Always Rushing

Always rushing

Life passes by as a blur

Unable to see

Which way the path curves

Barreling straight ahead

Not recognizing a Cliff 

Flying through the air

Ain’t life a bitch


We rush from A to B. We rush from B to C. Most of our lives are spent rushing around, trying to do everything as quickly as possible. No wonder we create so much unnecessary harm in others. We have no time to focus on bettering ourselves. We have no time to figure out if we are acting out of an implicit bias (we most likely are if we are rushing). We have no time to figure out what our kids actually need, what our spouses need, what our communities need. Rush rush rush. Can we please slow down and take a moment to pause.

I believe if we learned to slow down. If we learned to pause before reacting. If we learned what traumas we have in our lives. If we learned. If we listened. This world would be able to solve many of its problems which have been birthed from rushing time. I know some people scoff at the idea of self-help, usually, they are plagued with a fixed mindset. Luckily for all, we are able to switch from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset. Who we are, how we act is not who we always have to be. Don’t be afraid to change for the better. If your rebuttal is you don’t have time to spend on yourself, chew on that thought.


Therapy

Some days I do myself a huge disservice and allow one negative thought to seep in. That tiny little varmint slowly multiplies into dozens of invasive thoughts. Next thing you know, my mind is blanketed in a heavy, depressive state. I know better than to open the door to negative thoughts yet I do it over and over again. I let my fear seep in and control my mind. “You have to stop that bad thing you think is going to happen from happening.” A form of hubris I haven’t learned quite how to handle. 


For the longest, I have preached and preached about the importance of therapy yet never sought it out for myself. I get into nature. I meditate. I journal. I train strength. I do “cardio”. I strive to incorporate my passions into my life. I read. I do all of the things that are supposed to improve mental health besides therapy yet I still find myself struggling often to not focus on the small when the small is so close to my fears. I have realized I am a “control freak” and due to the pandemic, and a feeling of a loss of control, it has blossomed in a way that feels new to my awareness. You cannot be afraid to ask for help. You have to be honest with yourself, swallow your pride, and know it’s alright to want help. Doesn’t mean anything is wrong, doesn’t mean you are broken. This means you are open to learning and growing. Learning to be comfortable while feeling vulnerable. 


I will be starting therapy to help uncover any trauma that is there. To help me identify behavioral patterns that I may want to keep or break. To help me understand how to better communicate feelings and moods. To help me be a better version of myself. The better I understand myself, the better I can help those around me. I want to be part of breaking the taboo behind Therapy, especially in the Black community. I have wanted this for years and I will soon be taking that first step. 


I originally wrote this before I started therapy: I have since started therapy and it has been everything I could have asked for plus more. The sage advice by the comedic genius Chris Rock to present the worst version of yourself to your therapist has led to exponential growth in a short amount of time. An interesting discovery was finding out that I am sensitive. My denial of being sensitive is what would lead to my feeling of being withdrawn or indignant. I have since been given tools to help better express my feelings. It has already helped in many situations to take the edge off where the edge prior would have been sharp. I am looking forward to continuing to find out more about myself and work on developing better tools to deal with all that is going on inside my head. If you haven’t had therapy, think about exploring that option as a way of optimizing who you are.


Be Balanced

Opposites, balance, that’s the theme of the year. 2020 is trying to open our eyes to how unbalanced the world has been. Massive greed runs rampant. Those with plenty hold onto it tight as those who starve unnecessarily suffer. We sit still. We don’t move our bodies. We create things to make the need to move obsolete. However, as we see with this virus, nature still operates how nature always has. It is time for us all to examine how we can maneuver our minds, bodies, and souls back into balance.

 I love movement. I enjoy the challenge of learning a new skill, of having to shed my big head and allow criticism in order to improve. I love being a beginner. I believe in the basics/fundamentals. I dislike the idea of placing ourselves in boxes with titles such as a yogi, weightlifter, and so on. We are human first. Humans need to express movement often in a vast variety of ways. Below are some simple ways to bring some balance to your training.

·      If you always stand, kneel

·      If you always stay still, move

·      If you always sit, stand

·      If you are always on a specific level, change levels (TGU)

·      If you always move fast, move slow (eccentrics, tai chi)

·      If you always lift heavy, lift light

·      If you always do high reps, do low reps

·      If you always push, pull (pull-ups, rows, climb)

·      If you are always in flexion, hit some extension (cobra, cat stretch)

·      If you are always right-side up, get upside down (inversion table, gravity boots)

·      If you are always on the ground, hang by your limbs (brachiate)

·      If you never lift weights, lift weights (kettlebell training)

·      If you only lift weights, train bodyweight (gymnastics, ballet, yoga, pilates, martial arts)

·      If you only create tension, relax (yoga, meditation, martial arts)

·      If you only use your dominant hand, use your non-dominant (K3, kettlebell training)

·      If you always move indoors, move outdoors (hike, walk)

·      If you always do high intensity, do low intensity

Get creative! We all have patterns. We all have things we like to do. There is nothing wrong with that. However, even too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. The clichés in life are often right yet annoying. Do what you don’t want to do, or what you haven’t been doing so you can continue to do what you want to do.

