Change or die

Hey guys, been a while. I have been doing some soul searching and making some new goals while trying to maintain motavation. So today I'm going to cover a few things that I have been dealing with lately. As some of you may know, I currently work a full time job and coach crossfit in the evenings as well as coach on Saturdays. I also have a wife and a 5yr old daughter that has just started soccer, needless to say my life is a little crazy most of the time. Oh yeah, and let's not forget that I have to find time to train myself as well... man I'm getting tired just typing this. What I'm trying to get across is that sometimes in the daily shuffle you can easily lose sight of your goals and it gets hard at times to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I had recently fallen into not looking at the goals and just looking at the hardship. I was loosing my dreams to daily routine and was struggling to find the fire that burns within me. I know it's always there but the flame was feeling smothered. I felt a change coming and it was inevitable. To grow there has to be change and discomfort. I never shy away from putting myself in uncomfortable situations so I am going to lay my ultimate goal out there for you, but you'll have to wait till the end.

This November is my two year anniversary with crossfit and what has now become my passion (my wife and daughter come first, love you babe!). In this time I have truely found myself and seen the full potential that I can be. I have become a better husband, father and a more usefull humanbeing in general. I thrive on seeing the changes that people are able to make in their lives and can't wait to see what mine holds in store for me. It has only been two years but some days it feels like an eterity and others it feels like only minutes. I have come from being weak of mind, body and spirit to being full of zeal for life, love, and making an impact in everything that I am a part of. I have changed a bit from the "me" I was before. I don't wear the same clothes, I don't even remotely follow the same routines that I did before. MY LIFE HAS CHANGED!

Ok, some of my goals may not be far off from yours. I strive to get stronger daily. I strive for less body fat. I strive for perfect form. I am pretty sure that I will never be satisfied as there is alway somewhere to improve. One day you feel great about the work out and the next you are humbled. But my main goal that I am going to own is that I want NOTHING more than to coach full time. There, I said it. This may not seem like such a big deal. For me to put that out there is huge, I have kept it to myself for so long. Those that are closest to me already know this but to put it out to the public is another deal all together. I feel that there will be a magnifying glass on me during all of my WODs making sure that I am doing everything to perfection. This means ownership of all of my weaknesses with out foresaking my strengths. It's a big deal to me! Ok, what's the next step? This may surprise (ha) you but I don't really know what else I could be doing. I coach to learn, I train to learn. My eyes are always open to new ideas and focused on improving everything within me. Well that's me, let's get on to you! See, you are the main reason I do what I do. The reason I work with out question and know I am going down the right path. Seeing you improve, seeing your face the first time you get a pullup. May the ripples I create go deap and wide.

With out change none of this would be possible. Without discomfort growth cannot be obtained. You know this, It's not a new idea. What are your goals that you are afraid to say out loud? Speak them, post them, let them be known. This is the first step to reaching out and grabbing the things you want most in life. This is what I hope to give everyone!

Mike

Are You Prepared?

Are you prepared when an opportunity presents its self? Have you been doing everything that you can to be ready when you are given a shot? I believe that I have! Due to some amazing growth there has been an opening to start up an evening class at Woodward Crossfit and I have accepted a position coaching the 7:00pm class. I am thrilled to be given the opportunity and hope that we can change even more lives with crossfit.

Its easy to be prepared for something that you love, but it is just as easy to lose sight of your goals and get discouraged. Always keep in mind why you started the journey so that you can stay on the right path. Opportunities are always out there, you just have to have your eyes on the goal to see them.

Check out the website for details and location. We will be having a grand opening for the new gym on August 1st. Come out and celebrate and start down the path to achieving your goals!

See you there,

Mike

come one, come all! This sh%t is for everyone!

I just read this today and felt it should be shared. Amazing post by someone else going on a life journey that should last a long time if he continues. Props brother in crossfit!



Steve P Sums It Up

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By Mike Minium - Posted on 11 May 2010



Steve P in mid-pull-up during WOD 3 of the Masters Competition


I asked Steve P to sum up his experience at this past weekend's Masters competition in Irvine. He competed along with our team from CFO.

He gave me much, much more than what I expected, and went way above and beyond the call of duty, so to speak. What follows is a little over 3 pages (pulled from a Word doc Steve emailed me), and I highly encourage everyone to read every word. It's well worth your time.

I'd also encourage everyone to take up Steve's advice on testing yourself in competition every so often (3 to 4 times a year). Ask me about ideas on how to make this happen.

Without further ado, here is Steve's story.

(Be sure to click on the "Read More" link below and read all of Steve's piece.)




