coronavirus
Mar 19 2020
Staying healthy while fighting the Coronavirus

Amongst the protective measures taken at an international scale to impede the advances of the Coronavirus, we’re faced with an unprecedented situation: CrossFit boxes and gyms are being locked down.

Moreover, social distancing is also being reinforced which ultimately means we can’t go to our neighborhood’s park to jump onto benches and do pull-ups on the monkey bars. Altogether, these circumstances will disrupt our daily routines and we’re at risk of seeing our healthy lifestyles take a hit.

A test of character

There’s a silver lining to every unfavorable situation and, in this case, we’ll get to put our true nature to the test. Using the virus and the measures against it as an excuse to abandon self-care activities will be one of the biggest threats for the general population.

If we’re aware of this possibility and take action, we might be able to keep our sense of self alive and well to endure these circumstances. Many CrossFiters have invested heavily in this training methodology and lifestyle; this disconnect is just another test of the unknown and unknowable: how do you fare in unforeseeable situations?

Our body is the machine

We’ve probably heard it a million times but you’d be surprised the amount of people who flee the box when there’s not a barbell in sight. Well, turns out you’ll probably have to turn to bodyweight movements and cardio machines for a little bit (unless you’re lucky enough to have a fully-equipped home gym).

Don’t panic! Here’s a list of devastating minimal equipment WODs to keep you busy. You also have free access to programming on CrossFit mainsite – which usually includes a home version of it -. You can also find home workouts for free on Noah Ohlsen’s instagram page or daily home workouts at Comptrain’s website.

I’ve been on the home WOD wagon for quite some time because I enjoy training by myself so here’s a few of my go-to home burners:

  • Death by burpees: on the first minute, 1 burpee; on the second minute, 2 burpees; third minute, 3 burpees; … and you keep going until you fail to fit in the mandatory burpees and end up lying in a pool of sweat.
  • Marguerita:
    • 50 rounds for time:
      • 1 burpee
      • 1 pushup
      • 1 jumping jack
      • 1 sit-up
      • 1 handstand
    • Hero WOD Zachary Tellier (I was sore for 3 days):
      • 1st round – 10 burpees
      • 2nd round – 10 burpees 25 pushups
      • 3rd round – 10 burpees 25 pushups 50 lunges
      • 4th round – 10 burpees 25 pushups 50 lunges 100 situps
      • 5th round – 10 burpees 25 pushups 50 lunges 100 situps 150 air squats

Also, you can adapt any of the CrossFit benchmark WODs using odd-objects as weights (gallons of water, your couch, a backpack filled with books, …) and your furniture as gymnastic equipment (chair dips, rows under your table, …). Remember: “necessity is the mother of invention!”

Stress & anxiety management

By definition, anxiety is a series of physiological, cognitive and behavioral mechanisms that are activated in response to a perceived threat. Current events can definitely be considered a real threat because they involve two key aspects: a potential health issue and uncertainty. Therefore, many of us may be experiencing symptoms of anxiety.

This can also be paired with a stress response if the negative impact on our economy and social life is perceived as a burden that can’t be managed using our existing resources. If this state becomes chronic, the consequences for our physical and mental wellness can be devastating.

We must sharpen our anxiety & stress management tools to keep the intensity at a manageable level. Here’s a few of them to start off with:

  • Tolerating uncertainty – worrying about the near future is justified for the time being because the threat is real; however, it does no good to have these feelings interfere with other cognitive and/or emotional processes. Learn to coexist with the uncertainty and accept it without judgement.
  • Distracting tasks – when negative emotions reach a significant level of intensity, we can try to refocus our attention using distracting tasks: reorganize your wardrobe, get up to speed with your favorite TV shows or movies you’ve been trying to watch for some time, etc. Remember that attentional resources are finite and if you’re too busy deciding what to watch on Netflix, you won’t have enough left to spend on other worries.
  • Check 2-3 reliable sources of information – unfortunately, fake news are all over the place spreading generalized neurosis, conspiracy theories and what-not. Negative emotions live off these alarming news so I invite you to try and shy away from them. Identify 2 or 3 reliable sources of information to stay updated but don’t binge on refreshing the news feed. Otherwise you’ll enter a vicious circle where checking the news reduces anxiety and you’ll be doing it every other minute.

Keys to eat clean

If you’re motivated to keep living the healthy life despite the increasing difficulties we’re facing, diet is an aspect you should look into. Being confined within the four walls of our apartments is usually paired with boredom. And guess what? Boredom is a main precipitator for eating out of gluttony.

What’s our food of choice when we feel like snacking? Not broccoli, no sir. We indulge in ultraprocessed tasty foods to release dopamine in our brain’s reward pathway and momentarily defeat the boredom. In the long run, this’ll take its toll on both our bodies and our eating habits.

