it right where we are. No one is ever going to stand right in front of you and like Willy Wonka, grace you with the golden ticket to life balance. We must learn, and I am still learning, to say 'no' to some things in order to say 'yes' to others. Frustratingly, we have to learn to do this not only day-by-day, but literally moment-by-moment. 

This occasionally means climbing back down a ladder we thought was giving us a leg up. As many in fitness know, doing anything backwards is never as easy as moving forward, but it must be dealt with, and it must be done. 

When I was in New Zealand I spent the better part of my time there hiking a trail called the Routeburn. Along the Routeburn there is a summit that is about a mile off the main trail which affords brilliant perspective to the surrounding mountain spires. The way up to the summit is also quite steep and particularly jagged and typically a bit wet. The tricky part of all of this, is that if you do decide to go up, the weather is very unpredictable and you can sometimes go up and see nothing at all. 

The day I went up many of our party stayed down below and I figured it wouldn't take that long to go up and "YOLO". It rained most of the way up and was a bit of a trudge but I survived. When we got to the top it was absolutely freezing but I could see where we were headed, and where we had come from. It was stunning, but also - merely a moment of the journey. 

The way down in fact, was far more treacherous than the way up. My husband, Arrus, ended up accidentally crushing his phone along the way and a few in our party just flat out fell very hard multiple times as they climbed. 

The view.

Some paths help us to see better where we need to go, but they aren't the end goal. Often the longer, higher, or harder the path has been, the more terrifying it will be to come down. In my twenties, I feel like I have had to learn to be brave enough to ascend. In my thirties, I am feeling lately that I have had to learn to be brave enough to descend. 

The truth is, I don't know if we ever really "get" where we are going. We choose the paths we walk, the company we keep. I believe we can choose what we want. As Annie Dillard says,

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”

We spend it on coffee, on sleep, on training, on friends, on family, on cell phones, on books, on walking, on biking, on driving, online, on waiting in line, but we spend it. And we have the autonomy we have always sought. We can use what we have as we see fit. I believe we have this ability all the time - every year, month, day, hour, and moment. 

So I'd ask you now, given an image of your whole life's journey, before you set yourself to eating less, drinking more water, and pursuing that never-ending picture of a perfect you, is your ladder leaning up against the right wall? Will the work be worth it in the end? Is it worth it now? 

What do you want to want? 

Let me leave you with this piece by Mary Oliver: a challenge to me to be conscious: 

THE FOURTH SIGN OF THE ZODIAC (PART 3)

I know, you never intended to be in this world.
But you’re in it all the same.

So why not get started immediately.

I mean, belonging to it.
There is so much to admire, to weep over.

And to write music or poems about.

Bless the feet that take you to and fro.
Bless the eyes and the listening ears.
Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste.
Bless touching.

You could live a hundred years, it’s happened.
Or not.
I am speaking from the fortunate platform
of many years,
none of which, I think, I ever wasted.
Do you need a prod?
Do you need a little darkness to get you going?
Let me be as urgent as a knife, then,
and remind you of Keats,
so single of purpose and thinking, for a while,
he had a lifetime.

-e.

13 Things I Learned While Weightlifting

1. You can squat every day, but you can’t deadlift every day. But if you squat every day, and deadlift sometimes, your deadlift has the potential to get a lot bigger.

2. There is no such thing as fast enough. 

3. The best way to keep from being injured is to keep moving. Most anything that feels like injury is really tightness from somewhere else pulling things out of balance. To be injured less and to have better flexibility, move every day.

4. There are no more rest days. If you aren’t lifting, you can be stretching, playing, getting a massage, or watching Olympic lifting. If you aren’t doing any of those things, you should probably be lifting.

5. To be better at anything, you need to do it more often. To be the best you can possibly be at something, you need to do it every single day for a long time. Rome was not built in a day, and speed strength (the ability to move heavy loads quickly) takes more than a cycle. If you are not here, you simply have no chance of moving forward.

6. Your training partners will refine you. Keeping them afloat in the gym and outside of it is essential to your combined continued success.

7. Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do. (John Wooden). In all circumstances, you will not always have a good day, you will not always PR, you will not always feel completely healthy, but you will always be able to do what you can. Don’t leave the barbell without doing what you can.

