The Lion's Ovation

As a society, are we beginning to look at fitness differently? Or is only those who train CrossFit? Does O-lifting have to be in a gym, with proper form and attire? Or does it really only matter that the weight is successfully taken from the ground to an overhead position? Is it tradition? Safety? Or is it true power?

Read below and let me know your thoughts. Special thanks to AgainFaster and Jon Gilson for always posting something inspirational. The Lion's Ovation is from them.

The Lion's Ovation
There is no wooden platform. Only rolled rubber, stretched over a concrete pad and coated with the thin, obnoxious dust of the Aromas desert.

Luminaries with red and white lights are replaced by blue-clad Judges, some qualified, some not, all with hands held high.

The contenders eschew the singlet fashion of the sport; their wooden-soled shoes the only vestige of traditional Olympic weightlifting garb.

Dead silence is a joke, drowned out by a fierce, screaming crowd and the hate music rocketing from the speakers.

The California sun slow cooks the barbells, each resting against a log marked with a number that has no bearing on the task at hand.

Ten minutes. A stack of plates. Power snatch or squat snatch, split or not. Rip it up smoothly, press it out ugly, it doesn’t matter. Just get it over your head. Max load wins.

“Go!” slams out of the P.A., and the barbells flash. There are beautiful lifts, and ugly lifts, competitors digging, catching loads that should succumb to gravity, standing to the lion’s ovation, the roar of myriad spectators who know the feeling but not the arena.

They sense revolution. There is no polite clapping. This is gladiatorial fervor, surging crowd thumbs down, kill it now.

There is no need to visit the scorers’ table. The athletes witness the competition in real time, those who would have them slashed from the Games with superior lifts pooling sweat at their feet and crying triumph with each successful lift.

This is not a USA Weightlifting event. It is the future. Hundreds of eyes fixed on a stadium littered with lifters, not one paying attention to protocol or differentially waiting their turn to lift, none worried if they’ll follow themselves on the next lift—it’s guaranteed that they will.
There are no games to play, no strategy, no energy saved for lifts two and three. They lift until they fail, and then they lift again.

The traditional throng, baited breath in a fluorescent-washed gymnasium, is replaced with the vanguard of training, hundreds of valkyries sucking dirt and spitting fire, CrossFitters who recognize that work done is work done. They know that fitness is not measured in an instant but a series of instants, an endless thread of pain and resolve, held together with the glue of pride and the threat of failure.

It isn’t just spectator friendly. It’s an orgy of entertainment, created by a single rule: Stand It Up. Dumped barbells carom back toward the lifters, thrown unto the duplicitous curbs at their feet, giving a feeling of impending catastrophe and snap-focusing the risk of athletic pursuit.
There are those who would witness such a spectacle and bellow foul. This, they would say, is not weightlifting. This is an abomination.

They would be right, and for every wrong reason. We are no longer playing the same game, and just as you cannot call out baseball for cricket or black for white, you cannot call this a mangled weightlifting meet.

Instead, it is an evolution, a different creature, borne of the need to adapt. Until now, weightlifting was dying, its punctured lungs aspirating and collapsing. With a single hour on a sunburned farm, it now it stands ready, the province of Red Bull sponsorships and worshipful ten-year olds, where the best aren’t strong once an hour, but a dozen times in ten minutes, their fitness defined not in one sphere but in many.

There will be a fight, but it will not last long. First, the purists will laugh at the rules and the form, declaring that we couldn’t possibly succeed with such a preposterous format. As the loads increase, they’ll start with the ‘dangerous’, and as the crowds swell to fill the Rose Bowl, they’ll seek sanction and injunction.

In the end, the resistance won’t matter, because superiority survives on its own merit, because this is the future, wood and spandex be damned.

Welcome to a new epoch of weightlifting. Watch the bounce.

Workout Motivation?

What motivates you to try harder during a workout? To push yourself when you don't think you can go any further? To do that one more minute, one more round, one more rep?