Here’s a few tips to help keep up the healthy food-related behaviors:

  • Practice batch-cooking: if you’re not a fan yet, this might be your moment. Let’s face it, all we have is time on our hands so there’s no excuse. Plan out your weekly meals, cook them all and store them away. This serves a double purpose: first, it allows us to fill in the blanks on our menus (if we have to improvise, chances are we’ll go for ultraprocessed foods since they’re usually more available) and, second, it acts as a distracting task.
  • Defeats boredom: as we just mentioned, we need to keep our minds (and hands!) busy. If you’re lying on the couch and boredom creeps up on you, we all know what comes next: bag of chips, tub of ice-cream, cookie jar, etc. But hey, if you’re going to let yourself indulge for a bit, then have at it! Just don’t let it become a constant in your eating habits.
  • Stimulus control: this concept has already been discussed in this blog (check out this article) and there’s no doubting its efficacy. If I don’t perceive stimuli related to unwanted behavior, chances of emitting said behavior are considerably reduced. If you see that pack of Oreos on the table every time you walk into the kitchen, your desire for it will grow until there’s no other option but to grab it and go to town on it. We’re not made of stone but we’re also very simple. Keep it out of your peripheral sight and thank me later.
Desiree Mejia-Naranjo 0 Comments
expectativas
Mar 4 2020
Learning how to manage expectations

Ah, expectations… a very simple cognitive mechanism that can wreak havoc on our performance in sport and general well-being if it’s not properly managed. But before we jump into the deep end of the pool, we must cover the basics.

What to expect from expectation

Simply put, expectation is any prospect we hold for a future event. Its usefulness needs no explanation (but I’ll give it to you anyway); these sneaky forecasts influence other activities such as decision-making – which as you know from another article, is an ongoing process -.

How is that so? Well, we learn from situations that occur all around us and this content is selectively archived in our memory to provide information for the future. If my S.O. decides to cook for me, I know it’s going to be delicious thanks to past experience; if I were to cook myself, I’d know damn well the results wouldn’t be the same.

You expect traffic at certain times of the day, arguments with your boss when deadlines aren’t met or a poor score on Grace if you’re not too great at barbell cycling. These are things you’ve learned from previous experience and when the future presents itself with similar situations, expectations will help program your behavior accordingly.

Expectations, self confidence & sport performance

How do these expectations translate into the field of sports? They also exert a very, very heavy influence on other cognitive components (such as goal-setting or perceived control), on motivational processes and emotional states. So, learning to set the proper tone for our expectations is key for higher levels of performance.

In the never-ending quest for psychological variables linked to success, we find a large body of research that suggests that self-confidence best predicts outcome in sports (Craft, Magyar, Becker & Feltz, 2003). This is all nice and well, but how do we build self-confidence to that point? Using expectations, duh.

Ok fine, it’s not that obvious – and it’s definitely not easy – but if I take one more look at how expectations are generated, a question comes to mind: what if I “create” successful experiences to facilitate positive future expectations and, consequently, build my self-confidence?

expectations

Hold on for a second. I think I’m going the simplistic route and in psychology, that’s rarely the way to go. Expectations may depend on goals and past experience but there’s a few variables that cast their own shadow onto the process. Let’s just consider our memory; easily the most relied on from all our basic processes and it’s proven to be a straight out liar. Not because it responds to some mischievous alter ego but because it’s an active storage system, meaning it receives interference from other stored information, from our personality, our belief system and so on.

Therefore, our memory is tainted with who we are so it’s not like it passively stores your experience; it sprinkles it with your own individual differences. Expectations work in the same fashion. They’ll draw from past experience but its tendency towards negative or positive events will depend on our pessimistic or optimistic traits; their focus on the process or on an external outcome will stem from the direction of our motivation. So yeah, to know yourself is to know your expectations.

Noah Ohlsen after smashing “Shark Bait” at Wodapalooza 2020. Source: wodapalooza

Self-confidence will be in charge of modulating our expectation. If we believe we have the abilities needed to perform the task and achieve the goal, our actual performance will feel the difference.

Take for instance Noah Ohlsen at Wodapalooza 2020. After winning “Shark Bait”, he said he felt he was capable of winning the event (high volume of pistols and some swimming; it was a safe bet alright) so he went out and attacked it. As I’ve observed in him during the past years, this self-confidence is something he still struggles with, but is slowly building up. His recent experience at the 2020 CrossFit Games (silver medal and holding the top spot until the very end) may have served as a turning point in his career.

(on Shark Bait) “That was one where I knew I could send it and go for it, so I had to and it paid off.”

