It has occurred that the “something” I have been trying to express, that allows an athlete is to keep going under heavy physical stress, is knowing the difference between mental fatigue and physical fatigue. That “moment” of discovery has been elusive for me.
I confess my workouts had always been missing something. I could see it in other athletes, so I knew it existed. But I didn’t have a name for it. Some kind of resolve that gets them one more rep. You can see on their faces, that moment when they force themselves to go beyond their current limit. Some kind of in-the-moment determination that I didn’t seem to have. I just don’t push myself hard enough. Always holding something back.
12.5 was different though. I had gained quite a bit of insight from the previous four weeks. Aside from a poor showing during 12.4 (150 wall balls, 90 double unders, 30 muscle ups) I had met my targets. I knew a bit more about pacing, timing, how to get positioned. So going into it I was better prepared then before. I was still really, really nervous, but I felt better mentally.
I’m in the masters division so my workout was 90# thrusters and chest-to-bar pullups (3-3, 6-6, 9-9 and so on) in 7 minutes. A lot of weight for me to move. My goal was to get to the nines.
The guy judging me was Rob Dougherty, a fine athlete and a great guy. He was the brains behind the effort. He helped me with the pacing, got me motivated, coached me on form. He know where I was at (even if I didn’t). I put my hands on the bar, postioned them, got the bar up to my chest, got it braced, tried to keep my elbows out, then down and up.
At some point, probably 2 minutes in, time started to stand still. It took longer and longer to get set up, and get the bar up and down. I could feel the strength leaving. And that’s where something else kicked in. A little voice saying “keep going. one more.”
I really had to dig down deep to get that last set of thrusters, and the last set of C2B. And then finally done with nines. A few seconds left on the clock. I remember making some hand motion to indicate that I was finished. Rob said no. You have to done one more.
So I did one more. Somewhere in that WOD I learned how to go past the point of no return, just a little bit further then failure. I still don’t have a word for it. But I know how it feels. I felt it the following regular workout too — push ups, kb snatches, and situps — I could feel a bit more will to continue. I actually felt like I was summoning it up. I hope I can keep that feeling.
Cheers.
The 2021 Crossfit Games Open is over. Five weeks of competition to see what our Crossfit selves were made of. Week one was burpees, week two snatches, week three presses, box jumps and toes-to-bar pullups, and week four was wall-balls, double-unders and muscle-ups, and week five was thrusters and chest-to-bar pullups. You can see the workouts here.
I had no idea really what I was getting into, because I had no plans to compete, but CFES said, “yes you are”, so yes I did.
The main thing I took away from the Open was to plan carefully. For me that meant being realistic about what I could accomplish, and set my pacing myself accordingly. Mostly that worked; for four of the workouts I met my goals. The exception was week four, the wall-balls. I really thought I could do 150. I gtt 98. You can see my results here. As it so happens for week three I forgot to post my score of 153, so I didn’t get an official ranking. But I’m somewhere in the bottom 5%.
It was tough. Every Wednesday I would check to see what the workout would be. By Thursday I was starting to feel worried, Friday nervous, and Saturday morning come workout time I had a bad case of nerves. It would get to the point where I was losing too much energy worrying and it was a relief to get going.
The 75# snatches, the 95# push presses, and the 90# thrusters were all right at the edge of my abilities. In fact most the workouts I was doing things I hadn’t done much of. In fact I had never actually done toes-to-bar, or chest-to-bar. I had to figure those out in one day.
The pacing was critical, and I had some great support from judges and the people watching. That’s a big part of the experience — there is someone there to coach, count, help with timing, and people are watching and cheering. The nerves, the noise, the physical stress all get combined with a kind of internal quiet into one impression.
The final workout was my best. The previous four weeks had helped me get disciplined, and I felt like I knew what I was doing. What I found interesting is how different I experience time in a hard workout. Seven minutes? It felt like an hour. My focus increases, extraneous thoughts are gone, I am calmer. At first I can think about the next three moves; after a while it’s one move, then eventually parts of moves. Just get one more set of three, just get one more set, then it’s just get your hands on the bar. Pull. Move the legs. Pull. Now do that set of moves one more time. And a loud voice is saying go! One more!