Fitness Relativity and Quantum Leaps

Post-Regional Musings of a Master (aka “Old Fart”)


About 6 months after starting at CFO I remember commenting to Brandon one night about his incredible performance on one of the WODs. He casually (and humbly) answered “it’s all relative, man.” I doubt he gave it a second thought or realized how profound a statement he had just made. When I thought about it, I realized that our strength, skill and fitness are relative for each and every one of us. They’re relative to where we began, where we’re at and where we’re going. In the end, that’s what it’s about and what matters most.


We humans make and play games to compete with others for lots of reasons…fun and entertainment, ego, the satisfaction of pushing and testing ourselves. Many have said that the real competition is the one you’re having with yourself. The one that motivates you to put your heart into every move, focus on your form, stay in the moment and push yourself through it when that small but loud part of your brain is screaming at you to stop and rest or go home and push hard another day. Brandon’s theory of relativity is where it’s at. You go to the gym day after day, engage fully, work hard, sometimes (okay oftentimes) getting frustrated, tired and sore. And in the middle of the WOD when oxygen seems to be in short supply you think “why the hell am I doing this?!” But then someday when you look back 3, 6, 12 months later, you think “holy $#!^”, I never thought I’d be able to dead lift or clean or press nnn pounds. And before you know it, it’s “Wow, my first band-less pull up!” By the way, I couldn’t do one single chin-over-bar pull-up when I started two years ago. Now some of my favorite WODs are ones that are full of C2Bs.


So you keep participating in this apparent insanity and before you know it, the small, incremental, seemingly invisible improvements in skill and fitness begin to look and feel like quantum leaps…especially when others who know you take notice or you realize you need to buy new pants because the ones you’ve been wearing are all bunched up under your belt. And for those of us over 40 or 50, we know all about the dreaded annual check-up. But when you get to your doc’s office for the results of the latest blood work, it’s so cool when you hear that your cholesterol and other numbers are significantly improved over last year’s.


It’s tough to get off our butts and move. That’s where the group dynamic at CFO comes in. So many times I’m tired and just want to go home after work, put my feet up, feed my face and veg out. Making the choice every day (well, three out of four) to show up is the hardest part. Even starting the group warm-up is often hard because the mind is still thinking “geez, I don’t feel like doing this today.” But by the time the warm-up is over and the WOD’s about to begin, the worries and cares of the day have already begun to dissipate. When you’re in the middle of that pull-up or lift, the everyday cortisol-producing stresses, offenses, and crap we all feel like we have to put up with are gone. There’s only now, this rep. A little later, that post-WOD endorphin high may be really subtle but somehow life’s problems don’t seem quite so ominous. How could they be? You just overcame a barbell that didn’t give a damn if you succeeded or failed.


Ten years ago, humor writer Dave Barry published a book called “Stay Fit and Healthy Until You’re Dead.” Ironic? Absolutely! Can we avoid the inevitable? No. But having been to senior care facilities to visit family and friends who were in some way incapacitated and too much for their loved ones to keep them at home gives me serious motivation to do everything possible to keep the machine in as good of working order as possible. All of us have lost family members and friends who were way too young and it’s made me realize how important it is to take responsibility for my own health. Over time, these small, daily CrossFit efforts add up to apparently quantum leaps in overall fitness and health.


So for the past two years I’ve thought of the CrossFit Games as something for elite athletes only. Always proud that I trained at the home of the 2008 Affiliate Champions, the games were still something for only those few elite folks who had special athletic abilities and the incredible drive to train hard and compete fiercely. In a way, it certainly is. It’s a tiered, qualifying system designed to filter and reward for overall fitness. It shouldn’t be any other way. Then earlier this year when they announced the Masters (over 50) category I figured it was for those recently 49 year-old guys who’d been athletes their whole lives. It wasn’t for somebody who had been diagnosed with degenerative disk disease 16 years prior and had permanent nerve damage. It certainly wasn’t for a guy who two years ago was told by his docs that the best chance he had to escape the chronic, near-crippling pain was to have highly invasive surgery in the form of two experimental titanium-cobalt replacement disks inserted between his vertebrae. They said it would take a year for them to fully fuse to the vertebrae and the list of things they said I wouldn’t be able to do seemed endless.

Then over dinner and a discussion about dwindling workout intensity and our respective back pain, a friend visiting from out of town told me about something called “CrossFit.” He said one of the top CrossFit gyms in the world was in my back yard and that doing their prescribed “WODs” over the past six months had helped his back pain tremendously and I should check it out.


