Sunday Story…Quarter Finals

By the time you read this, David Savage, Ellie McKenzie, I, and Chad Hankins will have completed all the quarter finals, or whichever ones we were able to do.

To reach the quarterfinals, you had to be in the top 25% of your division, whether the division was 18 to 34 or one of the age group divisions above that. Obviously, the more people in the division, the larger the 25% is, but also the harder it is to get into that 25%. It's quite an accomplishment. All of us are very proud to be part of that cohort.

But really, it isn't about being in the quarter finals. Each one of you could join us with these workouts. They're accessible to almost all of us. What it is about is not the workout, but the willingness to do the work to show up, warm up, and throw down to prove to ourselves where our fitness lies and to find the holes in it. There are holes; each one of us has holes. The best in the world has holes; that's why they have coaches to help them plug some of those gaps, and even the best in the world continue to strive and get better.

That's what this whole thing is about. It's not about how you did in the Open; it's not about the quarter finals. It's about being a little bit better today than you were yesterday and not as good as you will be tomorrow if you continue to show up consistently, day in and day out, do the work, find your fitness, and we'll see you on the leaderboard of life.

If you're interested in building muscle and strength, sign up for a free fitness assessment at www.crossfitodyssey.com or reach out to me directly, and let's get you started on your journey to extraordinary results.

John Mariotti

www.sunday-stories.blogspot.com

www.crossfitodyssey.com

775-338-2412

 

 

Sunday Story...The Open…Final Report.

I want to send a big congratulations to each one of you who did the Open on Fridays with us. Every workout was a challenge. Every workout had you doing things that maybe you didn't think you could do, and you tried them anyway. Big congratulations, you deserve a round of applause for your effort.

I also really want to send congratulations to the 15 people who registered for the Open. Even though not all of you put in every score, you were there, and I know you got here and were judged on all of your workouts, so good on you! Big, big congratulations to David Savage, who finished in 205th place in a field of over 2,500! It's quite an accomplishment to finish above the top 10% of your field.

Now the quarterfinals are coming up for David and me, and we'll be participating in that next weekend, like the Open. The announcement for the workouts shows up on Thursday afternoon. We have until Monday to complete four workouts in five days. David and I will be doing them together. We think on Friday we will do two workouts, 10 and 2, and then the same thing on Saturday. We will have to just see; it depends on what the workouts are and how they shake out.

I know the crew at Invictus will have warm-ups and strategies for us to review and implement. We'd like to invite all of you to come and watch us, cheer us on, and judge us. We would love your energy to help us do our best in the quarterfinals.

Again, congratulations to each and every one of you for completing these workouts. See you on the leaderboard!

If you're interested in building muscle and strength, sign up for a free fitness assessment at www.crossfitodyssey.com or reach out to me directly, and let's get you started on your journey to extraordinary results.

John Mariotti

www.sunday-stories.blogspot.com

www.crossfitodyssey.com

775-338-2412

 

Sunday Story: The Open Week Three

We're in the last week of the Open. Some of us have already done this third workout. Some of you are looking at it with mild trepidation. Let's be honest, it is a burner. It's going to punish some people who decide to go out too hot, but it's going to really punish everybody in the end. This is the beauty of Open workouts in general. We are doing our absolute utmost in the workout.

Most of us won't qualify for any stage of the competition past the Open, and that's fine. We don't need to. If we do well, let's go to the quarterfinals and see what it brings. Maybe it's not because you're going to go to the Games or anything else. Maybe it's just to challenge yourself a little bit further. How hard can you go? Can you go for an extra 10 seconds? Can you go with an extra 5 reps? Can you lay it out there a little bit further? Can you go deeper into that pain cave and stay there? This is part of the challenge of who we are as humans: challenging ourselves to do really hard things, and to do them voluntarily, not because we must.

The fact is that you never know; you don't know how strong you are until strong is the only choice you have. The fact is that when you voluntarily try to do things that are so hard, you are going to move the needle on so many other things in your life, not just your fitness, but your mental toughness, your trust in your capacity, the confidence that comes from knowing you can do hard things. This is where the beauty of the Open lies. See you on the leaderboard.

If you're interested in building muscle and strength, sign up for a free fitness assessment at www.crossfitodyssey.com or reach out to me directly, and let's get you started on your journey to extraordinary results.

John Mariotti

www.sunday-stories.blogspot.com

www.crossfitodyssey.com

775-338-2412

 

 

Sunday Story... The Open, Week Two

Week one had us box jumping or box stepping and doing a whole bunch of wall balls. It was 12 minutes, and it pointed out to many of us where some of our training has not been what it should have been.

Now here we are in week two, and we've got a very nice triplet of overhead lunges, dumbbell snatches, and a mix of high-level gymnastic skills done under fatigue. If you've been with us following the Invictus programming, you'll notice that we do a lot of fairly high-level gymnastic skills under fatigue. By fatigue, we mean we've done a bunch of stuff, and then we have to step up to the bar or the rings and perform a skill that is difficult to do but even more difficult to do under fatigue, when breath is coming hard and fast, and heart is leaping through my throat. This is one of the beauties of CrossFit: we ask our bodies to do a lot, and then ask it to do something difficult under the best conditions.

You might ask yourself, "Why is that important?" The answer is simple. Sometimes we must do hard things that require thinking and frontal lobe work, even when our bodies and brains rebel against doing so. We don't want to do those things when our hearts are in our throats, our vision is narrowing, and our fine motor skills are under attack. It's at that moment that there's a separation between those of us who train for this sort of thing and those who don't. If we don't train for it, it's going to be really hard to hop up on those rings or hop up on those bars and get that job done.

Every week is a real eye-opener for all of us. But that is one of the reasons to do the Open!

If you're interested in building muscle and strength, sign up for a free fitness assessment at www.crossfitodyssey.com or reach out to me directly to get started on your journey to extraordinary results.

John Mariotti

www.sunday-stories.blogspot.com

www.crossfitodyssey.com

775-338-2412