Let me know how you plan on making your movement more balanced.

Strength Training As A Movement Practice

Until you have treated strength training as a movement practice, please don’t give up on it.

 

I have heard people say they have given up on lifting heavy because they keep getting hurt. Hearing that always deeply saddens me because I understand all of the benefits that come with moving weight around. However, I think lifting “heavy” is often villainized mainly due to the lack of understanding of how to lift weights. Often what I hear is “I tried CrossFit for a while, and it was great, but I kept getting hurt.” Or “I was pushing hard trying to squeak out one more rep and felt a twinge.” If these are a familiar story for you or someone you know, I beg you to give strength training a second or third or 100th try.

 

I remember I kept having aching pain in my left shoulder every time I bench pressed, lat pull downed, or overhead pressed. I had to finally swallow my pride and admit my shoulder had something going on. I spent many months rehabbing my shoulder and continuing to strengthen other parts of my body. Once I finally was able to move my shoulder in all ranges pain-free, I decided I did not want to run into the same situation down the road. Up until that point, I had been training either like a bodybuilder or a football player. This was at the same time that I was helping people through their injury rehab process and helping “older” people feel and move better. I stumbled across this philosophy of practicing skills and applying that to strength training when I attended my first StrongFirst course with Phil Scarito. This idea of strength training as a practice had been in front of my face yet I was blind to it until I was searching for it. I started to apply this idea of practicing movements and immediately felt my body begin to feel better and oddly enough, my strength and mobility soared.

 

For many of us who wish to train to enhance our lives, there is not a good reason to frequently attempt to lift something we aren’t sure we can do. If you are practicing a skill, you want to be able to have a high focus on what you are doing and confidence that you can do what you are doing. Like meditation or yoga, you want to practice mindfulness with your strength training. Being entirely focused on what you are doing in that present moment is a great way to avoid injury and build strength.

 

I believe you should rarely do as many reps in a set as you can. Instead, aim to do half as many reps as you could in a given set and do more sets of it. This way you can practice picture-perfect technique and also avoid unnecessary fatigue that can often lead to the sloppiness of movement which is when most people feel a twinge.

 

The most important aspect of treating your strength training as a movement practice is it gives you the chance to focus on moving well. If you can create an ego around not wanting to have a bad rep and putting that on the pedestal, you can probably lift pain-free. But if you want to lift as heavy as you can, and as many reps as you can, and never focus on movement quality, then expect to keep running into injury.

 

Remember, using a lighter weight but performing the task with better technique is not taking a step back, rather, it is taking a step forward towards true growth, towards true mastery. No one is considered to be a master at their craft by doing it poorly. A basketball player who puts up 1000 shots a day with no attention to detail, with no mission will never master the craft of shooting. You must be purposeful with your movement. Understanding the importance of patience, consistency, and intention will always lead you to success no matter what you are doing in life. Weight training is no different.

 

Treat your strength training as a practice. Treat your strength training as a way to feel better. Treat your strength training with patience. You’ll be surprised by how great you will feel mentally, physically, and emotionally.

GI Joe Fallacy

Merely knowing something is not enough to change your behavior. GI Joe Fallacy = the mistaken idea that “knowing” is enough to change your behavior, that knowing is half the battle. GI Joe Fallacy is a phrase that was coined by Laurie Santos who is a professor at Yale who is teaching the Science of Well-Being class I am taking. When I first heard this term it immediately registered with me, I thought yes, finally there’s a word for this fallacy. People often say “well, knowing is half the battle.” It’s not. It is one of two pieces, but they are not equal. The other alleged “half” is using that information and doing something with it. One thing I always say is knowledge is useless if you do nothing with it. This is why I take my sweet time reading books and applying the information I attain in my everyday life.

 

We all know that applying knowledge is way harder than learning knowledge. Learning is the easy part, applying is the harder part, that’s why the expression, if it was easy then everyone would do it exist, yet unlike knowing is half the battle, this expression is true. Since we all know this to be true why do we tell ourselves knowing is half the battle. We set ourselves up for disappointment when we know something and wonder why we aren’t getting any better. This applies to all aspects of life. Whether it’s a new skill such as playing the piano or playing basketball. We can all watch videos of people playing but we won’t improve. You will only improve when you go and apply what you learned; it is the act of doing that matters.

 

The number one place where we can see how false knowing is half the battle is, would be when it comes to our nutrition. How many of us know what will make us feel healthy and strong and how many of us always eat those things? I am guilty AF to knowing and not doing when it comes to food. I never feel guilty about missing the bulls-eye though because I understand it is hard not to succumb to temptation, I understand that knowing and doing are not equal parts to the equation, I understand that treating ourselves with compassion is how we begin to enact the knowledge. I also understand that I don’t need to do it perfectly to gain benefits and it’s the act of doing over and over again that will make it much better over time.

 

Next time you knock yourself for “knowing better” when you do something you feel you should have known not to, chill. Understand that knowing is not half the battle, it’s simply part of it. Now that you do know, you can figure out how to apply it, now that’s the upside. If you don’t know you have no chance, therefore knowing is key it simply is not half of the equation.