It comes down to resolve. Pain? It’s just another experience. After the final workout, I felt like my heart was pounding so fast I would faint. I had to lay down and close my eyes. I have a new word for it: gym spin. Like bed spins, only without the alcohol. I was able to get up after a few minutes, but it took a while for me to really recover my wits (such as they are, anyhow).
One thing I didn’t experience is the kind of explosive energy I see in the better athletes. I’ll have the work on that. Next year for sure.
That’s it for now. Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!
Crossfit East Sacramento has a lot of really, really talented athletes. Young, old, big and small. But certain ones catch my attention. There are a couple of young guys, JS and BB in particular. And a couple of young women, AL and LB. All four of them typically perform well; they exhibit tremendous discipline and resolve. They also, at least in the gym, seem to have even temperaments. A marvelous discipline, that.
It does not bother me that they outperform me. I confess I am concerned that the difference is so big. So I need to improve. It occurs to me from time-to-time that they are younger, and have an advantage. Maybe. But I think I can close the gap. However that isn’t the point here.
I am not in the business of predicting the future. That’s beyond my (current) talents. But I can offer up a prediction, a potential.
One day, a very mundane and typical day, full of distractions, and commonness, a day when the regularity of life has shaped expectations into a familiar rhythm, you will encounter someone like you are today. Perhaps 20 years from now, or thirty. It will be totally unexpected. They will be young and strong, striving to master life. And for a moment, or an hour, or if you’re lucky a few days, you will see life through their eyes. You will see yourself in them, and you will be amazed.
I envy you that moment (but in a good way!) Cheers.
I had an opportunity recently to watch the 60 Minutes interview with Barack Obama, broadcast last December. The interview comes at a time when the public opinion polls reflect a deep-seated dissatisfaction with the direction the United States is taking, politicians generally, and Mr. Obama particularly. So what was interesting to me was Mr. Obama’s confidence and self-assured disposition during the interview.
His solid performance came as something of a surprise because I have, perhaps like most people, been familiar with the president only through the eyes of other politicians, various political pundits, and social media. And of course a good deal of my exposure has been through the various polls that make the rounds. In other words, I’m familiar with Mr. Obama via the vast echo-chamber called “media.” The 24-hour 7-days-a-week news cycle does not seem to be charitable to anyone for very long. As George Will would say, “well.”
Watching Mr. Obama become president right there in front of Steve Kroft was instructive. Of course he was president before, but I hadn’t really respected that. And of course the wisdom of hindsight, many years, decades or centuries from now will render a verdict on his performance that I cannot predict. But in the moment, the here and now, President Obama seemed intelligent, pragmatic, and determined. Not just resolved, but optimistic. The comparison that comes to mind? JFK. As George Will might also say, “of course.”
But there you have it. A relatively young president, a student of history not necessarily by choice, but circumstance, talking about American fair play, the need for people to contribute their fair share, about reversing social injustice. Of course his circumstances are vastly different than John Kennedy. But the two men seem to share the same kind of social ideals.
I know there is another side to this story. As Steve Kroft pointed out, several times, the polls don’t favor the president. He is subject to some intelligent and rational criticism from several different sides. But it seems to me our country has always been a place where the social dynamics can be fierce: individual liberty, free speech, an open marketplace, the rights of private property all combined together can be a potent elixir. We are a culture of opinions that are (mostly) ungoverned by concerns about safety. As a country we were born out of rebellion, schooled in it, and we are still at it. Hurrah for the red, white and blue! Well.
The television broadcast was actually in two parts. I’ve seen both parts, as well as the complete interview ( broadcast on CBS Overtime). What’s interesting is that in the longer interview President Obama displays a much stronger side of himself. I suppose the constraints of editing an important interview down to a few minutes is challenging. And the shorter presentations do serve to explore the big questions and the President’s answers. But there are some subtle nuances that get lost. One thing that doesn’t get lost is that President Obama does not get rattled, he doesn’t lose his focus, and he doesn’t back down.
Kroft touches on all the recent hot-button issues: Wall Street, the deficit, discontent from Democrats and Republicans, doubts about leadership, negatives in opinion polls, and the upcoming election.
