Sharpen your SAW

There is an old story of a man who is walking through the woods and comes upon another man hard at work trying to saw down a tree.  Picture yourself in this situation.

“What are you doing?” you ask.

“I’m trying to saw down this tree.”

“You look exhausted, how long have you been at it?” you exclaim.

“Over 4 hours, and I’m beat! This is hard work.” he replies.

“Why don’t you take a break and sharpen your saw?  I’m sure it’d go faster.” you inquire.

“I don’t have the time, I’m to busy sawing.” the man says emphatically.

“If I had 6 hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first 4 hours sharpening my axe.”

– Abraham Lincoln

Ever been there?  Ever been the one with the dull saw?  I know I have.  It’s in those moments that it’s vital to take a pause and reassess our plan and take the steps to continue moving forward as efficiently and effectively as possible.  In life there will be many points that will dull our saw.  Our saw is anything and everything in our life.  It’s our brain, it’s our body, it’s our soul.  We all are comprised of many saws, and some of us take care of our saws better.  We routinely sharpen it to slice through the challenges that come.  We stop, adjust our plan, sharpen our saw and start cutting again.

There are plenty of things out there that will try to drag our saw into the dirt to dull our edge.  The key is to minimize the dirt and maximize the amount of time we spend with a honing stone sharpening our saw.  It doesn’t need to be anything grandiose, it just needs to be a commitment to move in the right direction.  Whatever leads to a sharper saw is what needs to be done.  No matter how small of a step it might seem, it needs to be taken.  Over and over again.

Inside each and every one of us, we are comprised of many saws that make up who we are.  And sharpening any one of our saws leads to our overall saw getting sharper.   The sharpening process is forever ongoing.  It’s a dedication that we make to constantly be improving, a quest for personal change.  This isn’t like when the new season of a show comes out on Netflix and we binge watch it over a weekend…or a day, I’ve done that.  Self-improvement takes time.  Just like working out, getting stronger and getting fitter.  Steps can be taken overnight, but it’s never a completed process.  It's just the beginning.

This is the common struggle point.  In the world of instant gratification and promises for immediate results, it is a challenge to be constant like the sunrise and wake up everyday with a plan to get a little better.  A daily habit or ritual that is dedicated to the most important thing in your life…you.  It all starts with you and it all ends with you.  No one will be able to motivate you forever.  Over the course of time the sharpening of our saw will become easier.  Lay the foundations now, put the habits in place and rise and grind through it daily. 

Ask yourself what area of your life you want to improve.  Start small and dream big.  If you want to get stronger, talk to a professional, build a plan and put in the work.  Sharpen your saw.  If you want to learn a new skill, seek out an expert, find a course, buy a book, invest the time.  Sharpen your saw.  If you want to get in better shape, focus on what changes you can make right now, buy a kettlebell, join a gym, start training.  Sharpen your saw.  Even if you’ve failed in a previous endeavor, honor the past, learn from it, accept it and let it go.  Sharpen your saw.

The only thing that doing nothing guarantees is that nothing will get done and nothing will change.  Your saw is the most important thing that you have.  Let's all have the courage to live the life that is true to ourselves, and not the life that others are expecting us to live.  Sharpen your saw!

Thanks for all the continued support,

G

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EGO Lifting

        I had a different plan for this weeks post, but decided to adjust on the fly after I got inspired.  I’ll get back to it eventually, but I’ll let it simmer on the back burner for a while longer.  Without further delay, here goes... 

I see guys and girls all the time keep loading a barbell with plate after plate and are just hoping for the best.  Hunting for a new PR that they are in no way prepared for.  The story you are about to here is true, names and places have been changed to protect the innocent.  It was a late winter day in 2014.  I was in a facility south of the Mason Dixon line, training alone while a man was lifting a few platforms down from me.  I’d seen this scene before, almost déjà vu.  I knew what would happen.  He kept throwing weight on with no regard for his health. It was too late, his ego had gotten the best of him and his ego wanted to take him to a dark and lonely place...I assumed the operating room.  Set after set his form went from above average to appearing like Forrest Gump deadlifting in his magic shoes.  No not a pair of CrossFit Nanos. 

