Strength #6: Putting Things Into Perspective

I was told that I needed to find more strengths... But let me tell you they are hard to write about and just when something seems like a strength, I encounter something that makes me think twice about writing about it as a strength.

This exact thing happened to me this morning, my strength I was thinking about became a weakness. I somehow missed my alarm for going to competitors class this morning and was awoken by a text from my training partner at 5:47 a.m. I quickly got dressed and drove to class but when I got there and saw how far they were into class, I became upset and realized I wasn't going to be able to get everything in. Also, that everyone was too far into everything for me to jump in and lift with them. Thankfully a couple of the guys got me smiling and laughing again but I let this little slip up get blown out of proportion in my mind. 

My BFF Katie!

But beyond this recent incident, I feel like putting things into perspective has become something I am getting a lot better at. I am still no professional at it but compared to where I was a year ago I am light years ahead. Ask my mom, she used to get phone calls on probably a weekly basis with me in tears freaking out over a test or something and she would have to calm me down. This past semester she probably only received one or two calls like that. I am getting better! 

But beyond school, I am also getting better about putting things into perspective in life. I have learned that there are a lot of things that I can't control and that I just have to realize that and be ok with it. Things may not happen how I want them to, but it is alright, and I will be just fine. In life many unexpected things have happened to me this year. Between car issues, loosing one of my little swimmers way too early in life, and just my love life in general, it has been a ride. I am not going to go into all of the details, but I have been able to deal with these speed bumps in stride this past year. I have put these experiences into perspective and dealt with them head on and I am proud of myself for this. 

I think a big contributor to getting better at putting things in perspective has been CrossFit. I have had to learn this past year that every day is not going to be a good day. While this is very frustrating to me, it has also taught me that I need to find a positive from the workout. If I don't find something positive, then I will have a negative attitude walking out of the gym and for a place that is supposed to help with stress relief that is never good.

Chicago's beautiful skyline 

Looking at the small positives or accomplishments in a workout really helps me focus on the good. Now don't get me wrong, I have a long list of notes that I need to work on, but focusing on the positives keeps me from dwelling on the negative aspects of the workout. Even if it is a bad day, at least I have something to look at that was good. This morning we were supposed to build to a 1 rep max jerk, since I was late and missed it, I stayed after class to work on this. My form was terrible and I was very frustrated but one of the guys just said to me "some days you have it, some days you don't." I moved on from jerks and even though I wasn't able to hit a PR, I looked at the positives in the other parts of my workout. One being I was able to do 20 muscle ups in 7 sets and another being I was 5 pounds off my front squat PR in nanos (for non-crossfitters, when I lift, I usually where olympic weight lifting shoes which theoretically help you lift more weight).

I have also learned that I can't let a bad workout rule my life. Although I am addicted to CrossFit and I love being in the gym everyday, it cannot be my main focus. One workout in the overall scheme of things isn't really going to make a huge difference. It is the cumulation of many days of training that really leads to improvements. If I walk out of the gym upset, I have told myself after my shower that I need to move on. Having this perspective has allowed me to keep a better attitude about the gym and make it a place that I want to go to everyday.

My amazing deep dish pizza!

This past week I was lucky enough to travel up to Chicago and visit with my best friend since kindergarten, Katie. We were able to explore the city and it was an absolute blast! I have set up some rewards for myself regarding CrossFit and food. The most recent one I achieved was a 143# snatch (I actually got 148#!) and butterfly chest-to-bar pull ups. Once I got these two things, I could get pizza! Luckily I got them the week before and I was able to get pizza from one of my favorite places, Giordano's in Chicago. It was amazing and well worth it! I also saved my ice cream to get a sunday from Ghiradelli that was also well worth it!

Also for Christmas, one of the guys at the gym got us an early Christmas present that included some "baby weights." These 1#, .75#, .5#, and .25# weights are going to help us get a new PR everyday! So excited to start using these! CrossFit St. Louis' Christmas party was also this past Friday night and let me tell you, it didn't disappoint. We had a blast celebrating all night long and looked pretty darn good in our Christmas best (but let's be honest, anything outside of sweaty workout clothes is pretty exciting for us!). I came home to Peoria yesterday and I am hoping that this holiday food adventure goes better than Thanksgiving did. Only time will tell! Happy Holidays to everyone :) I hope Santa finds everyone who was nice this year!

Struggle #20: Finding a Balance

Me swimming butterfly! My favorite stroke!

