Pump Up or Cool Down?

In general, you probably belong to one of two camps with regards to mental preparation for performances. These two camps are comprised of those that benefit from energizing the experience and conversely those that perform best with a calming of the fire. Neither is better or worse than the other, the key, however, is having self-awareness about your practices. As a blanket observation, most people aren’t lacking in the area of energy, nerves, and otherwise.

This was one of the first things we, as hitters, had to recognize playing baseball in college. The question we had to answer was if we needed to “get up” for at bats, or if we needed to “calm down.” From there we would adapt our approach on deck and otherwise to fit our needs.

This photo makes zero sense to 99.9999% of the population.

So, let’s extend this exercise to our fitness school. Imagine yourself stepping up to a bar loaded with your current one rep max. Are you anxious and energized in a way that interrupts fine motor control and execution? Or, are you the type of lifter that looks like a kitten in the lions den?

Clearly, each type of individual will benefit from some strategy built around their behavior. For emotional, hyped up athletes, there should be a great deal of self talk and mental preparation around calming “the beast” for the big lift. The other type of athlete, however, may be cutting their gains and performances short without adding that powerful rage and intensity. They may need to channel some anger and aggressive in their approach to the bar, for example.

Which athlete are you? Most importantly, what types of tactics can you practice to maximize your chances of success?

Logan Gelbrich

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Wednesday’s Workout:

Complete the following for time:

21-15-9
Hang Cleans (135/95)
V-Ups

Faux Affirmations

Intentions, goals, and even a positive affirmations can go a long way. At FFOTB, we believe in this stuff, too. So much so that we’ve got a page on our website devoted to students’ goals. We even held a goal setting seminar. In addition, I blab on and on about positive self talk and attitude.

Yes, this stuff is often what’s standing between folks and their best performances.

Yes, I believe the mind is first and foremost in our training.

Yes, I think mastering this stuff (mantras, intentions, etc) means mastering your LIFE.

However, there’s one small caveat to these great tools. This small caveat has massive consequences, too. That caveat? You’ve got to mean it. When you write down your goals or deliver a positive affirmation, it doesn’t matter if everyone from here to Shanghai thinks you mean it or thinks that you’re capable of it. Only you know if you mean it and that’s all that matters.

Red Black Gym sighting in Calif.

I see folks guilty of faux affirmations all the time. They play the game. They say things and hope. Unfortunately, hope doesn’t do so hot in a world of competition.  For some, their biggest fear may be actually being responsible for cashing in on their goals or mantras. If saying you want a goal just feels good to say it.. it’s not enough. If the words coming out of your mouth are, “I am powerful,” but you don’t believe it, then it doesn’t matter if I agree with you or not because until you believe it.. you aren’t.

My intention isn’t to discourage your affirmations and self talk. My intention is to call your bluff. Say it. Mean it.

Logan Gelbrich

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Tuesday’s Workout:

AMRAP 4
2, 4, 6, 8.. Clean & Jerks (155/105)
10 Mountain Climbers
-Rest 4 min-
AMRAP 4
2, 4, 6, 8.. Clean & Jerks (135/95)
8 Mountain Climbers

Visualization: Bridging the Gap to Your Goals

It has been said that we will fail at the margins of our experience. With such a statement we can draw a couple conclusions:

1. Preparation opposes failure.
2. Experience is extremely valuable.
3. If you find yourself in a situation you haven’t been before, the chances for failure are higher.

This holds true for most folks, whether you’re in the work place or fighting for our freedom overseas. The same is true for those of us that have sport as a career, too. Never given a keynote speech before? The odds are against you on that first one, my friend. How about a marathon runner from Los Angeles who has signed up for an event at altitude in Colorado? She is already set up for more failure than those with altitude training under their belt. 

But, what if our goals include things that are beyond the realm of our experience? How can we bridge the gap?

Enter: Visualization.

Utilizing visualization is a tool of unmeasurable value. It’s how high performance individuals accomplish incredible feats at margins of their experience. For example, if one hasn’t really “been there before,” but they’ve visualized themselves as such then, in many ways, they have had experience in the situation, albeit a simulation. And through visualization, the gap between experience and one’s ideal reality shrinks.

Kobe Bryant has seen himself winning the 2013 NBA Championship many times over. He’s taken the final shot, too. He’s seen it and it hasn’t happened yet. When he gets the ball with 3 seconds on the clock months from now, however, it won’t be the first time.

You’ve got to see it to believe it. Can you see your future?

Logan Gelbrich

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Wednesday’s Workout:

AMRAP 20
1 Deadlift (60% 1 RM)
5 Push Ups
10 KB Swings
15 Squats

Confidence in a Bottle

Confidence is one of those no-doubt-about-it qualities. It’s a good thing no matter how you slice it. It’s the little extra something that gets James Bond out of the most tight of spots, and it’s the same swagger that helps CEOs make it out of multi-million dollar deals alive. But, what is it?

