A Different Kind of Whole 30

A while ago, the folks over at Whole 9 Life challenged their readers to do a totally different kind of Whole 30. They wanted everyone to try and go 30 days without watching TV! While this may have nothing to do with nutrition, it most definitely has everything to do with health as a whole. Whole 9 Life isn't just about nutrition, they're about balancing life, taking the correct steps to becoming the best version of yourself. I didn't participate in the 30 Day No-TV Challenge because I don't really feel like TV is a major part of my life anyway. I enjoy at times but don't really feel like I "need" it. The thought of turning off my TV for 30 days didn't make me nervous, but I have thought of a little challenge that does!

As my friends, family, and even members of my gym will tell you, I have a little problem that involves shoes and nice athletic-wear! It seems like every time I turn around there's a new product that I have to have or a shiny new pair of kicks. Back in September when I was asked to write out my goals for lululemon athletica, I put down that I wanted to save 50% of all my paychecks. I am currently living rent-free and have minor bills to pay so this is the perfect time to sock away as much cash as possible until the not so distance future when Neal and I hope to get into a house. I did an excellent job up until December when it was time to buy presents for Hanukkah/X-Mas. I have managed to spend most of that extra savings that I worked so hard for on gifts...and not all of them were for other people! (oops!)

For the past few years, I have definitely been living in the mind-set that I don't need to worry about saving tons of money because what I make is not that significant and when I finally get that "big girl job" I will have more than enough time to make up for it so why not enjoy myself now right? News flash, I have my dream job....but it's not making me the kind of bucks that my original career had the potential to offer. So, its high time to really get a handle on my finances. Now, I haven't been completely irresponsible up until now, but I definitely have huge room for improvement. So here goes...for the entire month of January, I will be completing not only a Nutritional Whole 30 but I will also be abstaining from making any unnecessary purchases. No new apparel, no new footwear, no dining out for lunch while at work, no daily Starbucks purchases. Reading this, it seems like such a simple task, but I know it will be a challenge for me and it's something I need to do to put my life back in balance.

Now that I've got my two major tasks for the month of January planned out, its time to re-evaluate and post the rest of my yearly goals! Stay tuned!

I'm Back!

Well it's almost January and that means it's time for new goals/resolutions. One of my personal goals this year is to blog more. So here I am. My hope is to update this blog at least once a week.

The focus of this post though, is to talk about another goal on my list this year and that's my nutrition. Contrary to popular belief, I am not the nutritional perfectionist that many seem to think that I am. I did extremely well with my nutrition during the first half of 2011. I completed two Whole 30's and was feeling pretty good about everything. My body composition was where I wanted it and my workouts were getting better. How then did I let myself slip back into the habits of not making the best choices for my body and my fitness? Honestly, I don't know. I think a little of it was because I was doing so well, I thought, ehh couldn't hurt to loosen up a bit. Part of it was the advent of the holidays, and part of it was just plain laziness. The reasons really aren't that important at this point. What's important is that I am motivated to make a change. So, I am embarking on yet another Whole 30. This one will run from Monday, January 2nd to Tuesday, January 31st. My hope is that it will set me straight and put me in the right place as CrossFit Sectionals 2012 nears. Right now, I better go get that grocery shopping list ready cause it's about to begin!...

Competition Season Begins

The title in this post might be a little deceiving. For the elite among us, it seems these days the competition season is never-ending. Less than a month ago, the CrossFit Games took place in California playing host to the World's Fittest. Since I obviously didn't make it to the Crossfit Games, the last time I competed was at Regionals on June 17th, 18th and 19th. But looking ahead, I have 6 competitions and multiple other Crossfit Events written into my calendar within the next 4 1/2 months! Now, I am most likely not going to participate in every one of these events and competitions but the fact that the opportunity is there, is significant. I have been having a hard time lately with motivation. This is something that I feel resonates with many other CrossFit Athletes that I've talked to recently. I think the important thing for all of us to remember is to pick and choose our competitions wisely so that we can keep a healthy level of motivation and fun without getting burned out.

This past weekend I chose to compete at the Life As Rx Tour in Dallas, Texas along with a group of my CrossFit Katy family. For me, this marks the beginning of my Games 2012 Season. I chose Life As Rx for a few reasons. First of all, it was a chance to get out of town and focus on nothing but the competition and having a good time with my friends. When you work full-time as a trainer coaching classes 6 days a week, it is essential sometimes to take a long weekend to forget it all and focus on yourself as an Athlete and not a coach, business owner, etc. Two this was billed as one of the largest competitions at a huge venue (the 2011 Europa) with a unique opportunity to showcase CrossFit to a large group of people that were possibly unfamiliar with it. Also, I didn't go last year and regretted it.