I recently read a study, published in the Journal of Sports Medicine, about swimmers and their mentality and how that plays a role in the high number of shoulder injuries swimmers have. It talked about how many swimmers thought that moderate to severe shoulder pain was acceptable to swim through during practice. In the survey they performed on high level swimmers, it stated that almost 70% of the individuals thought that this shoulder pain was normal! In the conclusion the authors discussed how the attitudes of coaches and swimmers alike put swimmers at a  very high risk for shoulder pathology and unless this attitude changes, there will continue to be high rates of shoulder injuries in swimmers.

Backstroke start!

This study immediately struck a cord with me because I was one of those swimmers that thought moderate to severe shoulder pain was normal and acceptable to swim through. However, for the last three years of my swimming career, I dealt with a shoulder injury that caused me a lot of pain, tears, and missed yards. The mentality that I grew up with in my sport was that you swim through the pain. I was never directly told to swim through the pain but it was frowned upon by the coaches and other swimmers to sit out of practice for any reason. One of the hardest things I dealt with was the feeling that everyone else was mad at me for sitting out at practice. It always felt like everyone's eyes were on you and me being who I am I felt terrible I was out of the pool and that I couldn't complete practice with everyone else.

I carried this mentality over to CrossFit. When I started I still had a lot of shoulder pain because my joint was just so incredibly unstable and weak from the years of swimming. I would complete a workout in a lot of pain because I could do it and had done it for many of years during swimming.  It finally came down to my coaches at STL sitting down and telling me that this wasn't normal and that I wasn't allowed to do anything overhead for awhile to give it a rest. I hated this. It drove me crazy and there were many times that I would try to do something and they would look at me and say "what the heck are you doing, stop." It made me sooo mad but I needed to hear this.

Starting! I am the pale on in the
middle. Sorry I got I little nostalgic
with all of my swimming pictures!

Starting in the spring, I started to really work back into overhead movements and high volume of pull-ups, hand stand push-ups, ect and while some days I would over do it and some days I would under do it (just out of fear of pain), I can now officially say I have a pretty darn strong shoulder that doesn't cause me trouble besides a few aches and pains every once in awhile.  A side note: The physical therapist that worked with me all through my college swimming career tested my shoulder muscle strength a little bit ago and was incredibly impressed with how strong it was compared to what it used to be! Small victories!

Now this past fall I have been dealing with a knee injury which has had it's ups and downs. I was originally very smart with it and rested it, while just focusing on upper body strength, core strength, and gymnastics movements. But I got antsy and started back to squatting and doing other movements that I really use my knee a little too soon. I can honestly say now about four months removed it is significantly better than where I started but it is still about only 85%. Some days it feels great and lets me do everything I want to do without pain, but other days it tells me that I need to slow down. It is hard and frustrating for me to take a step back because I want to be doing what everyone else is doing but I have to listen to my body. After all, I will be carrying this body around for the rest of my life.

Two of the people helping me "find a balance"
Good teammates, great friends!

I have been trying to increase my training volume the past month or so. I have realized that to achieve my goals I need a little extra work here and there. I have been following a gymnastics program and seen a huge improvement in my pull-ups, chest-to-bar (I can butterfly them now!), muscle ups, and handstand push-ups/walks/positioning. I also have been attending regular classes on top of competitors class once or twice a week to add some more volume to my training. Regular classes have been an absolute blast because I have met so many new people and the workouts have been more back to the basics CrossFit workouts. In the regular classes I have really been working on touch-and-go repetitions along with using good form on all of the movements. I can honestly say I have really have noticed a difference in these two aspects of my training as well.

I feel like the few things I have added have really given me some more confidence in my abilities and are benefiting me in workouts. However, if I had it my way I would do two-a-days everyday! I love being at the gym and working out. I may have a slight addiction. But my body cannot handle this. I wish it could but with a lingering knee injury (that I don't want to make worse again) and my body not being used to crazy intense volume, I can't do two-a-days everyday. Finding a balance between increasing my volume but not killing my body has been a challenge. Thankfully I have about five people I bounce ideas off of and they tell me if I am being smart or not. This has helped me significantly because without them I would have probably crashed and burned and my body would be a wreck.

My little brother, Grant, the swim star

As I am aging I am slowly learning to listen to my body. However, I still require a lot of outside sources, but maybe one day I will get there... Who knows? But I have learned that surrounding yourself with people that are willing to listen to you and help you along the way to your goals is absolutely critical. I have found these people at CrossFit St. Louis and clearly I need to hang on to them because I still need a lot of help! I am not sure if I will ever find the perfect balance for me but I am working on it.

