As some of you know I spend a fair amount of my spare time playing poker and studying the aspects of the game. Recently I have begun to notice some parallels, however unlikely, between poker and crossfit and more to the point, between poker players and crossfitters. I will admit that in body type they are as polar opposite as they can be, but the similarities in the mental game is uncanny. As a larger part of our gym begins to take an interest in crossfit as a sport and we start to encourage you to take ownership and responsibilty of your program, there are a few concepts that should be made clear. These concepts are taken from the book The Mental Game of Poker by Jared Tendler and somewhat adapted for crossfit by me.
This is a bell curve. If you were to plot your performance at the gym over a large enough sample size, it would inevitably look like this. On the front end of the bell you have your A-game, which has the highest quality of decisions, or performance, but very low frequency. On the back end, you have your C-game, which has your lowest quality of decisions or performance, but thankfully also very low frequency. That leaves your B-game in the middle, which is the highest frequency and occurs in varying degrees of quality. This graph represent your natural range. Before you read any further, understand this: your A, B, and C, games are not different games. You're in the same gym, with the same weights, wearing the same belt, using the same chalk. Your natural range is you. You when you're breathing fire, you when you're sucking hind tit, and everything in between.
Now that you understand range, let us for a moment consider the inchworm. When learning happens over time, the movement of your bell curve mimics that of an inchworm. If you have just landed here on Earth and haven’t seen one, or if you were born without imagination, an inchworm starts by stretching its body straight, anchors the front “foot”, then lifts up from the back end, bends at the middle to bring the two ends closer together, anchors the back foot, then stretches its body straight again, and takes another step forward. The good news for crossfitters is there are nearly endless ways to take that step and improve our A-game. You can learn a new skill, set countless PR's on lifts and benchmarks, build up our cardiovascular endurance, eat better, sleep better, etc. You get the point. But what happens to our bell curve when we improve our A-game. I'll give you a hint.
Did you figure it out? That's right, it flattens out. Look at the big brains on Brett. That's because nothing has been done to improve the C-game. The "you" that sucks. All you've done is broaden your natural range. It's true that when the workout is posted and it's right in your wheelhouse, you will crush the gym, burn the bodies, and take any car you want from the parking lot. Until that back end starts to move, however, you're gonna get a lot of sand kicked in your face, and there's a good chance some of that sand is coming off the shoe of the person you dominated yesterday. Let me tell you from experience, volumes and volumes of filthy, disgusting experience, that is the worst kind of sand to have kicked in your face. The front end of your range can't take another step until the back end moves toward the middle. Without back end movement, the inchworm is just a worm.
So what to make of this? Is all hope lost for poor little Inchy? Should he just lay out flat, take the good with the bad, wonder what could have been, and wait for some smarmy little dick-nosed bird to come by and pick him off his branch? I submit that he should not! So dry your eyes and wipe your snotty nose, for all hope is not lost. In fact hope abounds for the sad sack, ass-end, C-game, "you" that sucks, because I KNOW that there are more things you suck at than you are good at. Before you get defensive, you know it too. It's down there in the dark corners of realization, next to the fact that you probably couldn't have made the college team if you hadn't had the flu or written the Great American Novel. This is your wake up call. It's the permission you need to stop protecting your weaknesses by trying to prop them up with your strengths. If you can squat the whole gym and can't jump a rope, then you just found a way to rocket your C-game into the next dimension. If you can knock out Angie in 4 minutes but can't deadlift your bodyweight, you have stumbled upon the simplest way to make it to the next level of your training. The possibilities are endless! Notice however the choice of the word "simple." Simple and easy are by no means synonyms when it comes down to something like this.
Now that you know how an inchworm moves, and how that applies to this part of your life, it's time for some honesty, bravery, and intense self-reflection. Are you ready to bring into the light the weaknesses that you ignore or protect? Are you courageous enough to ask for help? Are you confident enough to be proud of the small victories that seem to come naturally to others, even if no one else notices? Are you dedicated enough to track your workouts and record your successes AND failures with equal attention? Think about these things and take your time before you answer. There's no shame in just getting a sweat on for an hour. There's no shame in not wanting to think about the gym at all other than the one hour you spend there. The people who think the gym is just a gym are 100% right. But the people who think it is so much more are 100% right too.
 |
| I am aware this is not a worm but you get the point |
No comments:
Post a Comment