Auld Lang Syne

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Auld Lang Syne

2012 was an exciting year for Leah Mae and I.  Not only did we make it out alive we did it Crossfit style.
As I reflect over this past year I am overwhelmed with the outpouring of love and support from those around us. 
We are so excited to see where the blog takes us next year. We are looking forward to more give aways, guest blog posts, PR's and helpful hints to getting to the next level of health.

Here are some of Leah Renae's highlights:

• Started Paleo February 1 and lost 25 lbs
• Competed in the open and went on to compete in 3 more competitions.  
• Started this blog.When Leah Mae suggested co-authoring a blog I thought it would be the perfect addition to my journey. Little did I know it would become a needed outlet for myself and encouragement to those who read it.
• I turned 30!
• I got my Level 1 Crossfit Cert 
• PR's: 
• The kipping pullup, dead hang pull up, Chest to bar pull up, 5 butterfly pull ups in a row
• Girl push ups to boy push ups to RX Hand stand push up
• 55 uninterrupted double-unders
• 110 lb clean to 150 lb
• 205 dead lift to 225 lbs
• 80 lb snatch to 100 lb
• 145 lb clean and jerk
• 175 lb back squat 
• 160 Behind the neck split jerk

• I learned things about myself. I (LRS) have a hot streak in me and that competitiveness can show up without notice. 
• I also learned that Crossfit was meant to be fun. Stop taking the white board so seriously and LAUGH!

We hope you continue on your health journey with us this year as we set new goals and accomplish new things. 
Thanks again to all the support and love from family, friends and Crossfitters this year!
Check back to the blog and facebook page often as we will be giving away Crossfit gear, T-shirts, asking for your opinion, advice and help!

What was your biggest PR this year? Let us know in the comments below or on our Facebook page and we'll give one lucky winner a Free CrossFit Legacy t-shirt!

Opportunities

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Some opportunities come to us so often we don’t even think about them, like the opportunity to eat or live in a free country.  Then other times we have opportunities that we immediately know are the “once in a lifetime” kind and they ignite an excitement and determination in us like a new job opportunity or a marriage proposal.

I thrive on new opportunities. I’m an opportunity junkie, for the excitement, danger, emotion, and thrill of the unknown. I’m usually down for any new thing, but often in between you’ll find me bored or restless looking for the next new opportunity.

I feel blessed in my life with a great family, loving friends, supportive gym, and a great job.  At some point in my life each of those things were a new opportunities and opportunities I chose to take. Being born and then laughing, loving, forgiving and being forgiven by my siblings, getting to know a stranger and then letting them see my heart as they become my friend, walking into a gym overweight and out of shape but determined to change the course of my health and being offered the position as the Marketing Manager for Culligan and jumping in with both feet. 

  

I never want to forget or discount fulfilled opportunities. Instead I want to look forward to new ones, enjoy them as they come to fruition and treasure my life, my path and the experiences life has brought me.

What’s great is, over time, when the shiny newness of the experience wears off and each of those things becomes part of your life, that’s when the beauty of opportunity turns into the story of your life. I look forward to telling my grandchildren the stories of my life and the opportunities that I had the privilege of taking and experiencing in my life.  I fully intend to live until I die!

Frustrated

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Frustrated!

I jacked up my knee last Saturday and I can’t seem to get it to loosen up. My back totally froze up in a work out a couple days ago and I had to DNF. Yesterday I had to choose not to put more weight on the bar during a 3 rep max back squat for fear of further wrecking my knee or back or both… I have no engine. I feel like I’m going uphill on a skate board during every wod. Every second of the wod seems to take an hour. And during that one-hour-second I just want to quit. It feels like it takes every bit of energy just to convince myself to keep moving. And that has nothing to do with the knee or the back… it’s only my engine… my endurance, my strength…

Perhaps I’m doing exactly what I wrote about in my last post. But at the moment I don’t care. I’m frustrated with my performance…

I sound like a big baby right? Well here I go, I’m about to throw a temper tantrum…

I’ll start by saying I know people say “it’s showing up that counts” and that that I’m “probably going through some physical change” or maybe “it’s the weather”. I know that everyone goes through valleys or slow periods at one time or another. I’ll even go as far as to say maybe “it’s just mental”.  But after I get all the pep talk, cliché, psycho therapy babble out of the way, I’m still left with the real stuff that’s on my mind.