8. Deep practice is crucial – it is the key to accelerated progress. It is not enough to complete the reps; you must learn from them. You must sincerely attempt to make every moment better than the last.

9. More finish. No, REALLY. MORE finish. You can never have enough finish in the second pull of the Olympic Lifts.

10. If your brain has convinced you that the bar is heavy, it’s never really about the number of kilos on the bar. This self-sabotage is common, but when you can, you must move beyond it. In these moments, Olympic Weightlifting is probably less about the proficiency of your lifts and most about your ability to examine yourself and move beyond any beliefs about your own inadequacy. It will be frustrating to do so, but it will be more than worth it.

11. If you still think that lifting weights every day is going to make you bigger – you have OBVIOUSLY never done it.

12. The bar will tell you it is heavy off the floor. Don’t believe the bar. The second pull is a decision – make it.

13. How you feel is a lie. (John Broz) You will have a great day on what feels like a good one, a bad day on what feels like a great day, and you will not feel like training all the time – regardless, you will have to learn that in any moment you are infinitely capable of more than you think. If you are patient, you will become grateful for the chance to enter every day with the opportunity to cultivate that capability.

To pull is human!

Every now and then it helps to look back on where you started. I started CrossFit doing banded pull-ups with the thickest band there was OR worse, jumping pull-ups. I dreamed of the ability to actually do a pull-up, let alone, more than one! 

If you're interested in becoming more proficient at pull-ups, shoot me an email! 

How Practicing Mindfulness Made Me a Happier Athlete

This past summer I was fortunate enough to be gifted a course in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (or MBSR) through Jefferson's Myrna Brind Center. During our first year of marriage, Arrus and I got the chance to dedicate 3 hours of every Wednesday evening to attending this 8-week course. Though 3 hours in the middle of the week is a big commitment for any busy individual and certainly was for us, I am so glad we invested the time - this course was nothing short of life-changing.

What is mindfulness? It is the everyday practice of moment-to-moment non-judgmental awareness. 

I have always been someone who approached fitness from the perspective of what it has been able to do for me spiritually, as well as physically. I know not everyone sees it that way, and that's fine enough.  For my part, I love that movement allows most of us to feel alive (even if at the end of "Fran" we are pretty sure we are actually dead).  I love that there is a curiosity inherent to beginning CrossFit that is almost as magical as the way that children first learn to walk, crawl, run, look in a mirror, and find out what falling feels like. I love that the changes we can experience through good nutrition and lifestyle habits can alter our perspective on our relationships, our days and - let's face it - our lives. CrossFit Center City exists because I have a serious addiction to bearing witness to these changes.

Sometimes though, a lot like mixing paint colors, all these colorful changes in so many lives can blend into black or worse, like a muddy gray. Life can become muted and dull in spite of being around so much vivid color. This is what mindfulness has given me: a lens to look through when the picture is too big to absorb properly. And, true to form, I want to share this with all of you.  Here is what the last year and a half of learning about mindfulness taught me about being an athlete.

1. Everything I do is impatient.

Even as I write this post I want the words to come more quickly. I have found that impatience is one of my central characteristics as a person and as an athlete. I have the sneaking suspicion that many of you are in this boat with me. To be impatient is not all bad, you get a lot done most of the time when you don't like waiting. As an athlete this may be reflected in the way you take on new challenges, learn new skills, and wait with baited breath for the whiteboard to appear.

But when you rush (and when I rush!), you miss everything. In fact, you literally miss the thing that you most wanted. Maybe you miss the intricacy of a movement pattern unfolding before you. Maybe you miss the moment that your WOD rabbit revolutionized your world. Maybe you miss celebrating the success of another or hearing someone celebrate yours. Maybe you're simply skipping a step.

It's old news, but good news: it's a relief to stop, take a look around and really get a chance to release yourself from the constant pressure of what you are eager to become, and instead breathe in the air of what you are.

2. Mindfulness is falling awake, even if you're falling asleep…

Confession: with early starts and late nights and well, being human - I struggled to stay awake through about 90% of my time in MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stressed Reduction Courses). I would spend my first few sessions wishing I had prepared better, slept more, been able to be a higher order of being and able to stay awake for unlimited amounts of time. I soon found that there were tricks to waking up: drinking coffee even though it wasn't the most zen beverage of choice, opening my eyes instead of closing them, and sitting in postures that were best for me and not always pretty.

