September 29, 2007SATURDAY 070929Motivation Annie Sakamoto of CrossFit Santa Cruz. Tomorrow Affiliates all over the world will participate in the Fight Gone Bad Prostate Cancer Fundraiser. Check out the Team Stats for top fundraisers. For a little motivation and some helpful tips for your efforts this weekend here is a piece written by Ray Kaplan of CrossFit Challenge... "Weight Gazing" You've seen the weight gazers on the floor. They're the ones in the middle of a kickass Fran or a raging FGB who feel the need to pause and assess the apparatus they've just spent hard won reps lifting, pulling, or slamming. Why? Because they have fallen into the mental trap of weight gazing. Most commonly they're just coming off a metabolically demanding exercise, and they spend valuable moments pausing before engaging a strength component. In our Fran example, the gazer comes off the pull up bar and stops for 10-30 seconds before starting to negotiate the Thruster. Instead, our intrepid Crossfitter should grasp the bar immediately and crank out as many reps as possible, even if it's only one or two, to break the psychological pause of moving from one exercise to another. Once that positive feedback cycle of exercise / progress / exercise has resumed the athlete can start to accurately assess his or her rest needs. The trap of weight gazing is almost exclusively mental - of course we're tired, but we make negligible metabolic recovery by abstaining from that first rep. We've often times heard Jerry say "Rest Smart" - take three to five deep breaths and fire it up again. Utilize this technique and see valuable seconds recovered, intensity retained, and inevitable improvement achieved. And just a little more inspiration with a blast from the past video... Fight Gone Bad. Good Luck to All! Posted by at September 29, 2007 9:24 PMComments
Ray has been a monster motivator here in Old Town Alexandria! I'm psyched his words and strategy will resonate with CrossFitters Worldwide today as they gut through their FGB! Good luck and Go get some! Rest later, Good luck to everybody tomorrow! As a new affiliate, we're proud and excited to be a part of this and make our contribution. Thanks, good luck, and everybody have a blast this weekend! David Stout "weight gazing"...very interesting commentary and great suggestion on eliminating it. thanks ray! Comment #3 - Posted by: randy (crossfit denver) at September 29, 2007 6:53 AMGood comment about gazing. I generally try to avoid pausing between movements (occasional exceptions on something like JT or Nicole.) I'd rather pause in the middle of a movement if need be. Whether coming from a mono-structural cardio element or from another movement, the primary movers on the new movement are usually somewhat fresh in comparison. Sometimes it even works! :-) Comment #4 - Posted by: John Seiler at September 29, 2007 7:36 AMYou're always an inspiration Ray! :) I'm going to miss you come November!!! Comment #5 - Posted by: Cara at September 29, 2007 9:40 AM'gazing'...who HASN'T caught themselves doing that? Especially with some of the CF monster workouts--I attempted the 'BEAR' this week and caught myself putting the bar down and gazing at the insides of my eyelids-I'm still sore...YES! Ray, your one in a million my friend! Thanks for writing that. Wait, why wait until tomorrow when the official workout is today? Come on slackers! On a lighter note, good luck to all who couldn't make it to the workout today. Have fun! Comment #8 - Posted by: Jesse Woody at September 29, 2007 7:40 PMAt least I know there's a term for what I've been doing all too often. Now that it's been identified I can try to work against it. Thanks Ray! Comment #9 - Posted by: Robzilla at September 30, 2007 2:50 PMPost a comment |
