Its Like Yelling at a Dog
Today was unique in that I was able to experience my two greatest pet peeves within minutes of each other. The first is my biggest work pet peeve. I see it pretty much every patrol I walk and I’m deeply saddened by the fact that Ranger students never, ever learn from their mistakes.
The second is when I see clients that are doing too much work without any direction or purpose.
Granted, I am like a poster child for over training and overworking, but I feel like there is at least a purpose and a plan behind all of my bad ideas.
The internet is a hell of a thing. It provides great hard evidence when you screw something up. Its hard to deny that you said someone is an asshole when you made it your facebook status.
Its also really hard to deny that you’re double dipping workout or following multiple programs when you post about them, post your time to the comments, or check in at the gyms. Also, I love how people think that the coaches don’t talk to each other. We love seeing progress and results so when I text one of the other coaches “Hey, athlete X got 12 rounds today” and they text back “Yea I know she did 11 at the 0530 class too” we sort of know whats up.
Here’s the thing, some people can be helped with education. We can sit them down and have them watch lectures and read books like “Fit” (which is the best explanation of adaptation to exercise I’ve read) like its a scene in “A Clockwork Orange”.
Most people will get it. They’ll either learn from listening to coaches and more experienced athletes about why most of the time more isn’t better. That or they’ll learn the hard way when they blow up and experience an overuse injury or adrenal fatigue or an insurmountable plateau.
Either way, that’s just part of life and experience. Some people learn by seeing, others by reading or hearing, others by doing, and others still by needing a trip to the ER. If you’re going to be dumb, you’ve got to be tough right.
That’s where the coach has to come in. Sometimes we need to have a drastic, physical intervention on people. Kick them out of the gym, force them to do nothing other than foam rolling, scale them down against their will. Whatever the case that’s what we get paid to do.
However, if you work with a diverse enough group you’ll start noticing that some people are doing it as a cry for help and attention. I’m barely qualified to operate a toaster, let alone be a life coach. However, I’m sure every trainer or coach has had a client that keeps doing more and more and more and more work to no end despite being more than smart enough to know better.
I’m not talking about the overtraining athlete who feels the compulsive need to do more work to win or to not let their team down.
I’m talking about the non-competitive fitness client who supersets their Crossfit with hot Yoga and who spends their rest days at Zumba and their weekends running marathons.
I spend a lot of time and waste a lot of air warning people on the dangers of this and explaining a better path. However, I’m starting to become convinced that its an elaborate practical joke (most likely organized by mole men and Cthathulu).
Honestly, I feel like I’m yelling at a dog that just did something bad. I may be pissed and trying to get a point across, but their tail is wagging because they’re getting attention.
I love programming and coaching. Its a science experiment that fascinates me and I cannot get ahold of enough guinea pigs. However, if I’m not getting honest feedback and adherence than I have to cut ties if for nothing else than to preserve my limited sanity.
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Grouper Cheek Burgers
Here’s an easy recipe that I made at the beach. In case you don’t know what at the beach looks like, here’s a picture:
I bought one of the specials at the fish monger near the beach. It was grouper cheeks. I had no idea what grouper cheeks were or that groupers even had cheeks. Apparently, its the meat that is not the filet and is the meat from the fish’s face.
They said it tasted the same as the filet would and that pretty much about sums it up.
I grilled it with some blackening seasoning until the fish started to get flakey and put the cooked patties or filets or jowels whatever you’d call them on top of the peppers that I was roasting too.
I was going to use the peppers like a bun, but it would have been a little too over powering. So I ate it like an open faced sandwich.
Grouper cheeks were about 3/4 the price of the actual filets. This was a meal that cost me well under ten bucks. All it took was a little bit of effort to find a cheaper cut of meat.
Read MoreGame Day
Today is day one of the Dirty South Regionals.Check my Facebook page and twitterfor details and updates.
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This Week’s Haul From My CSA
This weekend I was actually in town long enough to pick up my CSA from White Oaks Pastures. Team practice ran a little late, so I once again have to apologize to Tripp for being the biggest pain in his ass out of all of the people in Columbus.
Above you’ll see the eggs that we got. You’ll never see eggs like that in a grocery store. You’ll also never taste eggs like that from a grocery store.
Again, I got a whole bunch of vibrantly colored radishes and turnips.
The thing that I was the most excited about this week was the broccoli. You can see it in the bottom right and it could not have tasted better.
Another large bunch of kale. My goal is not to squander it all on kale chips, although odds are that that probably wouldn’t happen. Kale chips are just too good.
Here’s a close up of the broccoli. I wish I took a picture of it with something better than my iPhone.
Lastly were some peas that I didn’t get to try because I was stuck in Eglin Air Force Base.
So once again, this is what real food looks like.
Read MoreWOD Breakdown: Victim of Your Own Success Runs
I’m starting a new segment for Wednesdays (maybe Wednesdays). I’m going to break down one of the WODs that I program for the gym in as painstaking detail as I feel necessary.
This weeks WOD is the one from yesterday. The workout is:
AMRAP 20 minutes:
Run 400m
Rest the amount of time it took you to run the 400
I remember doing this workout with JB and Brandon Corbin about this time last year. All of us were pretty fast runners. Brandon much faster than the rest of us. At the end of it we all were pretty smoked and JB commented that this was a “victim of your own success” workout.
The faster you ran, the more you had to run, the more work and less rest you had to do.
So workout tests what we call maximum aerobic power.
The 400m runs individually will take most people between 60-90 seconds to complete as a maximum effort. This means that it’ll be squarely in the shorter phasogenic metabolic pathway.
However, you do this for a full twenty minutes.
This pushes the cellular demand on your body into the oxidative pathway. This makes the work out not so much of a test of how fast you can run, but a test of how fast and efficiently you can recover.
The people who wind up burning themselves out on this workout are not necessarily the ones who go out too hard, they’re the ones who go out harder than they can recover from.
If you noticed your times dropping off dramatically during this workout, than you need to work on how you recover, lower your heart rate, and get back on the barbell (the theoretical barbell in this case).
Everyone needs to break up sets. It doesn’t matter if you are doing a body weight or a heavy barbell WOD. Learning how to get yourself ready to do work again is vital to improving your times.
The only way to improve this is to keep working on it. Doing intervals with incomplete recoveries is an excellent way to work on your ability to recover and get ready to do more work.
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