But I eventually realized, I may always be tired. I may never be perfectly prepared. And that may never change.

Like, literally NEVER for the rest of my life.

In your training, you may always have to favor the mornings or the evening WOD after a long day. You may be in on a Saturday after another night out spending your recovery on Buffalo Billiards (been there, guys - skeeball!). You may have kids/family/spouses/roommates/dogs who keep you from doing ___fill in the blank____! Whatever your situation is, you may be powerless to change it, but you can change your attitude towards that very moment. You have the power to make the very moment you are reading this more alive than the moment before it.

You have the power to open your eyes.

3. The distraction is the meditation.

In our very first mindfulness class there was a bumblebee.

An actual bumblebee.

This softball-sized (slight exaggeration) bee was hovering above us all. And who were we? A small cohort of doctors, working professionals, new mothers, grandmothers, nurses, teachers, therapists, ex-convicts, and cancer patients - all earnestly attempting to shut out the sound of a bumblebee in an otherwise empty room. We debated openly: Could anyone remember if bumblebees were vindictive enough to sting you? Would this one bend that way? Would you be next for the swoop or me? People literally screamed... in Mindfulness Class... On the FIRST day.

I'm still not sure if that bumblebee wasn't planted as a test for us by the Myrna Brind Center.  But here is what I have learned through Maddox interrupting my 2k time trials, a drop-in kindly asking for my attention 15 minutes into my training session, or simply the fact that something will ALWAYS be happening when I am rolling out my yoga mat to stop for 5 minutes - when you have noticed that you are distracted, this is the meditation.

That is the very moment that you are now here, and not "there" anymore. Embrace it. Learn from it. Try not to judge yourself for wanting it to be different. Welcome it as what was meant for you and be curious as to why.

4. Pain is perception.

In the last year or so my Coach has gone from giving me the daunting task of doing six 500m Row repeats on a Saturday by myself in a corner (after strength work, after 4 hours of coaching), to giving me twelve (TWELVE!) 500m Row repeats on a Saturday by myself in a corner (after strength work, after 4 hours of coaching). The funny part about all of this is that I thought six was bad...

What in the name of all that is good has this taught me?

That pain is a great teacher. Resent, even more so. 

Those of you who know me, know I am not a great rower and I'm not an athlete who comes to CrossFit with a broad conditioning bias (unless you count my being biased AGAINST conditioning) - despite having ACTUALLY rowed in a boat at one point in my life.

I think rowing in particular is a daunting task for most of us not because the act itself is incredibly difficult but because our pace, our limitations, and our perception of the length of the task is ALWAYS very clearly in front of us. Aside from an Assault Bike piece (which many of us haven't even had the pleasure of really delving into) rowing is the only thing you'll do in CrossFit that will show you where you are the ENTIRE time. 

If you are not keen to accept the present, you will spend the majority of your time on erg fearing what's next, or thinking of how you have felt before. Raise your hand if you have spent an entire 2k dreading the last 100m. The more time you spend doing this, the less time you spend focusing on the task at hand: this pull, this recovery, that breath. You are missing the entire point: to be rowing.

I row faster than I ever have today (even if that's not saying much relatively) and the majority of my improvement has come from one thing: I am not afraid anymore.

In mindful meditation, you will sometimes be asked to sit with what is uncomfortable. Literally, sometimes in the most ill-adapted position, or with an itch that you want so badly to itch. You will sometimes be asked to simply observe your pain (emotional or physical), examine it, identify the flavor, the scope, the texture - and to watch how your body responds.

Oddly, sometimes when you do this, you will find that the pain was never there at all. This, friends, can have a powerful effect on your performance, as well as your perspective.

5. May you be as strong as YOU can be.

One of my favorite meditations from my time in my first Mindfulness course was called the Loving Kindness meditation. While it sounds relatively fruity (and really, it's ok if it doesn't resonate with you - not everything will!) there is one part of it that felt just right for CrossFit. There is a variation of it here.  Within the course of this meditation, you will go from a series of sort of wishes that you will attempt to give to someone who is easy for you feel kindness to, to giving them to yourself, to giving them to everyone around you. The script of the wishes goes as follows:

May you be peaceful and happy.

May you be safe from harm. 

May you be as healthy and strong as you can be. 