On the issue of Wall Street, Kroft cites recent negative poll results (42% believe the President’s policies favor Wall Street, 35% said his polices favor average Americans) as being the result of a lack of accountability: no criminal prosecutions, and weak civil actions. President Obama’s response is a quick civics lesson (the executive branch is separate from the judicial branch), and at the same time he delivers a small introduction to the one point he makes throughout the interview: fair play. What he actually said is that some of the most egregious and unethical acts were legal, and what is needed is legal reform. “The toughest reform package since FDR and the Great Depression” is how he put it.
He said legal reform, but what he means is fair play. It’s a recurring theme throughout the interview. The President also said “we,” as in “we” put together legislation. His use of the phrase “40 thousand foot view” is interesting as well. The sense of all this is that he understands his power, and knows how to use it. As that other Roosevelt said, “the bully pulpit.”
Kroft raises the issue of tax reform. Kroft begins to talk about Republican efforts to compromise, but the President steps in to offer a correction — “they made overtures where they were willing to raise two hundred billion dollars in exchange for two trillion dollars in cuts.” Obama’s ability to deftly change the course of the conversation, to take a negative and flip it over so quickly, is displayed several times in the interview. He is as congenial as Kroft, but just as determined to manage the interaction and get his message across.
Putting aside for a moment the arguments between the two very different notions of “social justice” that permeate the discussion (e.g., self-reliance vs. safety-net), for Obama, the whole question of tax reform centers on his idea of “balance.” His rejoinder to Kroft was that stripping the middle-class and seniors of tax breaks and benefits — “the things that people of modest means rely on“ — was not fair. Those who prospered the most from “the new economy” should do more.
The other theme that Obama came back to is his willingness to engage in dialog with his opponents to find solutions to the problems at hand. From his perspective the Democrats are willing to make concessions, but they expect a willingness on the Republican side to do the same. In a word, “compromise.” Kroft turns this around by saying that the President’s own party thinks he gave away too much, that he was “outmaneuvered … was stared down … capitulated.”
Obama’s answer to this is serious and measured: the long-term solution for Democrats is to agree to make changes in social benefits (“entitlements”) and for Republicans to agree to raise taxes. The vision here — and “vision” is the one key theme of the longer version of the interview that is missing in the shorter version — is for a sustainable social benefits program. The overarching theme: everyone contributes their fair share.
When Kroft points out that even some of the President’s supporters think he has not been bold enough, Obama points out that the flip side is the argument that he is too radical. He manages to negate critics from both sides by defining them as extreme. Which is to say unreasonable. He follows up by saying he’s not in a popularity contest. The message: he’s the President and he’s making the hard decisions. And his opponents are just carping.
When Kroft says Obama is being judged on his performance, Obama corrects him by saying he’s being judged against an ideal, and not the real-world alternatives. This is a lead in to a discussion about the upcoming election. And here Obama delivers a masterful lesson in rhetoric: he dismisses the entire Republican field by saying it doesn’t matter which one is nominated, because they all carry the same ideological torch.
Obama defines the contest as one not of individuals, but “core philosophies,” and he says the “contrast … will be stark.” When discussing individual contestants the President calmly notes their political expertise. He doesn’t snipe. He says he is content to wait until the nominee is chosen. Until then, he has other things to do.
Kroft raise the familiar issue of leadership. Kroft asks if the President promised too much, underestimated the task. This is the same as asking, “are you up to the job?” The President replies he understood what he was about, and he defines the challenge as not just a change in leadership, but a structural overhaul, a reversal of a “culture dominated by special interests …”, not something that can be done quickly. A task that will take more than one president. He is, by his own words, a man of determination.
It can be said that Steve Kroft wasn’t really playing hardball. So be it. But I do think he was asking the kinds of questions Sunday evening viewers expected, and wanted — the big general questions, topical, something people can get their minds around in a few minutes. More than soundbites, but less than a full-on debate. In other words, Kroft was a somewhat friendly audience. I suppose that’s part of the game.
I did not at all get the impression the President is a creature of the teleprompter, as is so often said. He was self-assured without being terribly arrogant, he displayed a keen sense of humor, and he was non-plussed by Steve Kroft, and man who has been a journalist since Mr. Obama was a child.