Is it mind over matter when physical exhaustion sets in? Does the workout go from a physical one to a mental one? Sometimes that is all it takes -- the mind to take over and push for that last minute, that last rep. If the mind can make the body continue, how much longer could you continue? Could you continue until the muscles fail when the mind tells them to work? When they fail, could they rest for a brief moment, and could the mind tell them to work again, and would they respond? The mind is a powerful thing -- can you condition your mind to help you achieve better results? THINK about it.

Is it peer pressure? When you are working out with others, do you feel the need to continue, even when your body tells you otherwise? Seeing others continue, in the face of similar obstacles, can motivate you to continue, to do what they may do effortlessly. When they get that one more round, it motivates you to get it too, to keep up. We always want to keep up, compare our efforts to others, whether it is weights, reps, time, etc. Working out with others makes that comparison easier. The results are real-time, instantaneous.

What motivates you?

Is in an internal desire to be the best? Do you want to win? Be successful? Do you find inner satisfaction knowing that you did your best? That feeling of, "I did it, excellently". It's that internal flame of achievement that tells you to do the best, be the best, be or do better than last time. It is more than the sense of accomplishment, although accomplishment is achieved. It is the sense of satisfaction or success when you know you have done what you set out to do. You set a goal for yourself, and surpassed that goal. You continually raise the bar on your goals so that you can be better. In your mind, you must continually reach that ever-raising bar, and in doing so, you are satisfied.

Is it a survival instinct? The natural instinct to persevere against all obstacles, animalistic, primal. You may not even know that it is happening -- it just happens. Something is keeping your body going when everything says to stop. Something intrinsic only in nature. People have been able to survive when facing unbelievable obstacles -- deathly experiences. They survive. How?? Has a workout ever been so difficult, that it became survival? Or did it really just feel that way??

What motivates you???

Paleo - Week 6 and Counting

So, it's been about 6 weeks since I started the Paleo diet. Also known as the caveman diet. Eating like the cavemen did. Lean meats, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and fruit. All broken down to essential proteins, carbs and fat. No starch, no sugar, no legumes, no grains. That means no pasta, no bread, no deserts, no beans, no peanuts, no cereal, no sodas. If it is processed, the cavemen didn't eat it. If it needs to be processed to be eaten, the cavemen didn't eat it.

There have been several noticeable changes:

1. Energy level - Prior to starting to eat Paleo I was going to sleep around 9pm, sometimes earlier, if you can believe it. but my day starts just before 5am, and some days even earlier. So 9pm was reasonable. Paleo has given me more energy to stay awake longer. I now find that I am up until 10 to 11pm, sometimes making myself go to sleep because the next day will be starting soon.
2. Energy level part 2 - I have noticed an increase in my energy levels during my workouts. My ability to continue when previously I may have slowed down to a little rest. My ability to recover more quickly after the workout.
3. Weight loss - while I wasn't looking for weight loss, I have lost quite a bit of weight. The other day I was told I was "lean". That word has never been used to describe me. Lean. My body is using my fat stores to produce energy to make more muscle. The muscle is more visible due to the elimination of the layer(s) of fat. Nice.
4. Health - I have not even come close to getting sick, catching a cold, having a runny nose, etc. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the Paleo diet has made this happen, it could just be a coincidence. But I have never felt healthier.
5. Strength - A combination of diet and exercise has made me stronger. I can't say that it is only the diet, because I have also been training. But I have been eating appropriately for the level of training I am doing. I am using the proteins, carbs and fat that I am eating, when I need it, and as I need it.
6. Attitude - Because I feel great, my attitude has been great. I have been very even tempered, not fluctuating in mood as much as previously. This has been a great side benefit for my family.
7. Because I am eating better, my family is eating better. I don't know if they notice changes as I do. They are only eating the foods I feed them, when we eat as a family. They still eat grains and sugars, and other non-Paleo foods. But maybe one day i can get the to come around. Right...

Paleo resources:

1. Loren Cordain - The Paleo Diet
2. Robb Wolf
3. Basic shopping list

A friend and her daughter just started a couple of weeks ago. they are starting to see changes already.

How about it? Interested in learning more? Perhaps starting?? Go for it, it's easier than you think.