Personal Record{PR} versus Personal Best: Where should you put your energy?
You could get a PR in any event you do for the first time. That’s your PR, then, if you were to repeat that same event a month or six months later, it’s likely that you’d get a PR. Personally, I am always looking for a PR. Personal records are what keeps me accountable and motivated to keep coming back for more.
A personal best would be for (as far as I am concerned) an event that you don’t do weekly, monthly, but more likely one or twice in your lifetime. Like the time I hiked Mt. San Gorgornio with my dad in a day…that’s a personal best as I’ve not ever done it again. Same as hiking Mt. Whitney (elevation of over 14,000) that was a one time deal- therefor it’ll be my personal best.
Pictured above is me. Yes, me. And, the weight over my head is 97 pounds in a full snatch landing. That, so far into my crossfit career is my Personal Best and it took me two years to get this far. And, I’m proud of this.
Since, I’ve been doing crossfit for a while now, I’m always looking for a new PR and sometimes they take a LONG time to come. My new outlook on this is just “5 pounds of progress”. If I can set and attain measurable, reasonable bits of progress, I’ll remain motivated! That’s the key to keep doing something right? I’m already at a healthy weight and have my eating under control, so basic fitness goals are no longer there. And, because I’m a bit of a nut, I’d like to see progress in my lifts particularly. Being stronger, means that my competition days might be a little easier if I am strong enough to do the lifts well. Being stronger means that I am getting stronger which means more muscle mass. More muscle mass means I can eat more. Being stronger means that I can lift and carry my kids across small streams on hikes. Being stronger means that the big hills we climb on our bikes might be easier! To me, this is the key!
How do you stay motivated during the holiday season?
In case you didn’t know, I love Crossfit! For almost the last two years, I have completed a minimum of 5 crossfit workouts per week and my body has CHANGED. I went from a size 8 “healthy looking girl” to a size 2 very “muscular” mommy. My weight has fluctuated a total of 10 pounds, but, I’m settling at almost the same weight I started at around 140 for a 5’6″ female. No body believes how much I weigh when I tell them! I don’t remember the weights I was lifting when I started, but, I can tell you, it wasn’t much. My max clean and jerk is 130 and my Snatch is 97, which is NOT THAT bad for a girl my age!
What are the benefits of CrossFit, you might want to ask?
Improved strength, increased confidence, increased capacity for heavy loads over long or short periods of time. The best part of Crossfit is really the ability to go OUT and do adventurous things without too much extra stress- for example, a 2 hour bike ride or a 2 hour hike or an all day hike up a big mountain, or a even completing a six hour day of outdoor teaching and doing yoga (my day job) without feeling like I’m going to keel over at the end of the day.
What are my favorite parts of CrossFit?
I love the Olympic Lifts- particularly Cleans and Snatches. I have to say, though, that it took me almost 1.5 years of practice before I “mastered” them and I’m still no expert. These are hard as heck to perform correctly, and my coaches are still working with me on them. But, I love to practice them, I sneak extra practice in my garage and I secretly dream about lifting only someday!
What is the worst part about Crossfit?
Ok, this is very personal, but, I have a hard time when others beat me. I’m WAY too hard on myself and if I have an “off” day or if I just Stink on a particular day, I will feel bad about myself or repeat the workout later in my garage or work on the movement that I stank at later in the week. I don’t like to be beaten even if it’s by girls 15 years my junior, I just make myself practice more. Yes, I know this isn’t healthy and sometimes, I am little too obsessive about it. When this happens to me, I know I need to step back and go back to yoga and just CHILL out for a bit, life is too short to worry about crap like this. And, I do.
So, there you go! CrossFit in a nutshell, I hope you all can give it a try.
Time to celebrate small victories over here….whoo hooo… It’s been a long six months of hard work, but, maybe it’s just now paying off! My new PR in the Snatch is 97 pounds and I am darn close to 102. For once the weight didn’t feel heavy, I did TONS of practice reps at lower weights and I’m super proud to have finally closed this gap over my last PR of 85!
Image Credit and Big Thanks to my Coach at CrossFit CDR.
Note: This post was inspired by an article in the LA Times sports section from Sunday. The article was about a competitive gymnast who finished her college career at the top of her sport, then, all of a sudden had body image issues that lead to eating disorders. Although this doesn’t have anything to do with crossfit, it is about knowing what to do when collegiate sports are over!
For those of you women or moms out there who were athletes in school and now, wondering years later…what should you do? Go find the nearest crossfit box in your town, and join up. You’ll find your competitive spirit come back within three months. I did, and if you read about lots of athletes in the Crossfit games this year, that you’ll find that they are doing the same.
In college, I ran track and cross country and not that I was addicted, but, I was committed to exercising, because at the time, I also loved food! For two years, I ran. Then, I transferred to a 4 year school and found bike racing through a friend. I got addicted to that real quick because I was good at it without a lot of effort. I also loved the competition, the camaraderie and the motivation to get better. This lasted as long as I was in college working towards a goal– to get to Collegiate Nationals. But once I graduated, I still enjoyed riding, but I lost my way for a while as I didn’t have any set goals. {gained a few happy married couple pounds}. Few years later, I got married, and set a new goal– The Marathon. Did my first one at age 28, and finished it in 4 hours or so. And, I did it with almost no training. Or, as I recall, it was run for an hour on Sunday, then, run for 1.5 hours on the following Sunday, and so forth until I got to three hours. Lesson learned, you don’t need to run a marathon before actually running a marathon. Years later, I got the running bug again, and trained for and ran the St. George Marathon– got injured, but, still got a 10 minute PR on serious training. That was in 2008 and I haven’t run more than a 5km since then. Guess that was enough of that, heh?!
