Sunday Story…Write it!

I keep a log book of all the workouts I have done. This is a roadmap of where I have been somewhere to look back and gauge progress. I just filled up this particular book and I turned all the way back to page one and what was written was this:

The Road to the Games

The first day was 9/04/2012. The last day was 6/18/2014. 21 months of workouts. 21 months of progress, 21 months of ups and downs, successes and frustrations all contained in one journal. 21 months of working towards a single goal, a goal that is now in sight. 30 days from today I will be in Los Angeles getting ready to walk into the arena to compete with 20 of the other fittest men for the title of Fittest in the World, ages 55-59.

That book contains a road map for how I achieved my goal. It is the daily record of work done. Any quest should have a similar record. We still read Homer’s Odyssey which is essentially a record of a man’s journey home (to himself). The trial and tribulations it took to get there.

You should be keeping a similar record, a record of your journey all the trials and tribulations of your life. You may think it is nothing to write home about but you never know what may affect you deeply and if you don’t record it neither will the rest of us, or your progeny. Imagine having a record of your great grandmother’s travel from a large eastern city to the plains of Nebraska to meet and marry her husband, as my Great Grandmother did. What a journey, what true trial and tribulations, what fear and anger and happiness (I hope) would a story like that contain. What we view as mundane and mediocre may be highly interesting 100 years from now. I know I would love to read the accounts of my grandparents as they journeyed across the ocean to get to this country. What they saw, thought, and felt as they uprooted themselves from home and hearth in pursuit of something better and bigger than what they thought possible.


What a gift a book like that would be. What a gift to yourself. What a gift to your children and their children. You don’t have to be Hemingway or Shakespeare to write. You can write in bullet points if you want. You can write just a few lines or a paragraph if you want. The only rule is to get it down on paper or in the computer (save and back up!). You can do it. We want to see your journey. But most of all you can look back and see your accomplishments. You can browse back through your book and chart your own progress. You will be amazed at what you do, how far you travel without really trying.

Keep a journal. It isn’t hard but it is most definitely worth it.

Namaste

John Mariotti

www.crossfit-odyssey.com
www.martialartsnevada.com
www.sunday-stories.blogspot.com
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Sunday Story…Father’s Day

This one has been hard for me to write.

I am a Father. I am also a Grandfather. I am not always proud of the father I have been. I wish I would have been more like my father but I wasn’t. In 2011 I wrote this:
http://sunday-stories.blogspot.com/2011/06/sunday-storyhappy-fathers.html
about my dad. If you want to read it, please feel free.

I didn’t spend the kind of time I think, in retrospect, my children deserved and needed but that may just my perception now. In Brittany’s case I was a nonexistent entity. It is an ignominy I bear every day; shame on me that was inexcusable. No matter what I felt, or what happened between the two adults in her life I should have been better than that. I wasn’t and I can’t apologize enough.

My other 3 children had a Father who worked a lot…sometimes 18 hours a day and almost never took vacations. I was driven past the point of excess. It didn’t really serve any of us. On the other hand I still do that…drive myself toward goals and commitments that require unprecedented focus and determination. I just don’t have children living at home, or anyone else for that matter! Except for a cat that only cares if she doesn’t get fed.

Hopefully my children felt loved even though I was absent a lot. Hopefully they got the lessons I wanted to impart about the importance of hard work, doing a job well, service and kindness. Hopefully they learned what good things to do for their children and what mistakes to avoid on their own journeys to parenthood.

Unfortunately our children don’t come with an owner’s manual when they arrive (not that all of us would have read it anyway!) We can only do what we think is best at the time we are doing it, based on the examples we have from our families and the people around us. We learn as we go.

On this Father’s day I want to Thank all my children for turning out so well in spite of me and all my faults and miss-steps over the years. They are all grown up and out in the world doing great things with families of their own. And I want to Thank my father for being who he was as my father.

I love you all of you kids.
And
I love you Dad.