So fast-forward two years and I’m thinking that maybe this Masters competition would be a good way to focus on improving my skills and endurance. Forget about winning or placing. Just being able to participate and do the workouts would be an accomplishment to feel good about. Well of course as the games start to draw near, in spite of myself I start thinking about how to be more competitive. Mike kindly laid out some progressions for improving my endurance and work capacity. Then they announced the workouts and wouldn’t you know it, they included double-unders; one of the skills I had yet to focus on enough to master. Lydia told me about MJ’s advice on practicing them for 10 minutes a day and many others had helpful input, watching and giving counsel as needed.

So now that the weekend is over, my rank is currently 32nd overall out of the North Central & Southwest participants. Ran out of time (15 minute cap) and DNFed the first WOD due to double-under 'duh'...the way that life works is that for the first time ever, getting 10-12 in a row came relatively easy during tonight's WOD ;-) The 180 lb thruster in the second WOD was 22nd and the C2B Cindy WOD at 16.83 rounds was 12th. So it’s ho-hum from a competition/numbers/placement perspective. On the other hand, what an incredible experience! As Mini said to me the other night, performing at the games is like shining a bright light on each and every one of your weaknesses. And as we all know, having weaknesses exposed is about as much fun as ripping a bandage off a bloody wound it's bonded to. Even so, I feel more energized and motivated to improve than ever.



And what an eye opener. Performing at the games was incredibly different (much more challenging) than doing a WOD on home court. After experiencing this first hand, I have even more profound respect for each and every one of the Team CFO members and the way they've systematically and consistently trained all year and then went all-out and put it all together as a team so masterfully.


CrossFit has made an incredible reduction in my back pain and flare-ups are now a rare occurrence. And my experience is small potatoes compared to what some folks we know have gone through. My heroes are people like Jacques. The guy was undergoing chemo and radiation therapy for a month, all the while coming to the gym and nailing his WODs. I had no idea. The man is nothing short of amazing. And then we have Michael G. He’s got almost a decade on me and can bench 45 lbs more than I can. He’ll tell you that he’s not competitive, but I’m calling “bull” because I’ve watched him fiercely and relentlessly compete with himself and get his body to an amazing level of fitness and overall health.


At the games this weekend I was watching one of the Masters WOD 1 heats that went before mine. I saw a thinly grey-haired guy ripping through those double-unders like it was nothing. When I commented about how awesome he was, a person next to me who knew him said he was 62 years old. Damn, how cool is that! We may be older and can’t lift as heavy or run as fast and long as the younger folks but we can fight to be fit; and fight for our own health, independence and feeling good.


I feel a debt of gratitude to all the CFO members who have been amazingly generous in their support. Mike and the other coaches - you guys are the greatest! I can't begin to tell you how grateful I am for your skill, patience, ability to teach and well-placed kicks in the ass. CrossFit is real health care reform. You folks in the CF Elements classes, keep it up, it's the best gift you can give to yourself! When it hurts, just remember it's better to wear out than rust out ;-)

Not to get too esoteric or woo-woo, but I’ve read multiple accounts of Taoist masters whose intensive Kung Fu and Tai Chi practice kept them fit and capable right up to their last day on earth. At some point they recognized that it was their time, said their goodbyes, laid down and peacefully passed on. No chaotic smelly rest homes or chronic care facilities, no bed pans, no burden on anyone around them. I don’t have any scientific data, but I’m placing my bet that doing these crazy workouts will get us a lot closer to a better way of living and that ideal way of passing than what 99.999% of the population is doing.


Our chronological age is only one aspect of our real, let’s call it our ‘functional’ age. More importantly, it’s our state of health that matters most (at least to me) and overall fitness makes a huge contribution there. Sure, genetics plays a big role; and at the same time, I’m hearing reports that biomedical experts are learning that the environmental conditions in our bodies can make a huge difference in how our genes express themselves. Even when something goes awry and a condition of dis-ease manifests itself, the person with excellent fitness is going to have a much better chance of restoring their healthy state and recovering in a shorter amount of time. Pretty obvious stuff but I’ve got a family that depends on me and I want to be putting fuel into the tank instead of draining it; so when I’m feeling like slacking off, one of my motivators is to think about how much I care about them. Their willingness aside, I don’t want them to have to be providing chronic care for me, especially not before I turn 100.


So I'd encourage everyone young and less young to jump at the chance to compete at the sectionals, regionals or even throwdowns. Ain't never been an athlete, let alone a competitive one, but this was an experience not to be missed. Besides being a blast, it's a great mental device to focus your efforts and improve your skills, strength, and endurance. You might even look back on it as the catalyst that helped you make a quantum leap in your own fitness and health.