Now, in 2010-2011, I’m addicted to Crossfit and loving it. Why now?! Why must I have a sport now in my 40′s? Because in order for me to stay fit and continue working on my goals, I have to find new goals to set. I have to have accountability partner to make sure I do it right, and I have friends whom will say something if I don’t show up for a workout. And, I have a coach who will text me asking where I’m at?!?!
What the heck is crossfit and why should you do it?
1. It’s a combination of gymnastic movements, weight training, and endurance through the use of a WIDE variety of modalities. The 2011 CrossFit Games has athletes swimming in open water, throwing softballs for distance, handstand walking along with lots of heavy Olympic Lifting.
2. The cool part of it is you can always set new SMALL goals or new BIG goals to help you stay motivated. You can compare your scores to other women in your area or just to yourself and see improvements..
3. You can do it in your living room or you can do it in your backyard or at your local globo gym. All it takes is time, effort and discipline. But, I could say that about any sport, exercise or hobby you may find love for.
4. The best part is that I am a seriously fit mommy and I could jump into any local running or triathlon race with little to no “training” and do just fine and that’s the beauty of it, we get good at LOTS of things we weren’t good at in college or high school.
Were you a collegiate athlete and do you still workout or compete now?
This is a subject I think about often. I am now 40 and I am competing daily in CrossFit…And as you know, I just finished competing for CrossFit CDR’s Regional team and our team finished 10th out 54th teams in Southern California. And, I am damn proud to be 40 and out there competing against girls half my age. However, one thing for me, is that it sometimes TAKES a long time to get PR’s in events. I don’t know why this is, but, I’ve been on a long plateau for six months, still training daily, but not hitting my numbers, so yesterday, I’m happy to report I finally got a legitimate PR.
Yeah, for me!! That’s a 3 second PR and that’s a LOT for a sprint like that. And, guess what? The girl in front of me is 17, the girl behind me is 28 and numbers 4 and 5 are in their 30′s!!
Now, lets’ look at some of the women competing in the CrossFit Games:
You can follow the CrossFit Games and read more about the women competing in the games, here, and I haven’t even looked at the women in the Master’s category!!
Are you running out the door to your next workout? I always am…and 10 minutes behind, but, when I get there, I know someone else has done the thinking for me and that they have my best interests at heart. Now, for you–sweaty mama’s and ladies, when YOU hit the gym, do you have a goal or an intended plan when you walk in the door? Before the days of crossfit, I’d get to the gym- not know what to do, so, I’d carry weight training books around and did whatever it said- Thank You, Strength for Life. I’ve followed Al Lyman’s Marathon Plan or Cyclo-Core cycling plans and workouts. I usually did not FLY by the seat of my pants!
My number one goal right now is to get stronger. I would seriously like to be able to lift more weight. I’m almost forty and I know I’m not nearly at my full strength capacity as of yet. So, what’s my point? A specific, focused plan for any workout is highly recommended by me and by most coaches. Hitting the gym, only to spend 20 minutes on an elliptical and one round of nautilus weights is not going to change your shape or get you stronger. What will get you stronger is the use of a PLAN and using either barbells or dumbbells or kettle bells that will require YOUR entire core to be engaged when performing an exercise. You can still get a kick a** cardio workout utilizing these types of weights rather than a “cardio” machine. You can do intervals, Tabatas, sets of 3′s or 5′s. When I am lifting really heavy, I am still breathing hard!!
Barbells have changed my life. They require YOUR entire body to be active in one lift. You must have proper positioning and depth for the lift to count. It’s taken me over a year to get comfortable with an overhead squat {depth here is just shy of “below parallel”} and I love the I can always improve my strength!
You, as a woman, if you are reading this, can add barbell training at your local gym! I’d start with the Press. Learn it, master it, then move on to Push Press. You can reference crossfit demos easily and teach yourself. Volume is less important than correct form. You can start with just 8 or 10 pound dumbbells in small sets of 3. We typically will do 5-7 sets of 3 moving as much weight as we are able for the set of 3.
You want ripped shoulder muscles?! Presses is a great place to start!
How many of you weight train and how many of you use free weights or barbells?
Objective was to lift 95 pounds using the Clean & Jerk for 30 repetitions (in less than 10 minutes). Mine, was to complete as many reps as possible in ten minutes. And, I argued with my trainer. “No, I can’t do that!”, “Can I just do 85 pounds????” No, You can’t. Now, my technique isn’t pretty and needs LOTS of work, but, the fact of the matter is that I can do it. It can only get better from here.
“By trying new things we open the potential to learn more about who we are and what we like.” quote by Cheryl Nordyke.
Olympic Lifting. Heard of it? Ever tried it?! Me, hummm, no. Never. Not one single olympic lift in all of my years of working out. One of Cross Fit’s main aspects is olympic lifting. And, they bring in the big guns to the certifications to train our trainers. Coach Burgener is the main one. Almost daily, we are drilled on the “Burgener warm-up”. “Dip, drive”, “Shoulders”, “Snatch”, “2 inch snatch…” These are just a few of the key words that are running through my head- in no particular order…. And, the two most difficult ones for me are the Hang Clean and the Snatch. Argh!
Below is a video of Sage Burgener doing the Hang Clean. She is now an Olympic Lifting coach who trains other instructors. She makes it look easy!
Tomorrow’s WOD will include pull-ups, kettlebell swings (prolly swinging at least 44, maybe 53) and Hang Cleans. When I master it, I will share it!
In the meantime, tell me a skill you’re perfecting now!
