Posts Tagged ‘Motivation’
Another New Fighter!
Please welcome Steve Garcia to our Self Defense and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu family!
Welcome New Athlete!
I would like to take a minute and welcome Natalie Wilson to our fitness family. She joined the Boot Camp class tonight. See her, help her out and don’t try and give her the heavy stuff yet!
Do You Journal Your Fitness Efforts?
Everybody should invest in a notebook and write in it everyday. There are many, many reasons to keep a journal. It is a great tool in the organization of thoughts and ideas. It is an invaluable tool in charting your progress in life. For the athlete, a journal is a necessity and should be in your gym bag along with your shoes, towel and other workout gear. I have long neglected the religious journaling of my training, my workouts and other important details of my life and now kick my self for it.
I have forgotten so much of what I have learned over the years in my Martial Arts and Fitness travels. Furthermore, I have many achievements and accomplishments that have gone unjournaled and have thus faded into distant memories. It is unfortunate, but it is not too late.
I encourage you to keep track of your workouts or fit test results, but that simply isn’t enough. You need to keep a copy with you. You should record what you did during your whole workout: warmup, workout, cool down, scores, times and weights. You should record your impressions of your workout. If you felt good or bad or injured or energized. You should record strategies that worked and did not work.
Thoughts and ideas on how to improve your performance between workouts or to improve on your performance on a specific workout. If you learned some great detail that improved your form or time, you should write that down so you do not forget.
There is no limit to what you can write about in your journal. The important thing is that you write in it consistently and refer back to it to see your progress. If you are working on a goal (and you all should have a goal) like weight loss for example, then you should state your goal in your journal. Outline your plan and then record the steps you are taking to fulfill your goal.
Perhaps you read a good article on improving your eating habits and are trying to follow the program. You can cut it out and tape it into your journal or write down the details in your journal and then see if day by day, week by week, you are following the program. Not all programs are one-size-fits-all and so if you are not finding success you can analyze where it might be going wrong and thus make some adjustments.
Remember it is your journal and you should feel free to write in it, personalize it, make it as interesting and enjoyable and user friendly as possible. Many people tape inspiring pictures in their journals of six-pack abs that they want to have or inspiring athletes that they idolize. Here is one tip that I find works really well. Use two pages that face each other and track your workouts in columns going across so that you can fit several weeks of workouts on those two pages.
Having several weeks worth of work staring you in the face makes it easy to look at your recent progress. This is especially true if you are working a progressive goal like those pullups. You can see from left to right how many pullups and other assistance exercises you did for those weeks and quickly see if you are progressing.
If you are doing a fitness and body composition test every Friday, then you might have 4 weeks of tests on those pages staring at you and thus you can see if the program was working that month.
There are no limits. I haven’t even touched on food journaling. If you are following the Paleo plan and zoning, it is a must that your write down everything you eat. Charting your fuel and performance will allow you to really see how everything works together. Getting really personal is also good because you can see how your emotions effect your diet and exercise. If you are a good journaler, you might notice patterns that help or hinder your performance.
You might notice that every time your boss gives you a new assignment, you eat a pint of Ben & Jerry’s and you don’t workout for 3 or 4 days. You might notice that every time burpees are posted on the WOD board, you come down with a cold, a sore back or some other reason not to give it your all.
Hmmm…interesting.
Never Give Up
I was training my son in Standing Grappling and Ground fighting just a few days ago and my youngest said, “It’s too hard, can you show me something else that is easier?” Of course, I gave him a hard time about it and continued to drill and drill. Later on, I sat him down and shared some of my life experiences where having a “Don’t give up” mental attitude literally saved my life. So, I thought that this thread might make a good blog post. Let me know what you think. I look forward to your comments and tweets.
Here it is:
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit. – Aristotle
How many times do we tell students “don’t give up”, but do we practice this mindset ourselves? When a challenge comes along and we don’t get it the first time, we should keep trying for at least one hundred times.
I have not failed 700 times, I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work
~ Thomas Edison
Think how successful we would be if we always did things one hundred times before we even thought about giving up. If this was put into our life at work, home and in martial arts, think of the things we could achieve. we might not even get there after one hundred times but think how much better we would be than just giving it one chance and then saying “l can’t do it”.
“Begin at the beginning,” the King said, gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”
Lewis Carroll
The human quality of perseverance is very important. Often people with physical talent fail because they lack perseverance and motivation, they should instead be like the proverbial boulder and just know we can achieve whatever we want, as long as we keep taking action and learning we can only go forwards and progress.
Repetition is the mother of all skills. To do a technique once and expect it to work for us is not true in the slightest. To really understand the technique and its concepts we have to do it until the line of familiarity and the root movement is in our subconscious. It can be done anytime anywhere without even thinking about it.