Heros and Leagcies

Banana workout from chad vazquez on Vimeo.

What impact will you have after you have moved on from this life? Have you ever thought about this?
Over the past several months I have been really worried about money and material things that I cannot afford to give my daughter and my wife. This was really beginning to bother me when I started to dwell on the future that I would hand down to my daughter. She is a wonderfully gifted, athletic, energetic and intelligent child. She speaks well, has not had any major health problems and is generally a great kid. Was this just the way that she was born or could I have had something to do with that. Forsaking modesty, I believe that I have been one of the major influences in her life. She talks about eating healthy and understands what impact it has. She is only 4 and has a better understanding of health and fitness than most adults that i run across. Is this more important than any material object or monetary hand out that I could give her? I believe so. Is there anything greater that we can give the next generation?
Our society is riddled with health problems that are plaguing our generation and the next. You and I are the only ones that can stop this, and we must do so in any way possible. Be it crossfit, yoga, sports, or just a healthy diet and constant movement. WE MUST MAKE A DIFFERENCE!
Get involved and do your part. It may feel small and unimportant but the ripples will extend beyond this life and the next. What you do for others is immortal and will be felt for generations to come.
What will be your legacy? Will you be a trailblazer, change the generational sins that have been handed down to you, or will you just pass them on? Look deep inside and fight for more than yourself, fight for the future of mankind. Does that sound like a little too much to tackle? It's not, you do it one person at a time!

I will make a difference, I will be a trailblazer, I will DO! This is my legacy. What is yours?

Hold the line,
Mike W.

Great Weekend

Hey guys, nothing earth shattering here, just wanted to say that a calm reflective weekend is good for the soul. Getting a good, fast and confidence building work out in on saturday was a good start. Walked around Georgtown with my wife, daughter and the in-laws saturday afternoon then went to wildfire cafe and had some elk tenderloin and steamed veggies. I felt a little restless as the sun sank lower and was wondering what to do for the evening. I called a couple of friends but everyone was busy. We ended up deciding to just stay home and relax, this is a first in a long time for me. I always feel I have to be moving and crazy busy to seem like i havent wasted a moment. In my quiet reflection of the evening i found that sitting, reading and spending chill time is needed also. I feel so relaxed and excited about the week and the challenges that lie in the week ahead. I love this feeling and need to visit this place a little more! Action does not always mean "movement". Take that! My last post had me in a craz of movement a busy work when part of the challenge is learning to act while sitting completely still.

Hold the line!
Mike W.

lose your mind!?

I've been doing some reading and happened upon a concept that intrigued me. Your "mind" can only live in the past, which you can do nothing about or in the future, which will never come. Action is always in the present! Seek action with everything you have and do not let up. Action is in the here and now and you cannot be anywhere but "here and now". Your body does not live in the future or the past so let it go and act. If you always wait for tomorrow it will be to late and you will be left to dwell in the past! Don't regret what you could have done. What time is it, NOW! Where are you, HERE! Your ACTIONS are the only thing that you control so ACT! You are the light, light the path so that others might see. Lose your mind and act in the present.

"What is to give light must endure burning" Victor Frankl

Hold the line!
Mike W.

Busy much!

Wow, its been a whirl wind of a couple of weeks since my last post. New job, different hours, and the unknown of what time I will be getting off daily. Needless to say it has come with some adjustments and I think I am finally settling in a bit. The thing that I have had to remember is preperation is the key to sucess. You have to plan out and prepare for the day ahead or you will fall short of your goals. Food prep is the biggest issue that we all face that are trying to live a healthy lifestyle. I carry the biggest "lunch" cooler on the planet and everyone at work makes fun or has something to say about it. I don't mind because carrying that much food/fuel with me keeps my energy up and I don't fall victim to all of the horrible choices that we drive by all day long. I know some of you struggle with your eating but know that it is intirely possible to stay on track, it is a simple as preparing the night before. I say simply but it is not easy. It takes dedication and a will to sucseed to get it done. I get up at 4:30 every morning and as soon as I am off of my day job it's strait to the gym. I don't usually get home till about 8:30 or so in the evening. That take a lot of planning and leaves little time to do much else.

How dedicated are you. Will you be complacent in your current state or change your behaveours to get to the next level. I am here to tell you that complacency is the slow death of everything that we are meant to be! CHOOSE THIS DAY!!! Everyone has what it take but it will always require sacrafice. Are you ready to LIVE, it's all about the journey and I can't wait to see where mine takes me. Hope to see you along the way.

Hold the Line!
Mike