The Heat of the Moment

Sweat is pouring down your face and you can barely see as you grab the kettlebell and dip down into a deep squat, preparing yourself for another round of swings. You can’t see with your eyes due to lack of oxygen and excessive perspiration, but every muscle in your body is acutely aware of what’s going on, of the position of your legs as your thighs burn with the tension, of the weight in your hands pulling your arms towards the floor, of the fire in your lungs. You take a deep breath and ready yourself to go and you hear your trainer’s voice, “Six more minutes!” A death call through the loud bass and beating of your heart. Just when you thought you were prepared to tackle the task at hand, doubt sets in, “Six more minutes?!??!” With six minutes to go you decide that a few more breaths won’t hurt, surely everyone is feeling the pain. Surely everyone is taking a breather, a sip of water, a break.

(This is my sweaty, legs burning I don’t want to do it face –  max reps 125lb deadlift immediately after finishing a 5k with obstacles in 23 minutes. The outfit… I don’t want to talk about that really).

This scenario is all too familiar in the Crossfit world. It’s what we look forward to. The pain of a workout tends to blur out the pain of the day to day struggles. It is reasonable to take breaks and give our bodies time to recover in a workout. But what if I were to tell you that this thought process is counterproductive? That it is the root of most of our problems, not just in the gym, but in the world in general…

Think of it this way. If the workout stood for a stressful situation, or a problem in life such as unpaid bills, or relationship issues, taking a break in such a way could be detrimental. Say for instance, you and your significant other are fighting, and you planned on walking away from the situation to calm down and then coming back to talk about it, but in the heat of the fight you realized it was a bigger deal than you originally thought. So, instead of just walking away to cool off and coming back, you decide that you need longer. You need a couple of days to think it over. In the meantime, the problem gets worse. By not communicating and dealing with it head on, you have set yourself back. You have done nothing to improve the situation. In fact, you have done nothing but maintained the problem in the best case, and made it larger in the worst case.

So what should you do? How should you deal with the struggle of a workout or the struggle of life? What the hell are you supposed to do if you can’t take a break, go forward like a bulldozer or some other type of relentless machine? No.

You should have a strategy (I don’t say plan because I have a problem with planning, see this earlier post for my thoughts on how destructive plans can be). Instead of reacting to situations, you should be proactive. Think about how you will deal with problems before they arise so that in the heat of the moment you are prepared and focused. When your brain is malfunctioning due to lack of oxygen and your body isn’t cooperating due to pain and fatigue – whether it be from an intense workout like the beginning scenario, or a stressful, crippling life situation, a predetermined strategy will work like auto pilot to get you through it.

What if you stepped into the gym, looked at the workout and saw that it was a 15 minute, as many rounds as possible, grueling workout with heavy kettlebell swings and all sorts of other methods of torture, and came up with a strategy? What if you said, “This is going to suck but it will be over in 15 minutes. I will allow myself two deep breaths when I’m feeling hopeless. Two breaths will be sufficient. No matter how tired I am, I will not take three or four breaths, I will take two. Even if I need two breaths between each rep or each round.”

What would happen is you would complete the workout more efficiently because you would be poised. You wouldn’t feel let down by your own actions, but empowered because you struggled through it methodically. You would also more than likely find that you completed more rounds than you would have if you had paused “as needed.” The problem with taking as many breaths or breaks as you feel is necessary at the time is that when things suck, it will never be enough. When a workout, or life gets you down, it is hard to be optimistic and fight your way through it. It is much easier to feel down. To feel like you deserve a break. To feel like you want to give up. When the kettlebell is in your hands and you see that there’s still a long way to go before you’re done, but your body is past being “done” your brain assuages to pain and finds ways to give up and avoid the impending torture. The same goes for stress. When it becomes too much and it’s hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel, it is easier to run a way completely, to give up and to avoid the situation, but this doesn’t fix or solve anything.

Instead, when faced with a stressful situation what if you employed a strategy. What if you told yourself, “This sucks. This is going to suck for awhile. I am allowed to be sad, but only for a day, or a phone call to my mom/best friend/significant other. After that I am going to move on. I am going to do what is in my power to improve my situation and get through it.” So if my problem was a fight with my significant other, and I was extremely upset, I could use the same strategy. I could walk away from the situation, take two deep breaths and come back honest and ready to tackle it. I could discuss my frustration and move on. I could tackle my problem in the moment, without letting the moment get the best of me.

This type of strategy works for food too! I like to cook meals strategically with the big picture in mind. This allows me to stay on track with my eating habits and save time and energy when it comes to meal prep. Here’s a strategic meal plan that can leave you with dinner, breakfast and lunch with little effort. Enjoy!

Two-For Taters

Makes approximately 4 servings of dinner and six servings of breakfast/lunch.

Ingredients

4 Sweet Potatoes

1lb Grass Fed Ground beef

1 scallion

1/2 bell pepper (I prefer orange, but any color works)

1 can (160z) organic diced tomatoes

1 teaspoon crushed red pepper

1/4 teaspoon curry powder

1 teaspoon chili powder

1 teaspoon oregano

1/2 Tbs garlic clove minced

2 Tbs Extra Virgin Olive Oil

3Tbs shredded carrots

Coconut Oil

4 eggs

pepper

garlic or sea salt

Dinner Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
2. Wash the potatoes and bake them for 50 minutes (to save time you could boil them – I don’t like to because they tend to get too mushy for my liking).
3. While the potatoes are cooking, heat up the olive oil and sauté the garlic,  crushed red pepper, and scallions. Remove them from the pan and set them aside. Do not drain the pan.
4. Brown the beef in the pan. Just before it is done, add the shredded carrots (for moisture due to the occasional toughness of grass fed meat), the curry powder, chili powder, oregano, and the sauté mixture.
5. Take the potatoes out of the oven and cut them in half. Scoop out the centers (save what you remove, you need it for part two!) leaving approximately 1/4 inch around the edges of each side.
6. Fill the potatoes with the mixture * There will be a lot leftover.
7. Bake the stuffed potatoes at 400 degrees for about 10-15 minutes.
8. Remove them from the oven and put a thin layer of diced tomatoes on top before serving.

***I prepare breakfast while my potatoes are cooking so I can just put it in the oven in the morning.

Breakfast/Lunch Directions

1. Cut up the scooped out insides of the sweet potatoes into small squares.
2. Mix the leftover meat-sauté mixture with the potatoes and the rest of the diced tomatoes.
3. Grease a casserole dish with coconut oil.
4. Put the potato, meat, sauté, tomato mixture in the casserole dish evenly.
5. Beat 4 eggs in a separate bowl and add pepper and sea/garlic salt to taste.
6. Pour the eggs over the mixture and allow it to settle.
7. Bake at 350 degrees until the eggs are cooked through. ***I like to do steps 1-6 and then cover the dish until the next morning so breakfast is fresh and warm.