Skip to main content

Heat of the Moment

I've probably mentioned the CrossFit workouts I do on occasion over time; it's something I've enjoyed doing for a while and something that I like to talk about. It's not all that rare for me to describe the whole thing to someone with obvious enthusiasm in my voice. Like I said, it's something I like doing.

In fact, it's something I like doing enough that I try to keep that linked blog up to date as much as possible. I'm hardly perfect, but I do try to post the work outs before the week is up, at the very least. I don't entirely remember when it became a part of my routine, but at some point, it just became one of those things that I had to get done. Sure, other people can update the blog, and they've done it before. Still, that responsibility has fallen to me often enough that I try to post the work outs when I know what they are. It's almost a matter of habit at this point.

Regardless, I know that it's hard to figure out how movements should be done based on text descriptions alone, so I usually spend a little bit more time on the exercise descriptions. I distinctly remember that years ago, someone told me that something I wrote was unclear, so she ended up doing twice as many squats as she had to for one of the work outs. I wasn't exactly putting together sloppy descriptions before that, but that comment definitely encouraged me to be much more precise about what I wrote.

Given that, I sometimes do one or two of the reps as I'm writing up the blog post. The idea is that since I'm actually doing the rep, I can give a much better explanation of how you're supposed to move your body. If it's a particularly tricky or complex exercise (I'm looking at you, Olympic lifts), then it's pretty common for me to come close to doing a full set. Again, I don't want to put someone else through undue strain or injury because I couldn't figure out the right word to use.

The really funny thing is that once I start doing a few reps, I get the urge to just do the work out. It doesn't matter if I'm tired or not; some combination of muscle memory and competitive drive make me feel like I should just keep going and do the whole work out. I've actually caught myself thinking, "oh, that's not too bad, I bet you I could do that in 20 minutes" a few times. Luckily I've yet to go through with this crazy plan, but this thought process is no fluke.

All in all, I've decided that writing those blog posts is good for me. For one, it helps me switch up my exercise so I don't have to do the exact same thing every day. Secondly, and far more importantly, just the act of writing those posts is enough to make me want to exercise. How's that for healthy motivation?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Pink

Way back in high school, there was a male teacher that all the girls thought was attractive. It was an open secret that a bunch of them had crushes on him. In fact, the school newspaper even did an article about him that quoted some girl saying, "he's so cute, he even makes pink look good." Yes, he had worn a pink shirt to school one day, and it had apparently been a big hit. I was reminded of this story when my sister-in-law suggested that she would choose pink as the color for her wedding and bridal party. I don't think I've ever made a color look good before, but I remember thinking, "well, I know it's possible to not look stupid in pink as a straight guy, I guess I can try." And I think that's almost exactly what I told her. I also happened to own a gray suit, so I figured the combination would look all right. However, I was pretty much the only one willing to play along. My sister-in-law's brothers wanted absolutely no part of th...

Dreams

Normally, I don't eat very many sweets. I tend to eat pretty generous portions, but I generally prefer savory food over sweet. In fact, I usually prefer things half as sweet when possible. My preference doesn't have anything to do with health reasons, it's just one of those things that I've always liked better. That said, I do inevitably eat dessert, particularly if I'm out with other people. My stance towards dessert is roughly equivalent to those who are social drinkers . If other people want to munch on something for dessert, I'm not about to cross my arms and refuse. That'd be just a tad gauche. So, I do eat some dessert. I even have a few standby favorites that I'll usually order when presented with them (brownies, creme brulee, and apple pie). But left to my own devices, I'm not about to go hunting for dessert. Apparently, this means that the sugar can really mess with my system under the right circumstances. As I've discovered, ...

New York City Trip (Day 1)

After my crappy flight , I was now in Newark, New Jersey at 7AM on a Friday morning. I had done a little bit of reading up, so I knew which bus I needed to take and where I was going to get off. All in all, getting into the city was surprisingly easy. I suppose speaking the language does make things simpler. Through no real planning of mine (a theme of the trip, at least on my part), I picked one of the later bus stops at which to get off, Grand Central. I actually just figured that getting off at Grand Central would give me options, and heck, it's called Grand Central. That just screamed "decent place to disembark that might be close to some stuff" to me, so that's where I got off. However, it also meant that we drove down 42 nd St to get to my bus stop. That just happens to be a big street, and it gave me a glimpse of Times Square as we drove by. My bus stop choice had accidentally given me a rough layout of the city. Go me. I had about 6 hours to kill...