Pork chops and
cauliflower mash!

This past week I was lucky enough to travel home and hang out with my family, my number one support system. I got to see my little brother swim and kick butt. He is getting really good and I could not be prouder of him, I'll brag to anyone who will listen! I may be turing into my grandma on that factor, but I don't think it is a bad thing. I also tried out a new pork chop recipe that was pretty darn good, albeit very spicy! My cooking adventures have caused me to be more daring in the kitchen but I am not quite able to handle the super spicy things yet without a lot of water!

Struggle #19: Thanksgiving Break

The best girls to survive PT
school with!

Sorry it has been awhile, this week has been insane for me. I officially finished my last final of physical therapy school yesterday but that was after a crazy week of studying. Going home for about a week for Thanksgiving created a challenge for me trying to make time to study unfortunately, so when I got back to St. Louis, I had my nose in the books! It was soooo hard to find the motivation to study but thankfully I was able to make it through this last week successfully! My friend's parents were in town last night to move her out of her place so they were kind enough to take us out to dinner to celebrate this exciting occasion with us! It feels so weird to say that I am done and when everyone asks me how I feel I can't say much except that it hasn't really set in yet!

Anyways back to the struggle, Thanksgiving break. I was pretty confident that I was going to be able to stay strong throughout the week and made good food choices all week. However, reality kind of hit me in the head at my first family Thanksgiving meal. All of this delicious food was sitting in front of me and I'll be honest I indulged... Not excessively but I definitely had some mashed potatoes and noodles. I may have also had a few desserts because they are just too tempting. The rest of the day I ate well and Friday was going really well until I didn't eat dinner and was hanging out with friends and presented with pizza. Yeah I definitely caved on that as well. I wasn't very happy with myself but more annoying was my body being mad at me as well. Not eating a lot of gluten, cheese, and other things my body decided to hate me when I ate some pizza. Oh well lesson learned. Only consume pizza if it Chicago deep dish pizza and worth your body hating you.

I definitely slipped up a few more times over the week but I won't bore you with all of the details. As much as I tried to be good, it is so hard when there is really only "bad" food in front of you for most of the week. My mom was adorable and bought ingredients to make a salad out of spinach, cranberries, pecans, and a raspberry vinaigrette for me (which was really good)! But besides that the meals in front of me were never really tailored for me. Which I am totally fine with, I can find something to eat almost anywhere but it is also really hard to eat a minimal amount of food/selection when all of these bad things are in front of you.

Cauliflower bake meal prep

I know I made a lot of excuses and that I feel bad making them because I should know better. Like I said in my previous post, a few bad things here and there doesn't matter but in about 4 days they all added up to a lot of bad things... You can't turn around and look back at it, so all I can really do is learn from it and hope that when I go home for Christmas I am able to control myself a lot better! I do know that when I got back to St. Louis, I immediately went to the grocery store, bought delicious healthy food, and meal prepped for the entire week. I made salads for lunches, had lots of food for snacks, and prepared a few dinners that I could pop into the over for cooking later in the week. Boy oh boy, did this make me feel a lot better!

Some chicken and salads for the
rest of the week!

One awesome thing about going home was that I got to train with CrossFit North Peoria's competitor group! I love going elsewhere and really just getting to do my thing. It allows me to show my strengths but also really focus on my weaknesses. I can't get away with things because I don't want to leave a bad impression there! One day we had to do 3 sets of 10 deadlifts at 65%, which is normally something I would freak out about, but I just had to do them there and I did well for me! I was happy. While there I also did 30 muscle-ups for time for the first time ever! Interesting thing about it though was that I had to do 10 wall balls every time I broke on the muscle-ups. It was a definite game changer but it was a fun and different workout to do!

Overall the week at home taught me that I am still not perfect with the way I eat. I could punish myself for these things but I have learned that it doesn't help me eat better, it just causes me to crave things more and makes it easier for me to indulge. I really just need to learn when it is alright for me to deviate from my food plan and when I need to take a step back. I feel like I keep getting better with this but there is still a lot of room for improvement. While I have found a lot of delicious options to eat, it is also really hard to always be perfect with temptations everywhere. But I can definitely feel the side effects in my body and training if I eat poorly so this helps keep me motivated to stay the course. Slowly but surely I am getting better, it will just take a little more time. Or a lot, but who's counting?