May you live with ease of well-being.

It's a shock to the system to go straight from the striving of every day at CrossFit Center City to hearing this and attempting to a) accept it, but b) give it. I have been doing CrossFit - that is - keeping score, encouraging people to aim for more, straight-up weeping alongside athletes who feel they are not good enough, and ultimately, striving for growth in every direction for the last nine years of my life.

What if you could stop all that and simply accept that right now, you could aim to be as healthy and strong as YOU can be - not as someone expects you to be, as you expect you to be, but simply, as you can be - right in this very moment?  What if you could give that kind of grace to someone else? 

I think the journey becomes more joyful. I think the goals seem more like a part of your story instead of a threat. I think the people around you seem more like companions than competition. 

It's a brave hope, but that is the best thing about now - it is actually the only moment in which change is ACTUALLY possible.

How can you start learning more about Mindfulness?

As a start, I'd say that the HeadSpace App is incredibly helpful, especially if you're short on time and/or money, and definitely a very easily approached way to begin practicing. This will provide you with 10-minute pieces for lots of different situations, but it will also take you through a short beginner's program to give you the lay of the land in your mind.

I would also highly recommend attending a drop-in session through Jefferson's Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction program. They host sessions that are only $20 to drop-in from time to time. You can find more information about that here.

Related specifically to Mindfulness and the life of an athlete I would highly recommend CrossFit Invictus's book, The Invictus Mindset: An Athlete's Guide to Mental Toughness. Invictus also has a series of Meditations and Visualization Practices that you can use for cool-downs before bed, or after a workout. Visualization is not Meditation, but it is closely tied to the practice.

If you're a bit spooked by this whole thing and just generally need to feel more mobile and maybe a little more chill, you can also check out a trial membership at ROMWOD - ROMWOD is not for everyone, but there are daily posted videos that run between 20-40 minutes of very gentle stretching specific to the needs of CrossFitters. There's also some guided breathing and occasional touches of mindfulness and visualization that are different every day and also searchable by specific body part needs.

Finally, CFCC's Stability WOD class aims to provide about 10-15 minutes of Mindfulness Meditation at the end of every class. I am not a certified instructor by any stretch of the imagination, so I often use recordings I have found, or scripts that I have been able to experience myself. I think this variety has been helpful, but for any of my steady attenders out there - let me know if not! We spend about 45 minutes to reset movement patterns, and the remainder of class trying to take a hot second to allow for some time to listen to our bodies. You know how people are always saying that with regard to injury: "Listen to your body,"? Turns out, you actually have to make time to do that so that your body doesn't have to start screaming...

If you have any questions about Mindfulness or any of the above, please feel free to reach out. This has been a topic that I have continued to spend more time with in the last year since my summer course in 2015 and I'm very passionate about allowing others to experience the relief I have been privy to through my time in meditation. I also really had to work hard to only write about five things in this blogpost. As I've said, it's not for everyone, but for those of you who feel that any part to this resonates with you, I'd love to help you in any way I can.

I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes:

"You cannot move forward from some idealized point in the future that has not yet arrived. If you are to move forward, you must do it from where you are now. Though it may not be perfect, it is plenty to get you going. Wishing for more, or feeling resentment because you don't have more, will only waste your precious time.  Although there is no guarantee that your actions will be effective, one thing that is certain is that nothing will happen if you take no action at all."

- James FitzGerald, aka OPT

Q&A: Should I get a CrossFit Level 1 Certification?

"hey! quick question: thinking about getting crossfit level 1 certified bc ultimately would love to work on the side as a coach would you recommend waiting until i get a better hang of my skills, or is the earlier the better?"

-----------------------------

This is SUCH a good question and one I've actually been asked multiple times before so I felt it was time for a more formalized answer.

Of course, the answer to most questions is always going to be some version of "it depends". So what does it depend on in this case?

First: What's your end goal in becoming a Coach from a timeline perspective?

This is probably a question worth asking upon having to make any decision - but what do you see the progression being in this particular genre of life choices? In 1 year, do you see yourself occasionally subbing at your local CrossFit gym for a class here and there? Or, in 1 year, do you see yourself entertaining the option of integrating your life as a Coach into a full-fledged career involving Coaching of any kind? In 3 years, do you see yourself being interested in the full autonomy of any coaching position you are placed in? Or, in 3 years do you see yourself placing coaching on the back-burner, and using your time as a Coach to inform whatever profession you are headed towards?