To put it another way, Mr. Obama seemed very much like a President.
One of the innovations of Crossfit was developing a series of standardized workouts that allowed athletes to compare their level of fitness. The workouts involve a combination of many, many domains of strength, agility, and endurance. So it’s a great way to make a comparison of an individual’s ability.
But I was thinking the other day that I wanted to come up with a way to measure ability at a more granular level. So let’s say athlete 1 is a 150 lb. man, and athelete 2 is a 245 lb. man, and they do the same set of exercise at the same rate — who worked the hardest? I thought it must be the smaller man. But by how much?
Well I came up with a way to answer that question. The Felsted! The Felsted measurement is named after Angela Felsted, a very talented athlete who was named Crossfit Games MVP by the Crossfit Games MVP Committee [full disclosure: I am the sole member of the Committee].
Anyway the idea is to measure pound-for-pound the output of two atheletes based on a 100 lb output standard. For example, Crossfit Games workout 12.1 was max burpees in 7 minutes. The Felsted standard is 100, based on Angela’s ouput (I’ve normalized weight and results). So how does that compare to a 200 lb. man did 125 burpees in 7 minutes? Simple! Take a weight coefficient of .75, multiply by the number of burpees of 125, which yields 93.75, multiply that by 100 and you get .94! So the 200 lb man exerted .94 of a Felsted! Neat, isn’t it?
The 12.3 WOD is a bit trickier because you have to account for the difference in WOD weights. But if a 200 lb man had a score of 300, we adjust for the percentage of barbell weight, yielding an relative output of 363.45 (75 lbs vs 115 lbs for 32% of the workload). Then we adjust for body weight using a coefficient of .75, multiply that by the relative output, divide by 243 (Angela’s output) and you get 1.12 Felsteds!
I have no doubt the Felsted measurement of output will re-revolutionalize Crossfit.
Well that’s it for now. Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!
Last week I went to see ” In Absentia” at the B Street Theater. This is an outstanding piece of work. The premise of the play is straightforward — the death of a loved one. But the staging is unique. The play is non-linear; past and present are presented all at once. Characters move in and out of time in the most marvelously fluid fashion. The actors never dropped a beat.
One phrase or word or visual cue and the conversation morphs into fantasy, back to reality, segues into a memory, then comes back round to the present. Characters carry on multiple conversations, the dialog is quick and cunning, the relationships are complex. You would think this would be confusing, but it wasn’t.
The main character, a women named Colette, is forced to deal with the disappearance of her husband Tom. She is caught between fear, hope, grief, and guilt. A mysterious young stranger shows up at her remote Canadian home in the winter, and fills the void left by her missing husband. Her friends disapprove, but she can’t let him leave. The play comes full circle as he reveals more and more of his elusive nature.
Elisabeth Nunziato, Kurt Johnson, Jamie Jones, David Pierini, and Dan Fagan make up the cast. Everybody did an outstanding job.
Well that’s it for now, thanks for stopping by and have a great day!
I confess I did not want to participate in the 2012 Crossfit Games. I told myself that my numbers wouldn’t be particularly interesting, or important, or meaningful to anyone in particular.
But there was another reason, which is that I held a secret grudge against all those stronger, faster, and younger people who were really going to do well. I was angry because I thought I wouldn’t be able to compete very well. I decided to ignore the fact that there is a masters division; I told myself that the real world didn’t make those distinctions, thus the masters division was phony. It aggravated me that there even is a masters division. I was smart enough to know these feelings were simple inferiority fears, so mostly I ignored them. I acknowledged them, but didn’t dwell on it.
But I still wasn’t going to participate. But deep down I really, really wanted to. Like a kid watching other kids playing baseball, who tells himself it wouldn’t be fun, but in reality wants to join the fun.
As it so happens Justin Riley at CFES likes to have as much event participation as possible, so he told us to sign up. He told us we were going to do the WOD anyway, we might as well get on the leaderboard, and in any case he would pester the daylights out of us until we signed up. So I signed up. I didn’t think I’d get anywhere, but I wanted to participate and Justin gave me the perfect excuse.
