Balance Is Hard

Still without a real phone == No new pictures

Put these in order of importance:

• CrossFit
• Weightlifting
• Running
• Yoga
• Rest
• Nutrition
• Work
• Max!
• Carbnivore
• Errands
• Cleaning/Laundry
• Planning
• Fun

It's hard, right? And then even once you've defined what's most important to you, it's still not clear how to maximize success.

This week at work we did Insights Training, since they're doing a big office move and we weren't allowed in our building. I found out my only subconscious color is Red, which explains my love of goals, lists, and actions. However at work I spend significant energy dialing down my "Red energy" and exude a lot of Blue (love of details, analyzing data, etc) and Yellow (enthusiastic, sociable, dynamic).

My personality assessment seemed relatively accurate, saying in a few different places that I spend significant time trying to achieve perfection at everything and being disappointed in myself when I fail. It also said my love of details and data can result in being less action-oriented and spend more time planning/analyzing/thinking. (Yeah, those things are kind of contradictory but maybe that just explains why I've felt so ill at ease lately?)

So in the spirit of self-improvement, I'm going to make a few changes in how I do things for the next month. At the end of November I'll see how things went and make changes as appropriate. Without further ado...

The Changes

Workouts

1. Every weekend I'll make a workout plan for the upcoming week, based on how I feel and where I think I can make the most improvement.
2. Once the plan is made, I'll either get the workouts done or I won't. If I'm tired, sore, sick, busy, whatever and miss a workout, I won't plan on making it up. With the high volume of workouts I have planned, there's plenty of other sweat sessions coming up to look forward to.
3. Every week will have at least 1 full rest day.
4. Skill work - Oly lifting, Double-Unders, Toes to Bar, Pistols, Handstand Push-ups. Every week I'll pick a primary and secondary skill to work on after WODs. If I want to compete in the Open Games, I need to whittle down my list of things I straight-up can't do to as few things as possible!
5. More yoga, more cardio, more "get lean" sessions. The less body fat I have to carry around, the more weight I'm going to be able lift. Simple as that.
6. Every 3rd week will be a "decompression" week where I'll focus more on rest, yoga, and CrossFit skills.

Nutrition

1. Re-commit to paleo. More lean meat, more vegetables, fewer nuts, fruits, and cheat days.
2. 1-2 healthy cheat meals a week. I want to transition this into a lifelong way of living
3. DRINK MORE WATER. No reason not to be better hydrated!

Work
I've decided to be better at work! I need to put more thought into how these goals should be structured and measured.

Other Things

1. Max - Keep him a happy, healthy dog.
2. Be more of a girl - More shopping, more manicures, more femininity. Since (almost) all my co-workers are male and so many of my activities bring out my inner competitiveness, it's hard to hold onto my girliness.
3. Cleaner more organized environment - apartment, car, office, bags, etc.
4. Make a budget and stick to it - adjusting it is fine but I should probably stop indiscriminately spending money.

I love that I really believe I'll be able to be more successful at more things just because I've made this list. I can be so silly.

The Carbnivore and I are planning a trip to the Happiest Place on Earth!

Smorgasbord Post

Thor is Scandanavian, just like the word smorgasbord

We're gonna go through a lot really quickly here, ok? First whining, then last week's stats, then this week's goals.

Whining

• My quads are better but they hurt all of last week. Really - quad pain?! Really?
• On Saturday, the weather was absolutely gorgeous... except for the hour I ran, when there was torential downpour (no, I'm not exaggerating) and hail. Do you know how rarely we get hail here? Rarely!
• Aforementioned run would have been fine anyway because as long as I'm not cold I love running in the rain. But it killed my phone. Speed workout without music? Fail.
• The phone never recovered. RIP, Charles :( This also means no new pictures. (Windows Phone 8 in one week, though!)
• Sunday I went for another run. A "long" run, if you will. (You wouldn't - it was only 6 miles. 6 miles just isn't long for marathon training.) One mile in I had terrible blisters on both feet. Why? I haven't had blister problems in ages. Stupid feet!
• Literally half way through Sunday's run (to the foot!) my Zune died! I love my Zune; the Carbnivore gave it to me and we went through a lot of the summer's failed marathon training together. Now I have no music for any running. Crushed. RIP, Ryan.
• Today I had to skip CrossFit because of my blisters. It turned into an impromptu Rest Day which was probably fine because it's been a couple of weeks but I HATE REST DAYS.

Max is a Rest Day god!

Last Week's Goals

1. Update baselines for 3 body weight exercises (100 abs - 3:06, Max push-ups - measley 6 if I go all the way down and touch my chest to the floor, Max pull-ups - 4 in a row. Hey, that's progress.)
2. Do more yoga! 3-4 sessions  (Pretty much fail. 1 hot yoga session and a few at-home sessions)
3. Drink more water - enough water to not have headaches, be dizzy, or miss workouts (Success... more or less)
4. 5 CrossFit sessions (4 CrossFit sessions + CrossFit weightlifting. Sorta success?)
5. 3 running workouts (track, interval, time trial) (Big check on this one!) 
6. Flexibility: Work on forearm handstand & splits (I completely forgot this goal even existed)
7. Take at least 1 Rest Day. For real this time. (I never even meant this one.)