I made an attempt to help him save his spine early on.  I don’t want to see anyone get hurt and being as I was a guest in the facility I didn’t want to over step so I politely asked him if he would like a tip.  He douche-baggily declined.  Before what would turn out to be his last attempt, I started to go see if he maybe now he'd be open for a suggestion.  But then again, I’ve only ever seen YouTube videos of people passing out attempting a deadlift so I thought this was a prime time to witness this.  I had a prime front row seat, so I walked back to my barbell, sat down and pretended to tie my shoe so I could watch.

He walked up to the barbell like he was entering the octagon of the UFC ready to fight for the title.  I wish I had video of this, but what happened next actually made my back hurt.  He got set up on the bar, made some weird noises, I assume trying to scare away gravity, then all of a sudden it turned into a scene out of The Walking Dead.   He looked like a zombie coming up out of a grave.  His hips shot straight up, the inside of his knees smashed together, and his back rounded like a black cat at Halloween.  I was close enough to see the gigantic vein start pulsating on his forehead as his face became flushed with blood and then came the zombie noise.  He let out this grunt from deep within, filled with air and intervertebral discs.  The best part, it appeared like the barbell was bolted to the platform, like magnets were holding it down.  Did the bar move you ask?  Not enough to be noticed by the human eye.  Its also never a good day when you get done with a rep and you go lay on a foam roller.  Trust me, that won’t put the fluid back in your discs. 

I wanted to share that with you to talk about that chase for numbers in the gym.  If someone performs a lift with terrible form over and over with heavy weight, your body will adapt and program itself into using that awful movement pattern.  I also see it where “beginners” will fail time and time again chasing that new PR and then see their confidence get rattled and self-doubt creep in.   For a beginner, it’s probably better to find a “technical” max, where you stop at the weight that you can do with perfect form and technique.  But the ego doesn't like that, the ego wants more weight.  Finding a true 1 RM demands an extreme amount of focus and body awareness that beginners just don’t have yet. 

If you always train with fantastic form you’ll get stronger in a perfect position with a great movement pattern.  This is a good thing, a very good thing.  Plus the likelihood of injury will be significantly decreased.  Take your time to perfect your form and technique.  Don’t walk-in chasing numbers and worry about what your peers are doing.  Instead use your time to focus on your technique to develop the movements and positions necessary to bring you to those numbers that you so desperately seek. Patience early will pay massive dividends down the road.

So, for my beginner lifters out there, if you can’t perform full, controlled reps, how about we lighten the load?  All it takes is a momentary lapse in focus or form and it’s game over.  The requisite mobility and strength to perform an exercise through a full range of motion should be your gold standard.  That should be your goal, not “I want to lift more than Susan or Brian”.  Take some weight off the bar, leave your ego in the car, and put in the work to get mobile and get stronger.  It takes time.  This isn’t studying for a final exam, you can’t cram weeks, months and years of volume into a short period of time…it takes years.  I know revolutionary stuff right there.

For me, I’m always working toward perfection, but there is always going to be a teenage girl in China that can Snatch and Clean & Jerk more weight than I can.  Hell, there are probably some that warm-up with my best lift totals.  I can embrace it though.  But don’t get it twisted, some day, I’ll be stronger than every teenage girl in China…well at least those that weigh under 58kg.