Competing turned out to be a great decision. I had a lot of fun and got in some solid workouts. As an advanced CrossFitter, I think sometimes I get caught up in the idea that I need to always be doing complicated WOD's and movements. This weekend was a good reminder that the simple stuff is just as ass-kicking! Finished up with a 10th place finish so I was happy. In case I forgot to mention it here, my goal for this season is a Top 10 Finish in all of the events I choose to compete in. So that's one down. The next one on the list is the BCS Games in College Station on August, 27th.

CrossFit Katy's Bring the Heat 2!

Thank You, Thank You, Thank You! That is pretty much the first thing that I think about when I think about Saturday's Bring the Heat 2 Competition. Thank You to all of the Amazing CrossFit Katy members who sacrificed their Saturday to help us put on a great competition! I know I've said this before but we really do have the most amazing community. There's no way we could put on these kinds of events without the love and support from our CrossFit Katy Family!

The name did not disappoint as mother nature most definitely "Brought the Heat" but so did the athletes that took on the WOD's. For this competition we had 3 WOD's for Scaled and 4 WOD's for the Standard division.

The first WOD was a 4 rep max deadlift followed by an 800 meter trail run. I saw some amazing feats of strength as the top two males in the RX division wrestled for first place lifting close to 500lbs each! I am most impressed though with CrossFit Katy's own Steve Gonzalez who competed in his first competition last weekend and lifted 30lbs over his previous ONE rep max for a set of Four! Awesome!!!

The second WOD was a short, fast burner. 25-20-15-10-5 Box Jumps coupled with 5-4-3-2-1 Clean and Jerks. Huge shout out to Ashley Buttirini from Bayou City CrossFit! This was also her first competition AND she went RX! The 105# on the clean and jerk was no walk in the park for her, but she gritted her teeth and rocked it!

The third WOD consisted of 21 power snatches followed by a 30 meter shuttle run, 21 push presses, another 30 meter shuttle run, 21 hang cleans, 30 meter shuttle run and then 120 meters of overhead walking with the barbell! The overhead walk proved to be tough with plenty of athletes struggling through that last 60 meters but the grit and determination was unmatched. That's the thing I love about CrossFit, so many times even the athletes competing wonder at the beginning of the WOD whether or not they can complete it, but inevitably, something inside them tells them they can, no matter how hard it seems, how heavy the bar, how much it hurts, we all believe and that makes all the difference.

In an effort to embrace the "unknown and unknowable" aspect of CrossFit, the 4th WOD for RX was something that I've never seen in a CrossFit competition. It was a "floater" WOD which consisted of Max Double Unders. Athletes could perform the WOD as many times as they wanted during the day to get their top score. It was a great twist to an already great competition.

Overall, I am extremely proud of the kind of event that CrossFit Katy was able to host. I fall more in love with this sport and the people that do it every time I go to an event and our event was no different. Again, thank you so much to all the amazing boxes that sent their athletes out to brave our WOD's and the Texas heat! And of course, to my amazing CrossFit Katy Family, I love you and we couldn't do this without you. Can't wait till next year!!

Half-Full?

I read a tweet today from Compete Every Day that said "2011 is exactly half way over. You have six months to do what you set out to do this year..." Not gonna lie, it caught me a little off-guard! Can you believe that this year is half-way over?!?!

So I went back and looked at my goals that I wrote for myself back in January. Yes I know, I should have re-evaluated my goals at the beginning of April, but things got a little crazy with the gym move to the new space, new programming, etc. Not an excuse but oh well. (Maybe one of my goals should be, keep up with goals!) :) I have so far met none of my strength goals! Boo. On the bright side, I have gotten 4 consecutive muscle-ups which is 2 more than I was shooting for in my first 6 months of the year and only one shy of the 5 that I want to get my the end of the year......Bottom line, I have a long way to go if I am going to accomplish what I want to accomplish by the end of the year.

Thank you Compete Every Day for B*%& # Slapping me into reality! Goals will never be accomplished without a road-map and without diligently working on them every day!

Living the Dream

It's finally happened! I didn't think I would be writing this post today. I didn't think I'd be writing this post this month. I didn't think I'd be writing this post this year even.....but I am! When I first moved to Katy, it was so that I could go to nursing school. I had dabbled in CrossFit on and off for about a year before I moved here, but it was nothing serious. When I finally really got into it and got my Level 1 Cert, it was more because I wanted the knowledge. I wanted to know more about this sport that I was growing to really love, and maybe, just maybe it would allow me to coach a little bit with CrossFit Katy. You know, be a back up in case of emergencies or something. But then things started to take off a little. Classes got bigger and more consistent, we moved into a box and added barbell work and other things that needed technical training. We needed more coaches and I was there to help and it was great!