Last Saturday was week 3 of the workouts. First week was burpees, 2nd week snatches, and 3rd week a combination of box jumps, presses and toes-to-bars. The WODs are posted every Wednesday at 5 pm. It’s nerve wracking. Except for burpees and box jumps I was nearly totally unfamiliar with the movements. I had never done a snatch with any real weight, and I really didn’t understand the movement. I had never done toes-to-bar, and a 95# press is right on the edge of what I can do.
And that’s it, right there: the edge. If you’re not on the edge of your ability, you can’t improve. And yes I could do these workouts alone, but that nerve-racking stress, the noise, the chaos, the fear, is all part of the challenge. Managing the surges of adrenaline, all the hormones, all that emotion, is part of what must be done.
I won’t say I’m relaxed during the event, but I will say I plan out my approach to the work at hand, set some goals, figure out what pace I need to be at, and step up to the bar. 3-2-1 and go. Once it starts I’m fully engaged; I’m tense, but it’s getting to the point where it’s more about focus, and less about fear.
When all is said and done, failing is better then living with fear. My numbers are, as expected, near the bottom 15% (maybe lower). The masters division is full of great athletes. But for a few minutes every week I get do the emotional equivalent of a space walk. Right out there on the edge of my space.
Well that’s it for now. Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!
Last week at CFES we had a simple workout that had 5 rounds of 500m rows and 20 push-ups. It always sounds simple before it gets going. Whoever is running the workout takes time to answer questions, discuss what techniques are going to be in play, so everybody has a chance to think it over.
For me, and I suspect 90% of the people in Crossfit, the key to any workout is scaling. And after a year at it I know how it’s supposed to work: scale the intensity down to a level where you get the most out of workout. This means bringing the intensity down to the point where it’s not too intense but still enough to be useful. It’s a judgement call.
So on that day I decided I would try it do the workout as prescribed. 20 pushups, no big deal right? Well the total was 100 and I knew I would get bogged down. But I went ahead anyway. By the 3rd set I was doing knee pushups. By the end of the 5th set I was doing them one-at-a-time. A tough 19 minutes. I should have scaled down to 10 pushups and gone as fast as possible on the rowing. I think I would have gotten more out of the workout; in fact I think I would have incresased the intensity.
So today we had a workout that involved a one-mile run, and 4 rounds of 15 kettlebell swings, 15 pullups, 15 pushups, followed by 60 squats. So I ran the mile in 8:30, took a few seconds to catch my breath, and said, this time I’ll do pushups off the knees! Then I picked up a 44# kb. Right. 7 swings in I case to my senses and switched to a 35# kb. So I had scaled down to a 35# kb, did the pushups off the knees, but did the pullups as perscribed. Which I’m thinking was a mistake. I should have been using a band and just gone all out as fast as I could. Those pull-ups were really, really slow.
I’ve begun to think that what’s behind these decisions is ego. As many times as I’ve been warned about that, it’s still a problem. The goal is not to Rx the WOD, the goal is to create the most intense set of dynamics you can reasonably manage. And get stronger by doing it.
It took me 29:16 minutes to finish the workout. I honestly thought I was going to cry at the end. I came close to throwing up. It was about as much intensity as I could stand, so I’m getting closer to actually mastering the situation. I don’t doubt I need to work harder, but at this point I also need to start focusing on getting the most out of the workouts.
Well that’s it for now. Thanks for stopping by and have a great day.
Belen Fernandez: The Imperial Messager; Thomas Friedman At Work
Before I talk about Belen Fernandez’s book, The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman At Work, I want to relate a story from my childhood. When I was about four years old I was watching a movie on television about the American Civil War. I didn’t know anything at all about the Civil War, but I could see there were two sides fighting each other — the “blue” and the “gray”. So I asked my mother which were the good guys, and which were the bad guys.
My mother told me both sides were Americans, and there was no “good-guy/bad-guy.” Now I guarantee you my mother understood the moral implications of the American Civil War. But she also understood that the mind of four year old probably wouldn’t, and she didn’t want me getting into the very destructive habit of seeing people as “good” or “bad” without understanding the context of their situation. Much later in life, I saw this quote: “In war, the first casualty is truth.” As George Will would say: “well.”