G

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Practice for Failure

“Practice…ugh, it’s so boring, it’s the same thing over and over.”  Practicing at times can be the most painful thing you will ever have to do.  Repetition after repetition, no matter the task, tests you both physically and mentally.  It needs to push you to your outer limits of your current capabilities.  Without that push to the edge you have no chance to get better.  Without that desire to walk up to that edge and jump off you’ll never make it beyond where you are right now.  People tend to misunderstand practicing as a necessary evil that if done long enough you will improve.  However it is not that easy.  It takes countless repetitions in a quest for perfection.  It takes a person who is willing to be able to leave their ego on the sideline, in the locker room and be willing to be critiqued on their form, technique, and ability, whatever it may be.  Coach me coach.

I’m not just talking about practicing for sport here.  Everyone in life has practiced something.  Cooking, welding, taping ankles, playing the guitar, painting, it doesn’t matter.  The one commonality between all successful people is failure.  And with the failure came a renewed vigor to get back to practicing their craft.  To roll the sleeves back up, take a look at what went wrong, have someone tell them what went wrong, where they were lacking, why it was a miss, and get back at practicing to get better.   It’s a frustrating road, an aggravating road of loneliness at times.  A journey through self-doubt.  A road littered with failure stacked upon failure.  But those are the moments that make you, those are the moments that harden you, that steel your reserve.  Those are the moments that should exhilarate you because now the journey starts all over again, except this time, this time you have the upper hand, you learned, you grew, your wise now.  Game on.

Practicing exposes your weakness’ and forces you to take that hard look deep inside of you to measure your level of commitment and desire to succeed.  Rep after rep, day after day.  If you’re willing to work hard, make the necessary sacrifices, you can be good, hell great even at your thing.  Practicing can be the most powerful tool you have at your disposal.  But it only works if you use it.  Are you going to fail?  Yes, I have hundreds of times, shit probably thousands of times.  Failure is the point of all this, how else do you grow?  How else do you know what your worth?

This past weekend I competed in my first Weightlifting competition.  I had three goals going into Saturday.  1. Have fun 2. Learn 3. At minimum make 5 of my 6 lifts.  Those of you that might not know the format, the competition has two total lifts, you start with the Snatch, you get 3 attempts to hit as heavy a weight as you’d like, then you have another 3 attempts with the Clean & Jerk.  There is a large amount of strategy that can go into picking your opening weight and how to go up from there and all of the little nuances that go into competing in such an event.  This being my first competition I had a plan of what I wanted to do, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”

The time came, my name was announced and it was my turn to step out onto center stage.  As I approached the bar for my first Snatch attempt, I felt just as amped up as I’ve ever felt in my life.  I felt great, I felt strong, I felt a youthful vigor and excitement to go crush that barbell.  It brought me back to the opening kickoff of every college football game I ever played in.  The weight I chose was a weight I knew I could hit.  Maybe I was over confident or maybe I was over excited, adrenaline is a hell of a drug, whatever it may have been I missed my first Snatch behind me.  I can count on one hand the amount of lifts I’ve ever missed behind me.  I had a few minutes to think over what had just happened and I actually was completely relaxed within moments.  It took me by surprise how I became almost zen like as I sat there waiting for my next attempt.  I completed the hardest part of the day for me.  Stepping out into the spot light, all eyes on me, in a singlet, and failed.  The rest of the day was going to be easy, letting my practice, my hours on, under and over the barbell take control and just ride that wave.

And it was one hell of a ride.  I finished the day 5 of 6 on my lifts, hit my current personal best on the C&J, with ease, and left that day flying.  Could I have gone heavier?  Yeah, looking back I believe I could’ve.  But that’s what my next competition is for.   I took a chance, I took a shot at something I’d never done before and fell in love with it.  It’s one thing to work on Snatches and C&J’s in the comfort of your gym or garage, it’s a whole new world rolling into your first competition, the spot light, the singlet.

I leave you all with this, go chase failure.  I think that’s the whole point, because without failure we don’t make any progress.  The more you fail the better you get at your thing, then failure won’t come as often, and that’s when you need to push for it.  Try something new, put your neck on the line and take a chance.  Go fail and take this life further than you ever imagined.

“Practice is the best of all instructors.” - Syrus

G

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