Namaste

John Mariotti
www.crossfit-odyssey.com
www.martialartsnevad.com
www.sunday-stories.blogspot.com
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Sunday Story…What (it took)

When I was coming up in high school wrestling there was a guy named Dan Gable out of Iowa who won the 1972 Olympic gold medal. Legend has it that he lived by this credo…”7 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 7 years. That’s what it took.” So what has it taken to get my 57 year old rear to the 2014 CrossFit Games?

Aside from the obvious dedication and commitment over the last year:
Workouts:
I have had workouts scheduled at least 5 of every 7 days and frequently 6 out of 7.
My workouts usually take over an hour and as much as 2 hours. This doesn’t include warm up or cool down.
I spend 3 or 4 hours a week on “mobility” work (and this isn’t enough!)
I have had dedicated Olympic lifting sessions once a week for the first 6 months and twice a week for the last 6 months.
My coach(es) have me doing specific stability and mobility exercises.

For recovery:
I visit an Active release doctor once a week.
I have been doing cryotherapy (go to http://www.cryousa.com/ for more info) once a week or so since February.
I try to sleep 7-9 hours every night…successfully most of the time.

Diet:
I eat real natural food 99% of the time. In the last 6 months or so I have added more potatoes and white rice than in the last 2 or 3 years. In some circles that would not be “paleo”. I do use whey protein from SFH (100% grassfed), fish oil (9 grams a day), branched chain amino acids (BCAA), as well as several other supplements from different natural products companies. These products come recommended to me by people I know and trust (Robb Wolf, Stephen Cherniske) and are designed to aid in recovery and avoid possible dietary deficiencies based on my out of sight activity level.

I have and continue to experience several injuries over the last year. None of them have been severe enough to stop me or slow my activity significantly. In this regard I have been very fortunate but I am skirting the edge of disaster on this one. That is why the mobility, ART, and other recovery practices are so important.

My social life is fairly non-existent. I eat, sleep, and train. I prepare all my food a week at a time. I think about my training or programming for the athletes I coach. This has been an all encompassing journey… a quest, if you will. There have been times I wondered if it was worth it. There have been times when I wanted to quit, to stop, to call CJ Martin and tell him I was out. There are still days when I wonder if I am good enough, that I am going to show up in Los Angeles in 6 weeks and get laughed out of the stadium. Then I get reminded of how far I have come…all the things I can do today…better, faster, longer…that I could not do just a few months ago.

I wouldn’t trade all of the pain and struggle of the last 12 months for anything. It has been a transformative and amazing metamorphosis. And I would do it again, even if I wasn’t going to the Games in a few weeks.

So, to all of you reading this and all the things I write, Thanks for your support both publically and privately, and expressed and implied. If you want to start your journey to personal excellence, your journey to extraordinary, drop me a line and we can start you down the path as well!

Namaste

John Mariotti
www.crossfit-odyssey.com
www.martialartsnevada.com
www.sunday-stories.blogspot.com
Follow me on FaceBook!

Sunday Story…What (part 3)

Exercise

Many of you want to know exactly what I have done to get to the CrossFit Games. What exercise protocols did I follow? When and what did I do? And I am going to lay all of that out for you in next week’s issue. But this one’s for you. What do you need to do to be fit and healthy, because, honestly, what I have been doing has moved from optimum wellness to an edge that skirts over-training and an obsessive focus on a specialty fitness regimen.

Here are the 5 things you must do to begin the road to optimum health and fitness

#1 you have to move

It sounds simple, I know, but you really need to move. Walk up the stairs instead of the escalator, or walk on the people moving sidewalk, park further away from the store instead of looking for the closest spot, take a walk after dinner, or ride your bike once in a while. Just move and move often. It doesn’t count as exercise either by the way, it is basic human maintenance…you were made to move, not sit and rust.