The CrossFit Level 1 is an investment for sure. But the act of becoming a Coach, of forging the trust that it takes to be able to bear that title, is heavy, and in my humble opinion, should never be taken lightly.

Last night I attended a volunteer meeting at a at-risk youth non-profit organization where I used to be an intern over a decade ago. One of the first volunteers that got up to speak made a very simple point: don't start something you aren't at least sure you want to commit more than the time that is necessary. Committing to a relationship with at-risk youth is no small matter - and in a lot of ways, people who are eager for coaching aren't that different. They are where they are because they have sensed a great need. The stronger the bond between Coach and Athlete, the greater the capacity for good. But that works both ways, that bond of trust, if broken - can never be repaired quite back to what it was at the outset. It's like trying to put toothpaste back in a tube - some things just don't work the other way around.

From what I have seen in teaching interns, in coaching all kinds of people in all kinds of places, over the last 9 years, is that the time that is necessary for someone to be committed is at least a year of CrossFit. You need to be doing CrossFit for at least a year, no matter HOW good you begin, before you can consider yourself really read to commit to making it more than just a hobby.

Is this number purely conjecture? Yes. But it seems to work. If someone is obsessed for at least a year - I know it's realer than a "phase".

Second: What are you thinking you are going to receive from Coaching? What are you thinking you are going to be able to give? Have you seriously considered whether there are other outlets for you to receive and give these things?

Are you becoming a Coach because you love sharing information about movement or because you love being a source of information about movement? Are you becoming a Coach because it seems like a fun thing to do one night of the week or because you'd like to make a living making people feel better? Are you becoming a Coach because you want to spend more time in the gym, win the CrossFit Games (oh boy!), or get a back like a map?

I am all for this profession in its many, many forms - and I think more doctors, lawyers, congressmen and business gurus could do with a little bit of exposure to coaching. You learn so much about how the psychology of habit change can play out in real life. You learn so much about the difference eating an omelette versus a bagel in the morning can make on a person's whole attitude toward life. You learn how to speak to people, how people learn, and how to work with others.

But at the end of the day, there SHOULD be something about JUST coaching (in your case) CrossFit that REALLY and SUPREMELY appeals to you. If you're way more into aesthetics, CrossFit will never be what you're looking for though it may get you halfway. If you're way more into athletics and the study of physiology, CrossFit will never be what you're looking for though it may get you halfway. If you're way more into the psychological effects of aggressive exercise, CrossFit will never be what you're looking for though it may get you halfway. AND, my favorite, if you're into CrossFit to make some extra cash, well… just don't.

Some excellent advice that I have been on the receiving end of and have tried to implement in my life: always be aware of when you are using someTHING or someONE as a means to an end, rather than an end in itself. Coaching for the sake of love of anything other than coaching will ALWAYS yield disappointment - maybe not immediately, but it WILL happen.

Third: How are YOU going to give your gift in a way that is a unique expression of who you are?

I actually don't have any judgments to give on any of the reasons above. I think defining your end goal will actually shed some light for YOU on what your move should be. That is, if the goal is to use Coaching to inform a later less Coaching-dominant profession, then yes, you can dabble, you can start the Level 1 ASAP. If the goal is to use Coaching as an end in and of itself, understand that the Level 1, though it can be done at any time, is absolutely only the beginning; the tip of the tip of the iceberg.

So, how are you going to whittle down the wide world of "ALL THE THINGS THAT YOU DON'T KNOW" after you get done with your Level 1? In no way do I even believe that those who instruct the Level 1 believe that it is wholly sufficient for the production of good coaches. The Level 1 is just that: LEVEL ONE.

It provides its attendees with a baseline for movement patterns, perspicacity, and CrossFit's framework for what a Coach should aspire to be learning about all the time (nutrition and health, movement quality, scaling, instruction and cuing, program design, and triage) - but it is not the end of a Coach's education. It is simply a stop along the way.

If you are definitely interested in Coaching as a life-long profession - that is a VERY different blog post, but I'm happy to chat about that too.

I hope all of the above gives you some good questions to ask yourself as you pursue your progression as an Athlete and a Coach!

-e.