I’ve regressed or maybe I’ve just hit a plateau while those around me continue to progress. Either way, my neck is sore from watching each of them pass me by. I’m frustrated because my times have gotten slower. My AMRAP rounds are fewer.  I grit my teeth during the wod and hang my head after the wod just to keep from screaming or crying from frustration.

Everyone has been supportive. Everyone is encouraging. My pep talk jargon would say “Leah, you’re your biggest critic” bull! To me the white board is the biggest critic… It would say “Leah, you’re only competing against yourself” bull! At this point I’m ONLY competing against not DNFing. “Leah, at least you show up. At least you’re moving. At least you’re not quitting.” At least, at least, at least… I don’t want “at least” I want more.

I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to snap out of it. If it’s mental I don’t know how to improve my mind set. If it’s physical I don’t know what changed. 

I don’t know what to do.

Highlight Success and Attack Weakness

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I know firsthand the struggle we as women face when we decide to get healthy. The cravings, the fear of failure, the busy schedule, the extra time and effort required to turning your life around.

Do you see the beauty in the changes you have made?

I have found myself in more conversations recently, with women talking about their health journey. I listen to their story and I hear about their work out routines and diet changes and I am truly excited for them. But what resonates is often how hard they are on themselves despite these great changes. They have made life altering decisions and are taking all the right steps, but now more than ever, they feel like failures. They talk about how weak, ugly, fat and sometimes worthless they feel. It seems that by choosing to do things the right way, in their mind, it only shines a brighter spotlight on their wrong things they do, which in essence drowns out the beauty of the actual successful steps they have taken. 

Do you realize that no extraordinary journey is without a few pit stops and getting lost once in a while?  

It’s like despite the good things we do for ourselves we often mentally consume ourselves with our weaknesses more than our wins because anything less than perfect is devastating. We get embarrassed that we haven’t reached our goals yet. We get frustrated that we still have cravings, don’t feel like working out all the time and that the scale seems to only go down in .25 lb increments. I truly hurt for women when they tell me that they had a bite of their Grandmothers homemade pumpkin pie and now it’s ruined their whole day. Or when they just want to cry because they’ve only lost 1 pound in a 2 week period. It breaks my heart to see how hard they are working yet continually feel beaten down.  

I see beautiful women all around me. I see is the beauty they possess inside and out.  These women have given their lives to friends, family and church. They are blessed with love ones, friends, jobs, an education, a house, walking, talking, breathing, loving…. living. They wake up every day with a new resolution to do their best for themselves and those around them!  They sweat, and grunt at the gym and invest in healthy foods and activities for their families yet, one wrong move and they are up in arms at their lack of self control.

Leah Mae wrote a post a while back called “Put Good In” where she talked about how to change your diet and make it easy.  In her post she says “rather than taking the all of the unhealthy things out of your routine, put good things in.  The theory being that the reinforcement of good things, like a new sheriff, will run the bad things right out of town.”

I have started to make these changes in my own perspective. My goal is enjoy my wins. I want to show people what works for me and be excited about my journey every day.  I want to set new goals and keep pushing toward them. I want to change my paradigm and the paradigm of those around me that my successes needs to be talked about and highlighted but my failures deserve only to be attacked and changed. Letting our weaknesses mentally consume us only beats us down, but enjoying and sharing our successes propels us forward on to new successes.