You may train for a long time, but if you merely move your hands and feet and jump up and down like a puppet, learning Karate is not very different from learning a dance. you will never have reached the heart of the matter; you will have failed to grasp the quintessence of karate-do – Gichin Funakoshi
Think how many times we do a jab in our training more than say a difficult kick, the jab is repeated far more times as the difficult kick will work in a real situation. It’s repeated time after time so that it will work for us in situations and we become very comfortable throwing it.
Given enough time, any man may master the physical. With enough knowledge, any man may become wise. It is the true warrior who can master both….and surpass the result.
~ Tien T’ai
When we have developed all of our combative skill sets ensuring that we adhere to the six attributes then our techniques will become technically sound and we will develop our tactical or strategic skills to become an excellent martial artist.
The obstacle is the path
~ Zen Proverb
Until next time, Let’s Get Training!
jim
Welcome New Athletes!
I want to welcome the following Athletes to our family.
Lorelei Wherry – Boot Camp
Natasha Wherry – Boot Camp
Jennifer Tello – Boot Camp
Welcome!!!
How Can We Improve YOUR Gym?
I am always trying to improve the gym and find ways to make your experience there more beneficial and life changing. How can I do more? I need your thoughts and recommendations! Either post a reply or tell me at the gym…
Until then, Let’s Get Training!
The Final Frontier: Goal Execution
The goals are set, the plan has been made, now it’s time to pull the trigger. A goal is no good without a plan. A plan is useless if it is never executed. Bringing back the road trip analogy, it is safe to say that if the goal to go to California is set and the plan is mapped out. The next step is to get in the car and drive. Maybe, if you want to putter out of gas in 10 miles and you don’t mind wearing the same clothes everyday.
The first step in goal execution is preparation. There will always be preparation in any type of goal fulfillment. Let’s revisit John. John is going to run a 5k. He has his goal set, his plan made, and he’s off to the races. Not exactly. In order for John to properly (key word properly) execute his goal he has to lay a foundation of preparation. John will need comfortable clothes and running shoes for practice.
Also, he will have to sign up for the 5k. He should also talk to some other people that have run before. This will help him to be better prepared. The only thing left is for John to set aside time on his calendar for running. Now, in partnership with his goal and plan, he is able to execute & attain his goal. With this formula, anyone can accomplish a set goal.
Everyone has the same number of hours in a day.
What are you doing with yours’?
Get Internally Motivated!
Everyone has at least one co-worker can not stop smiling. They love Monday and don’t mind working weekends. They take the boss’s criticism with a grain a salt. They even come to work on time when the boss is gone. These people can be so frustrating. Don’t get mad; get internally motivated. Work is probably the most difficult thing for which to get intrinsically motivated. It is worth the effort.
Most people can say that they money plays a vital role in their work. Money is an extrinsic, or external motivator. It is the “reward” that comes from completing the job at hand. In reality, any relative job could fit in this equation if the money is the same. This is not what Jack has on his mind when he comes to work with a positive attitude. Nope, Jack is intrinsically motivated. He knows that he must complete his specific job to see the specific “reward” that motivates him.
Jack has been building homes for 20 years. He makes enough money to feed his family, keep a roof over their heads, and live a frugal but comfortable life. He does his job to the very best of his abilities everyday. Jack realized 15 years ago that if he was going to have a positive outlook on life he needed to find the good that comes from his work. One afternoon he met one of the families for which he was building a home. He was moved by their gratitude. Even though he wasn’t solely responsible for this family getting a house. He had his part. He now knows that he has to do the best at his job so people can have homes.
The point is, find something or someone that is positively influenced by the work you do and you will have found an intrinsic motivator. You will know, even if no one else does, that you are responsible for making a positive impact. That will give you what you need to forge ahead. Who knows, you may even become that annoying person that can’t stop smiling on the weekend at work with the boss.
This isn’t dangerous….By Jon Gilson
This isn’t dangerous. Wrestling lions is dangerous. Climbing mountains is dangerous.
This is a walk in the park.
You can stand there and scream, loading a thousand YouTube videos, a thousand screenshots of undereducated idiots throwing around barbells and calling it CrossFit. It doesn’t make you right. It makes you a YouTube-watching naysayer.
What you’re lacking is honest proof. Statistics. A spreadsheet, a number, a definitive outcome, an analysis of variance showing that what we’re doing carries an outsized risk of injury.
Of course, you’ll never find it, because it doesn’t exist. Instead, you’ll type hate mail on the nearest message board, insisting that thrusters break wrists and burpees break backs, that the clean and jerk is an abomination, the kipping pull-up an affront to humanity.
Good luck. While you hold forth from the mountaintops, we’ll be pressing on, recognizing a singular truth that has escaped your narrow worldview: risk and reward go hand-in-hand.
If you want the world’s safest fitness program, you’ll have to forego fitness. You’ll strap into a lever-controlled, pulley-modulated padded seat, moving through a predetermined range of motion, and you’ll stay fat. If you want to get fit, you’ll have to stand up, and the second you do, you’ll be subject to gravity.
Interested? Read more by going to their page and finish it up…