That brings us round to Belen Fernandez and Thomas Friedman.
Thomas Friedman is a very, very controversial figure (see Thomas Friedman: In Your Face). I have reviewed The Lexus and the Olive Tree, and I am finishing up a review of The World is Flat. I have read From Beirut to Jerusalem as well. I am familiar with the territory.
I think Friedman’s writing reveals him to be a silly, self-indulgent and pompous man, so captivated by the sound of his own voice that he goes off track all too often. He strings anecdotes along, connects them with unwieldy metaphors, supports them with quotes from famous people, and tosses in a few “facts”. His constant bashing of Arabs is tiresome, and his pious overtones are boorish. He seems to thoroughly lack any appreciation for historical context. The closer you look, the less sense his writing seems to make.
To put it as Friedman might, you start pulling on one of those threads and the whole house of cards comes tumbling down like the Berlin Wall. A few hundred pages of that kind of writing makes for a long read. Why anybody takes him seriously is a point I will come back to later.
He goes to great lengths to say very little. His newspaper columns are a little better because they are shorter.
But he is a Pulitzer Prize winner, works for the New York Times, gets on Charlie Rose frequently, and I suppose all that counts as success. Me? Well, not so much.
Now we have Belen Fernandez, a very articulate writer with a keen sense of humor. She is a far better writer then Friedman, and in just a few pages of The Imperial Messenger it’s obvious she works hard, way harder then Friedman, to make her points clear. She has 50 pages of footnotes for a 143 page book. This is a scholarly intellect at work.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that it’s not until the last paragraph in the book that she makes it clear what the value of the book actually is: “speaking truth to the people” and “exposing those journalists who do not” speak the truth. Secondly, and I think worse yet, Fernandez doesn’t actually ever say what is obvious: she is a pro-Palestinian partisan.
Both of those points are the kind best made in the beginning, not buried or left unsaid. I don’t care who the author is or the topic, a solid dissertation needs the central argument to be defined at the start.
With respect to being pro-Palestinian, I have no ax to grind there. As I said at the beginning, the whole “good-guy/bad-guy” thing doesn’t work for me. If the Middle East wants peace, than the principle antagonists are going to have to find the right context. Both sides are accountable for finding that context. “Good-guy/bad-guy” is no excuse. In any case Fernandez should come out from behind Thomas Friedman and tell us what she thinks is true about Palestine.
Now we come back to point number one: journalists who by intent or incompetence mislead people need to be exposed. This is because “the consequences of such bad reporting … justify the killing of innocent people.” I’m going to reinterpret this a bit and give Fernandez and Nir Rosen (who Fernandez was quoting) the benefit of the doubt and assume they mean the following: journalism drives decision making. I know it’s an oversimplification, but Ithink it’s what they meant.
At the very least Rosen and Fernandez are saying that the kind of misinformation Friedman is spreading hides the facts and allows our government to do things in our name that we would oppose, if we knew the facts. So: people take Friedman seriously and we get what — the Iraq war? And continued war in the Middle-East? That’s on him?
Well what then of the availability of all that “truthful information in contemporary circulation, accessible through the din of establishment media”? So in one sentence Friedman gets criticized for being a propagandist, in the next sentence we find there are alternative sources?
No. People in the United States have access to all kinds of information, and elect government officials at every level, and those officials make the laws, set the policy directions, and oversee the people who carry out the directives. If you are going to say that misinformation drove those decisions to elect all those officials by all those voters, then make that case. Don’t waste time slamming Thomas Friedman when the real issue is American “hegemony” or “imperialism” or whatever.
Belen Fernandez has done her homework on Friedman’s excesses. But if Friedman is guilty of stringing together nonsense to misdirect us, Fernandez is guilty of stringing facts together that really don’t get to the heart of the issue. Why do people take Thomas Friedman seriously? It’s because it validates their view. If that makes him influential, so be it. Let’s get on with the business of holding our leaders accountable for making better decisions.
At the end of the day, the reason things are the way they are is because both sides are not heard. But I don’t think Belen Fernandez is helping as much as she could.