Unleash Your Inner Ninja: Guest Post by Allyson Strout of CrossFit KGB

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I am a bonafide box-stalking, blog-obsessing CrossFitter. I love to see affiliate pictures of people all over the world doing squats (with their girlfriend overhead) and handstand pushups (at the top of a mountain) and running (with a Fiat on their shoulder).  I get into reading coach’s blogs and am wild about creative WOD programming and I get giddy seeing that Ethel McAwesomeness in Toledo just got her first 85 pound deadlift just as much as I get giddy watching Lindsey Valenzuela do that Games snatch ladder over, and over, and over.  I watch YouTube because I just know that the secret to my elusive unassisted pull ups lies in some random video out there in cyberspace. (Pleeease, let this be true! And let me find.that.video.Pronto.)

But my own CrossFit story is not nearly as gasp-inspiring as the stories that go viral. Other box-stalkers have no idea who I am. I am, of course, thankful that I have not overcome adversity to get to where I am in my CrossFit adventure. I have not even given birth, so no taking-care-of-little-folks-at-home challenge there, either. Yes, reader(s): I have achieved this state of hopeful mediocrity simply by overcoming an astonishing history of laziness. Someone, alert the presses.

Not only have I not survived catastrophe or suffered severe trauma of either a physical or emotional nature (Thank You, Universe!), I have not come to CrossFit as an injured/bored/retired athlete of any kind. Well, I did play field hockey for one season my sophomore year in high school.  I was so, so bad that I never even got a team kilt but instead was provided a pair of gym shorts in our school colors (I suspect they were soccer team leftovers) just in case a majority of my team members, who were actually capable of understanding and executing the game of field hockey, were killed in one mass tragic accident. The accident never happened, I played twice for a total of six minutes (in my snazzy shorts), and walked away uninjured and uninspired.

I know that in some circles it is cool to mock the globo-gym, magazine-reading treadmill and elliptical machine junkies and I would be lying if I said that I didn't want to burst into one of those places and drag every woman there to my CrossFit box, assuring them that I am changing their lives for the better. But I WAS one of those women. I even had a treadmill at home; it is from that machine that I saw two full seasons of Dr. Phil and read countless books. Sometimes at the same time. Instead of a trophy-winning history with organized sports, it was my treadmill that was my gateway to CrossFit. I got caught up in the I-run-and-therefore-I-rock thing for a full year. I was obsessed. I got thin. I got Runners World magazine and read it, cover to cover. I met people. I competed with them, with myself. I didn't eat enough, and then I ate too much because I “could” – I would just “run it off” tonight/tomorrow/this weekend. Repeat, repeat, repeat. (Teaching moment: I know, now, how lucky I am that I did not suffer a serious injury, even if that would make my story more interesting.)

Then, my best friend got the crazy idea to sign us up for an obstacle course race. I figured the running was no problem (because I am a RUNNER and RUNNERS ARE AWESOME)…but I had to climb walls? Deal with ropes? Shimmy under barbed wire and (gasp) maybe even help other people do the same? There are no book holders, no TV, on an obstacle course! I was panicking. I had a Facebook friend in Australia who kept posting about how strong and sore she felt from squatting and how she could see the muscle tone in her arms and how much she was learning and how invigorated she was with this CrossFit thing. I asked her about it, she told me, I signed up.

That was almost two years ago.

Now, I am in love and live with an affiliate owner. I am a Level 1 coach. I am heavily involved in programming, in building and supporting our amazing community, and I am madly in love with CrossFit. I do not lift like Lindsey, and I don’t always enter (or leave) the box on top of the world. But I am no longer lazy, and I am motivated in all aspects of my life in a way that I never imagined.

You don’t have to have a high school or college trophy on your shelf to CrossFit. You don’t have to have survived a disease or a disaster, and you do not have to have a story to tell. I am 42 years old. I have now – much to my surprise - participated in organized CrossFit competitions and events with varying degrees of winning-ness but equal degrees of astonished motivation. I have had a blast at obstacle course races, I run 5k road races with faster times than ever, and I completed (with a relative degree of ease) my first sprint triathlon this summer. I am not a rock star, but I am delighted that I have an inner ninja. I am real person, who never in a zillion years imagined that I would do the things I am doing. If I could go back to sophomore year, I total would – but only to get that kilt.