#2 you have to pick up heavy stuff often

I want you to pick up heavy things every day. Learn how to do it safely and keep your ego in check but pick up a variety of heavy things in lots of different ways almost every day. Especially squats. This is one of the most critical movements you can do…pick up weight, put it on your back, squat down and stand up. Do it right (get instruction), do it often, and do it in lots of ways.

#3 you have to move really fast sometimes

When you were little you had races all the time, remember? Race you home! Race you to the pole! You were always racing to get somewhere. You need to race again. Go as fast as possible, stop, catch your breath and do it again. Sprint like this 2 or 3 times a week. Combine it with lifting heavy things.

#4 you have to challenge yourself with new stuff

Learning new things does not come easy to us as we age. Just like it is easier to not move it is easier to not do things differently or learn new skills. Learning new skills is critical to our brain health, and let’s get real…without a brain being strong is just dumb. Doing things that make us uncomfortable will serve you in the long run…especially the things that help us maintain balance and flexibility…like being upside down!

#5 you have to play

Just play. Throw a Frisbee, swim for fun, a little beach volleyball, maybe some badminton or croquet…just play. Remember all those games…hide and seek? Kick the can? Kick ball? Tag? Red light, green light? Ask your kids to re-teach you, they are still playing those games. Then just play with no outcome in mind, no winners no losers just play for the sake of playing.

If you do those things every week, you will be well on your way to improved health and fitness. It won’t take long, either, especially if you follow what parts 1 &2 talked about…Eat Real Food and Sleep!

Next week…the competitive construct or the life of the unpaid professional athlete!

Namaste

John Mariotti

www.crossfit-odyssey.com

www.martialartsnevada.com

www.sunday-stories.blogspot.com

Find me on FaceBook!

Sunday Story…What (cont’d)

The second part of our physical puzzle is rest. Rest as in sleep. Rest as in no activity. Rest as in, well, rest. Unfortunately, we live in a time and place where we value activity over rest. How many times have we bragged about only sleeping 4 hours a night, or pulled an all-nighter to get a project done, or study for a test?

When we sleep we rejuvenate. When we sleep deeply our blood pressure drops, breathing slows, muscles relax, blood supply to muscles increases, tissue growth and repair takes place, energy is restored, and hormones are released, especially growth hormone which is essential for growth and development. A cat nap is not going to do all that. All of those things will happen when you sleep 7-9 hours a night. Sleeping also helps the quality of our lives by contributing to a healthy immune system, controlling our appetites through the proper levels of the hormones ghrelin and leptin. When we don’t sleep enough we may feel the need to eat more, which can lead to weight gain.

So let’s see…sleep more and get stronger, get sick less, control my appetite, achieve the proper hormonal response. Or we can sleep less and get sick, get fat, and die sooner. That’s correct studies show that people sleeping less than 6 hours a night have a death rate as much as 30% higher than people who sleep between 6 – 9 hours.

Sleeping well takes planning and sticking to that plan. You need to have an established routine that you perform every night before retiring to bed. Here are my top 5 tips for a great night’s sleep:
1. Go to bed at the same time every night (and get up at the same time every morning)
2. Sleep in a cool room (68 degrees)
3. Sleep in complete darkness
4. Turn off all electronic devices or keep them in a different room. The bedroom is for sleep and well, you know, not watching TV, doing computer work or anything else.
5. Keep it as quiet as possible.

It really is that simple but you must decide you are going to sleep well every night. Learn to quiet your mind, use deep breathing techniques, keep it quiet, dark, and cool, and wake up in the morning rested, stronger and healthier. You can do this.

Sleep…it’s what you need as much as food!

Next week…exercise!

Namaste

John Mariotti
www.crossfit-odyssey.com
www.martialartsnevada.com
www.sunday-stories.blogspot.com

Sunday Story…What

The why is simply this: to fulfill the mission of being as fit as humanly possible at whatever age I may be. But what does that really mean and what does it take to achieve that goal?