If I do some sketchy math and squint my eyes I can say I got 4 out of 7. Today I'm taking a Rest Day and one day I'll get back in the yoga studio more regularly so I don't feel too bad. I'm also super proud of myself for going to weightlifing on Saturday. It was 2 hours of complete, intimidating awesomeness.

This girl did not forget about her forearm goal AND she took an awesome picture. I hate her.

Last Week's Highlights

1. Monday's workout was one of my best CrossFit sessions, ever
2. #15 PR on my Clean! (Thank you, Saturday Weightlifting class)
3. #20 PR on my Deadlift! (#225!)
4. Started pull-up EMOM strategy. 50 pull-ups at the end of Saturday weightlifting.
5. 6 miles running hard on pavement. The run itself sucked but it's the longest I've run on hard ground since the summer's fractures. I'm definitely slower and I've lost fitness (which I thought would be very demoralizing) but just being able to run without pain feels amazing. I'll take what I can get.

This Week's Goals

1. DON'T do more yoga! (Reverse psychology?)
2. 5 CrossFit sessions
3. 1 Weightlifting session
4. 3 key runs (intervals, track, tempo)
5. EMOM progression for pull-ups (6 pull-ups every minute on the minute for 10 minutes 3-4 times a week)
6. EMOM progression for push-ups (4 push-ups every minute on the minute for 10 minutes 4 times a week)
7. Take a Rest Day (Ha! I'm achieving this one right now!)
8. Try a new paleo recipe
9. Calcium supplements every day
10. Drink more agua!
11. Get a new phone
12. Get more rest - at least 8 hours a night.

That's all I got for today. Tomorrow I'll post last week's workouts in detail, but for tonight I have to work. (Boo, work. Yuck.)



Probably I deserve this for working late tonight?

In Pursuit of the Perfect Push-up

No, not that kind of push-up

One of my big goals for 2012 is being able to do Angie RX.

"Angie"

• 100 pull-ups
• 100 push-ups
• 100 sit-ups
• 100 squats

My pull-ups have a long way to go but there's solid improvement (0 to 18 in less than a month!) and I have hope. I always assumed I'd naturally be able to do 100 push-ups by the time I mastered 100 pull-ups - very much like magic (which is what I'd consider it, if I could do 100 pull-ups to begin with).

However, now that I only have a little over 2 months until the end of 2012, it seems like I should have a backup plan, just in case the magic thing doesn't work out. Starting next Monday, I'm going to do an EMOM progression, something one of my trainers suggested for pull-ups. Before starting that, though, I realized I should figure out: What does a perfect push-up look like?

Someone sure is a real little show-off

I went on an internet hunt, since talking to real people is hard. My search was quick and productive (much like a good WOD) and I present you with an article from Greg Glassman (CrossFit founder), describing how to do a perfect push-ups. It has this helpful diagram:

Anyone else think the founder of CrossFit would be hotter?

Notice how his elbows are hugging in towards his body. This builds the same muscles you need for a lot of different weightlifting moves (such as cleans - a move I need to improve in order to nail November's goal of doing Grace Rx). If your elbows are farther out you end up building your bench pressing muscles. Not a bad thing but not really something that aligns with any of my goals.

So as I scheme how to significantly improve my strength by the end of the year, I leave you with this new and improved list of goals (straight from the aforementioned CrossFit article):

If I could do handstand push-ups "without use of wall," I'm pretty sure I'd be the coolest person in the world.

Happy Weekend!

...And Sometimes Rx Is More than Enough

I broke my legs. No, I'm not talking about the summer's stress fractures again. Now I'm talking about my quad muscles.

I'm brining leg warmers back

I'm not sure if it was Sunday's run or Monday's workout, but my quads are trashed. I didn't even realize until I tried to do lunges on Tuesday and almost fell. I totally picked up on it then, though. To that end, I moved my speed workout to today, even though my legs are still all whiny.

I also opted out of CrossFit this morning. I actually got all ready for it and then decided I should give pistols a try before going (since there were 70 of them in today's WOD)... and fell on my ass. I'm a clever girl so I quickly interpreted my body's subtle hint and went back to bed.

Sleep is a very important part of training

I was still planning on going after work but after my run I decided it would be a mistake. My leg muscles are just too sore. So I started doing what any good paleo, marathon-training girl would do: I started chowing down on carbs (Spicy Chex Mix left over from the summer's non-paleo marathon training days, to be specific).

For the most part, I love paleo, but if I don't break it about once every two weeks, I start going batty. Since that doesn't help anyone and I don't know of any reason why it would be that harmful to my body, I just go for it.

Batty!

Also, it's my mom's birthday, so it seems right to spend the night celebrating! Tomorrow I need to get back on track (regardless of how my quads feel - technically I could be doing yoga right now instead of chowing down on these delicious little morsels) but tonight I'll relax and unwind with the Carbnivore. And possibly some ice cream. :)

Pumpkin-carving Max

Pumpkin-carving Carbnivore

 

Pumpkin