Hopefully confidence is something that we can get, right? If that’s not the case and you don’t currently have it, things look pretty bleak for you. I think to determine whether or not confidence is something we can acquire, I think we ought to first take a closer look as to what it is.

I think there are two general sources of confidence. These can be distilled down to:

1. Faith– This confidence comes from “acting as if.” The understanding that things will work out because you believe it to be so is
   

   Soak up the sun.

   manifested as confidence.

2. “Been there, done that.” – This confidence comes from being in tough spots in the past and simply having had survived is manifested as confidence. Adversity need not be specific, however. James Bond, for example, may have confidence safely exiting a casino of gun wielding henchmen, not because he’s succeeded in the same experience in the past, but his ability to survive a gun fight while skiing down a mountain has some transferability.

Given the above sources of confidence, I think we can extract that confidence is, in fact, attainable. Furthermore, I’d argue that one need not have both origins of confidence to display some level of confidence. However, it seems that those that exude the most remarkable confidence both believe they can perform in the unknown (faith), as well as can rely on a history of success through adversity (“been there done that”).

Given that confidence is often the key that grants us access to courage to explore our goals, dreams, and remarkable life experience, it seems like a worthwhile endeavor. Lacking confidence? Fake it until you make it with unyielding faith, or intentionally take on adversity and when you survive said adversity take note and add it to your bag of confidence, or do both.

Logan Gelbrich

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Tuesday’s Workout:

AMRAP 5
1 min Plank Hold
20 Push Ups
200m Run
Max KB Front Squats

-Rest 1 Min-

AMRAP 5
1 min Plank Hold
20 Push Ups
200m Run
Max KB Front Squats

-Rest 1 Min-

For time:
Run 800m

Anxiety for Improved Performance

A recent jaunt through The Wall Street Journal exposed me to an interesting investigation into anxiety and its role in peak performance. I don’t care who you are, peak performance is a relevant goal on some level.

As an athlete and a coach, I can smell the words “peak performance” from a mile away. Immediately I dove into the article that revisited a study from 1908 that sought to find at what point anxiety helped performance and at what point it hindered it. The study was the inception of the Yerkes-Dodson curve. This curve creates an upside down U-shape with anxiety as the x-axis and performance on the y-axis.

Welchimo!

Peak performance, then, resides somewhere between zero anxiety and maximum anxiety. The idea being that little to no anxiety yields little sense of urgency, passion, and focus. Think couch potato. Too much anxiety, however, can cripple the best of us.

Knowing that anxiety  can play a positive role in performance makes finding that “sweet spot” stimulus important. Today most cognitive coaching services folks with too much anxiety, but the other side of the spectrum need not be ignored. Folks that illustrate signs of depression, lack of motivation, or general stagnation may, in fact, benefit from some stimulating worry. Do you ever get anxious about the workout of the day? Great! Use it. I do, too.

Understanding that anxiety is important for high performance may put a healthy spin on those butterflies you feel in your stomach. Turning up the burners of nervousness may be just the kick you need to get things done. Procrastination is the oldest performance enhancing anxiety in the book.

Where do you fall on the curve?

 

Logan Gelbrich

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Thursday’s Workout:

Perform 3 power snatches (135/95) every minute on the minute for 15 minutes.

But wait, there’s more!

I have a vision for this community. Believe it or not, I had this vision before there even was a community, let alone “The Nation.” The vision was to create a fitness school with its own grounds that embodies a lifestyle of performance training for anyone and everyone seeking physical and mental excellence.

We have that. I’ll fight any argument against it to the death. The only piece of the puzzle is that we yet to have our own facility. It’s important that the universe knows what is in store for FFOTB in the future, because this last piece is the most difficult one. I don’t know how to make this a reality, but I want to share my vision with you.

Andrew Jayne: Squat clinic

The intention of having our own (outdoor) facility is to provide the best circumstances to build fitness. What we have is incredible, and nothing short of it.  Adding tools like pull up rigs, racks, and boxes, however, opens the door for us to do more magic with our students.

Believe it or not, some way some how, this gets even better. Big dreams should be shared. That is mine. What is yours?

 

Logan Gelbrich

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Wednesday’s Workout:

Crushing “Helen”

Complete 8 rounds for time of:
100 yard Sprint
8 KB Swings (53/35)
5 Plyo Push Ups
*Perform a plyo push up by placing one hand on a 45 lbs plate and the other on the ground, perform an explosive push ups that allows you to transition the hand on the ground to the hand on the plate and vice versa.