A never ending process.

A friend of mine wrote me and asked if I would consider writing a blog post about my experiences so far in CrossFit with competing  and my road on how I have gotten to where I am now in this "sport."

So here is my 29 month life that is only going to continue to keep going.

 May 25th, 2010 is and forever will be a pretty special date for me. That is the day that I decided to venture down the road of CrossFit and I have yet to look back. It was just a normal weekday and I needed to get in my "cardio" session for the week. I landed on doing one of Johnny's "fusion" classes in which he would mix running, cycling, and rowing for an hour. When I arrived he took the class outside. The first thing he said was, "Alright class, today we will be doing a CrossFit workout." I immediately rolled my eyes and laughed when he told us the workout

4 Rounds For Time:

400 m run

50  Air Squats

Class began and soon after I wasn't really enjoying myself.. or laughing.. or rolling my eyes. 4 rounds and 17 minutes later (wtf..) I felt defeated and exhausted. Johnny had been trying to get me to come out to the classes the entire semester and my only response was.. "Nahhh, sh*t's lame JB." Well, let me tell you, I no longer thought CrossFit was lame. I was hooked. It was a strange feeling of success/failure at the same time. But it was satisfying. Ever since that day, my life has been 100% completely different. I first started doing it in the basement of my fraternity house. I still remember doing "Fran" the very first time. CrossFit's mainsite programmed it one day. They wrote

"Fran"

3 Rounds for Time

21-15-9

Thruster (95 lbs)

Pull-ups

Me, not knowing too much, I looked up the movement standards for a thruster and started the workout.... All 3 rounds. Needless to say, I didn't finish the "Triple Fran."  I then started going to the drop-in classes towards the end of the summer. It was addicting. A feeling that I had never had before. I started eating Paleo. I started losing weight. I started getting fit. Everything in my life was slowly changing into something better. It wasn't too much later that I decided that I wanted to try and compete.

The Fall 2010 school semester began and Julian and I started training. We really had no idea what we were doing. No regimented strength program. No specific Oly work. Nothing. We were just two guys exercising together with zero clue as to what the hell we were doing. February rolled around and it was the first year that they had the "CrossFit Open." I competed. I wasn't very strong. I wasn't very proficient in anything really. But I competed. All 6 weeks. I placed 150th in the Southwest region. During the open, I competed in my first ever actual competition. It was Fittest of the Sierra's 2011. I placed 17th. Not even a year had gone by and I felt like I was getting better. 

That year, UNR CrossFit placed in the top 30 in the SW region and earned a trip to Regionals. I traveled with the team and Drew to CO and it was an eye-opening experience. Never had I ever been surrounded by so many individuals with one common goal. Which was to better themselves. Ever since then, I have vowed, to myself, that I would make it to that level or even further. Not to have the name recognition or anything that comes with being a really good exerciser. But it is to have the self-satisfaction of knowing that I busted my ass, everyday, to make it to that point. 

The summer passed and a new school year rolled around. This time, I did however start to pay more attention to my training. I started documenting numbers and I started to actually follow a strength program (5/3/1). I got stronger. A lot stronger. However, things still weren't clicking. I traveled back home for the "Vegas Fit Wars" competition. My results were not what I expected. I placed 22nd and was disappointed.  I knew I had to change something. So I went back to the drawing board. I realized that my strength numbers were lacking compared to most of the top competitors. In December of that year I decided that I was going to "outsource" my own programming and I began to follow Rudy Nielsen's programming called The Outlaw Way. Things changed.. quickly. All of my lifts began to go up and I felt good going into my second year of The Open. My body however, did not agree with me. I began to fail at almost all of my lifts and was pretty much exhausted physically and mentally by the end of March. Over-training had set in and I missed my chance at making it regionals once again.

I needed another change. I needed something different. So right as soon as the open ended I stopped following any sort of program. I needed a mental rest. I did what any little kid should do. I played, and I played a lot. Not set program. No specific days of this or that. I just had fun. Went outside. Went to other gyms. Trained with odd objects. It was the mental restoration that I needed that I hadn't had during the competition season. Lifts began to go back up. Training began to improve again and life was gradually getting better all around.

Here I am now, sitting here writing this blog post with nothing but the best ahead of me. In June, I placed second at the 2012 Fittest of the Sierras. That was 15 places higher than the year before.

I recently just began CJ Martin's Competition Programming and I have PR'd in almost every category strength wise that you can think of. Here are some of my numbers now as compared to a year ago.

• Snatch: 230 vs. 205
• Clean and Jerk: 275(It's higher now, trust me) vs. 245
• LBBS: 400 vs. 360
• Front Squat: 335 vs. 305

Thanks CJ!


Things have changed quite a bit over the past two and a half years of my CrossFit "life" if you would. Never did I once think, when first starting, that I would be sitting here talking about my training and competition life. It's hard to think sometimes that people might actually look up to you. I haven't done anything special, in my opinion, that would make anyone want to emulate anything I am doing. I will say this one thing though, don't underestimate yourself or the effects you might have on someone else. Apparently there are people out there who care enough to read a 22 year old's exercise blog and actually reach out to them and ask that person to write a piece about their evolution through this sport. For that I just want to say, thanks Sariah. What you wrote made me appreciate the smaller things and I hope this small (longer than anticipated) piece can help motivate any and everyone to try something new and just go for what they really want.