So, if you are one of my fellow CrossFit box-and-blog stalkers but are waiting for that one picture/WOD post/athlete profile story that will push you the one final step to actually walking into your local CrossFit and getting started, maybe this is it. That would be wildly cool, and you can thank me later by sending me the link to that elusive pull up video, k?

And now for d&d's very first giveaway.  

One lucky guy or gal will win a CrossFit KGB t-shirt (like those pictured above)! Guaranteed to make you run faster and jump higher! New workout clothes are the best! 

Here's how you can enter:
-Please 'like' deadlifts & doppelgangers and CrossFit KGB on Facebook
-Then leave us a comment here letting us know you'd like to win
-Earn an extra entry by sharing the giveaway and/or Allyson's post via your Facebook or Twitter (we're @DoppelgangerGrl by the way)

That's it! Way easier than burpees! 

Thanks to Allyson and to CrossFit KGB for all of their support and endless motivation.  

Conditioned for Life

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Eight years ago today I was awakened at 5am by the sharp ring of my cell phone. I knew what had happened before a single word was spoken, before I even saw the number on the Caller ID. My father had died. 

The minutes and hours that followed were perhaps not what one might expect for a young woman in my situation. Brush teeth, contacts in, drive 30 miles to meet my mom at what seemed like the 15^th nursing home/hospital I’d visited in the recent months. See him for the very last time. All without a single tear. Why? Because I had been conditioned for this.

To characterize my father with descriptive words or traits wouldn’t really be appropriate. He wasn’t as much a collection of vibrant and noticeable qualities as he was a subtle absence of all of the attributes he didn’t care to embody. He wasn’t quiet, he just wasn’t outspoken. He wasn’t cold, he just wasn’t affectionate.

And although he would hate to be described as such, he was a diabetic and a Vietnam Vet. Sadly, he was the former because he was the latter. A lifelong athlete and lover of the outdoors, his Type II Diabetes did not resemble the more modern, obesity-induced, “reap what you sow” affliction. Exposure to Agent Orange was the more likely culprit. He battled to various degrees for much of my life and by the end, after countless surgeries and hospitals stays, had lost both of his legs and his nearly all of his vision. He was 55.

He forced me into independence practically from birth, always preparing me to stand on my own two feet. I was allowed to roam and explore much farther than other kids my age, but if I got myself into trouble, I had to get myself out of it. He didn't hug me or say 'I love you', he didn't participate in my activities or come to my games, he didn't even go to my college graduation. I never felt, and still don't, that this was because he didn't care or because he didn't love me. I believe it was because he thought the best thing he could do for me was to prepare me for a life without him. 

As athletes we progress. We condition. The threshold of the pain, endurance, and exhaustion that we're able to tolerate extends.  Callouses break at 75 pullups where they used to break at 10. Knees hurt at mile 13 when they used to buckle at mile 3. In the beginning it's always difficult to imagine ourselves stronger, to imagine throwing harder, running farther, or lifting heavier. Yet once we get there--stronger-- its usually more difficult to remember our weaker selves.

It is difficult for me to imagine myself as anyone who was not made strong by her father, by his influence and by being a young spectator of his painful journey. He conditioned me. For loss and disappointment, for struggle, for conquering the things you think may break you. For crediting no one but yourself for your successes, and for holding no one but yourself responsible for your failures. Despite all that's happened before and since his death, I wouldn't change any of it. And something tells me neither would he.

*"Anguish" - completed upon my dad's return from Vietnam and reentry into civilian life in the 1970s. Original artwork remains a part of the National Veterans Art Museum's permanent collection in Chicago. It was also included in The Twins Platoon: An Epic Story of Young Marines at War in Vietnam by Christy W. Sauro Jr.