Then nursing school started. I had to balance a huge class-load and lots of clinicals. I had to bury my nose in books and study for tests. I enjoyed it, but it pulled me away from the gym, away from the people that I worked so hard to better. It pulled me away from this CrossFit "Family" that I'd grown to love. After nursing school, I jumped back into the gym like never before coaching or co-coaching 15-18 classes a week, helping with programming, taking on personal training clients.....all while looking for a job in nursing. I remember thinking to myself over and over "If only....if only I could just train, I would be happy." Going to the Form3 Event in Austin, TX really solidified things for me.

"If you could do anything in the world, regardless of finances, what would you do?" I remember hearing Carey Kepler speak those words while we all closed our eyes and dreamed. I wrote down that I wanted to work at the gym and be in charge of our nutritional program that at the moment is in its infancy and I wanted to create and be in charge of a women's program. Then we were asked to write down what was stopping us, what we were afraid of and this is what I put....

As you can see, we had to write down what we were afraid of and then we were told we had a choice. We could choose to continue to be afraid, or we could choose to move forward.

I came back from that event motivated. I knew what I wanted, I wanted to work at the gym and I figured the only way to get there was to get a nursing job, work my butt off for a few years while still training a few classes a week and then maybe, the gym would be in position for me to leave my nursing job, or to go part-time, and coach more. It wasn't ideal but it was better than nothing. And then.....the amazing happened. I didn't get any job offers. Not one! I spent all my time at the gym, all the while applying to position after position and getting no responses. For a while I was devastated. Every month that passed without a nursing job pushed my dreams further away, but at the same time, every month that passed without a job allowed me another month in the gym coaching. Many people in my life have said that everything happens for a reason. I never really liked this idea because it made me feel like I wasn't in charge of my own destiny, but the more I think about it, the more I think maybe it's a little true. Maybe opportunities happen for a reason and then it's up to us to take them. The last few months at the gym have been great, so great that CrossFit Katy has decided to hire me as a full-time trainer!!!! I can't believe I get to type that today! Now instead of dreaming of the day when I get to step away from nursing and be a full-time trainer, I get to live it! I can't express how much this means to me. I can't thank CrossFit Katy enough for allowing me the opportunity to live my dream! Time to get started....

Regionals Wrap Up

Well I figured I'd better get this blog done since it's been a whole week since Regionals! I guess it's just taken me a while to digest everything. First thing I have to say is WOW I am so proud of my teammates at CrossFit Katy. We went into Regionals with high hopes and little else. All of the guys on our team have been consistently doing CrossFit for barely over a year and our ladies (myself included) while strong, still have so much to work on but we put it all together and managed a 12th place finish! 12th Place! Out of the 30 teams that qualified, and the over 200 Affiliates from our Region, we finished 12th! It was a great feeling.

Now I gotta be honest, I didn't feel this way on Sunday. In the weeks leading up to Regionals, my coach decided that I was going to do the Thruster Ladder, the 250's WOD and Amanda. Amanda! All I could think about was that WOD. I remember seeing that WOD on the live stream from the Games last year and thinking that I wanted to be able to do that. I wanted to be able to string muscle ups together and effortlessly throw 95lb squat snatches around. A week and a half before Regionals, my teammate Adam and I did Amanda....and we crushed it. 16 and change was the final time and I strung 4 muscle ups together in my set of 9. I was so excited, I couldn't wait to get to Sunday! Unfortunately that didn't happen. We faltered on our 250's WOD and we never got the chance for a come-back with Amanda. In hindsight, I should have spent more time working my chest-to-bar pull ups than my muscle ups but you live and learn.

Now that the excitement has waned a little, I can look back and say that despite not getting to Sunday, we really did an amazing job. My whole team and many other athletes from my gym have found a new sense of motivation with respect to their training and I can't wait to see how far everyone goes!

On a different note, I have to take a moment to congratulate and thank all the amazing athletes, teams, volunteers spectators and judges that helped make last weekend great. Big thanks to Matt and Pam Munson for putting on a great event. Huge shout outs to my local CF'ers Leah Shullenberger, Aja Barto, Team CF West Houston, Bayou City, Atomic and of course shout outs to new friends and old friends, Azadeh Boroumand, CF Dallas Strong, CF Waco, Candice Ruiz, Lindsey Smith, Carey Kepler, Emily Baker, Alex Janss, Miguel Garza, Team Central, Team Red Black, Jonathan Haynes, Diego Centeno And finally....THANK YOU CROSSFIT KATY FANS! We had such an amazing turnout and we appreciate everything that ya'll do. We would be nothing without our community!