It means you must be aware of all aspects of your physical life. For our purposes today, that is what we are focused on. Should you be balanced and emotionally sound, intellectually stimulated, and relatively stress free? Of course you should. There are 3 parts of this physical puzzle that must fit together to fulfill the mission. Diet, Rest, Exercise…diet is first.

DIET aka Nutrition

“80% of your results in the gym are dictated by what you do in the kitchen.”

The food you eat is critical to being healthy. The food you eat is directly related to your ability to perform in the gym and perform throughout the day in your life. Your mental processes get inhibited when your brain isn’t fed right. Your physical abilities are diminished when your body isn’t fueled properly. We should all know this by now. You can figure it out for yourself if you don’t believe me…how well do you perform when you are hung-over? All that alcohol and the resultant sugars affect your brain and your body and not in a good way. So let’s extrapolate that data out a bit…other sugars may have a similar affect. Putting chemicals in your body (like alcohol) may have deleterious effects on your body. We just are not aware of all the other crap we are pouring into our bodies.

My stance on diet is simple: Eat Real Food. Food you can identify. Food that doesn’t require a label. Food that grew from the ground, food that was raised the way nature intended it to be raised. We have been fed (pun intended) a bunch of lies when it comes to food. Some of those lies were honest mistakes, made by people working off erroneous information. But many of those lies came from economic interests, and people who had a vested interest in making us consume a product.

One of the biggest lies is this: Eating Fat will make you fat. Eating a low fat diet will create a healthy body. Really? So in the last 40 years we have seen the American (and now the world) health picture improve? NOT! Diabetes and obesity are rampant and this is the first generation of children not expected to outlive their parents. You need fat, you need protein, and you need carbohydrates in your diet every day. How much of each should be determined by your activity level and other factors. Right now I eat a lot of natural carbohydrates…rice, potatoes (sweet and other), dates and other fruits. But right now my activity level is off the chart high.

Here is your Diet program (also known as the Stop Eating Crap Diet)…Eat meat and vegetables, healthy fats (olives, avocado, coconut), a little fruit, a little starch, some seeds and nuts in quantities to support activity but not to store fat. NO SUGAR. Avoid grains, dairy, and legumes. Grab your plate, put a portion of meat on it (about 4oz. or 30 grams of protein) and fill the rest of the plate with green stuff. Simple and easy. Repeat every time you eat. Some protein, some veggies do it for 30 days and call me. We will tweak it after that. Oh, and lay off the wine (or keep it to a glass a day and no, you don’t get to save them up for Saturday night!).

Next week…Rest!

Namaste

John Mariotti
www.crossfit-odyssey.com
www.martialartsnevada.com
www.sunday-stories.blogspot.com

Sunday Story…Happy Mother’s Day

It is that day of the year to pause and reflect on all of the women wore bore you, raised you, parented you or all three. That person may be your mother, grandmother, step-mother, teacher, mentor, or aunt. They weren’t perfect. Neither are you. They did the best they could in the situation they were in and the tools they had available and did it with your best interests in mind. We can’t know what was going on for them, only what our experience was.

When you are a parent you get to make your own rules. You also get to break them. You get to say (stupidly sometimes) things like…”my child will never eat sugar” or “we won’t have a television in my house” or “I will never raise my voice to my children.” Parenting is an ongoing process of trial and error. None of my children came with an owner’s manual. And every one of them was different. What was effective for one was worthless on the next child. You didn’t come with a manual either and your mother did what she did in the hopes that you would turn out OK. Most of us do turn OK, often ignoring the best laid plans of our mothers.

She did what she thought was right. She did what she did to get you to adulthood so you could do what you are doing. It worked…here you are today, all grown up and out in the world.

All the best things I am I credit my Mother (and Father). All the rest is my fault. It’s that simple.

So say thanks, give your Momma a hug and a kiss (or a virtual one) or a prayer and be grateful for all the things she did and the sacrifices that were made for you to be who you are!

Namaste

John Mariotti
www.crossfit-odyssey.com
www.martialartsnevada.com
www.sunday-stories.blogspot.com