Noah Ohlsen, interviewed by Craig Richey after the event.

How do I manage expectations?

If you’ve made it here than you already know: boosting your self-confidence! Direct action on our expectation content may seem too gimmicky: imagine forcing yourself to say “yeah, I’m gonna crush this”, while your inner and meaner self is giggling in a corner. Not too effective, right?

Self-confidence, on the other side, is more straight forward because what it needs is proof that we do indeed have the right toolbox for these tasks. There’s so much talk about working on your weaknesses and, this is extremely valuable in CrossFit, but so is knowing your strengths and being able to showcase them when it means the most.

Quick tips

  • Self-confidence is built upon positive experiences. Try yourself in as many scenarios as you can come up with to stuff your psyche with happy instances.
  • Set your own goals! For these to be effective they must be self-referenced, personalized and related to previous performances (Burton & Naylor, 2002) – the successful ones we were talking about -.
  • DON’T neglect your strengths in favor of your weaknesses. Keep those tools sharp because you never know when you might need them.










- Burton D & Naylor S. (2002) The Jekyll/Hyde nature of goals: Revisiting and updating goal-setting research. In T Horn (Ed.),
Advances in Sport Psychology. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. 
- Craft, L. L., Magyar, T. M., Becker, B. J. & Feltz, D. L. (2003). The relationship between the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 and sport performance: a meta-analysis. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 25, 44-65
- Jones G.(1995) "More than just a game: Research developments and issues in competitive anxiety in sport." British Journal of Psychology, 86, 449-478.
- Jones G & Hanton S. (1995) Interpretation of competitive anxiety symptoms and goal attainment expectations. Journal of Sport Exercise Psychology, 18, 144-157
Desiree Mejia-Naranjo 0 Comments
mat fraser
Feb 12 2020
Mat Fraser and the psychological keys to his success

Mat Fraser is the most dominant athlete ever seen in the history of CrossFit. He has become the first athlete ever to become the “Fittest Man on Earth” 5 times in a row (2016-2020) and in such a dominant fashion that it’s silly at this point to think anyone can even try to take his throne.

After showing up on the scene at Regionals in 2013, he’s won 29 official CrossFit events (including the Open, Regionals, Sanctionals and the Games). His “worst showings” were a 7th place at Regionals in his first year and a 7th place in the Open in 2016.

At the 2016 CrossFit Games he beat second place Ben Smith with a 197 point spread, beating previous record set by Froning in 2012 (114-point lead). Fraser would go on to break his own record two times in a row in 2017 and 2018 with 216 and 220 points respectively. But wait, there’s more. In 2020 he broke his record (again) by crushing second place with a demolishing 545-point lead.

Where does his success come from?

Fitness aside (I’ll leave that to experts in Exercise Science), I can only consider the psychological components that may help explain his high-performance and consistency at the top of the “Sport of Fitness”. That’s why I decided to write an article where I explain his keys to success from a psychological standpoint.

I’ve based the article on natural observation and information recollected from several interviews Fraser has given out in the past years. Therefore, these are by no chance scientific affirmations and they’re subject to my own personal interpretation as a professional psychologist.

– Intrinsic motivation

Intrinsic motivation, as we mentioned in another article, refers to participation in activities because of the pleasure or satisfaction derived from the activity itself. This condition is commonplace for the immense majority of high-level athletes who’ve achieved any success in their field.

Something that’s also very usual is the transition from an initial extrinsic motivation (guided by external consequences such as fame or money) towards an intrinsic motivation. This was the case with Fraser who claims he only started competing at local CrossFit competitions for the prize money.

After a while, motivation came from the personal satisfaction of going hard in training, continuously seeking progress as an athlete and solving problems daily. What makes him enjoy his days is knowing how hard he’s working to improve as a competitor and as a human being.

– Perceived control

One of the most salient aspects I’ve observed in Fraser during his CrossFit career is his perceived control. In several interviews he’s talked about identifying the situations he has control over to take action. For anything and everything that falls out of that condition, he practices acceptance.

Knowing when we have control over a certain situation is a common thread for many of the psychological skills that facilitate an optimal mental state. Fraser appears to have this particular skill locked down and this positively influences other cognitive processes:

  • Coping – he’s faced some stressful life events (alcoholism at 17, losing his best friend, severe back injury that kept him away from weightlifting) and has learned how to pick his battles. He steps back, assesses his degree of control and acts accordingly.
  • Decision-making – he’s simplified this process to its most basic form. For him, every situation offers two possible choices: one brings you closer to your goals and the other one keeps you further away. This allows him to keep his eyes on the prize and make every minor decision based on the greater goal.
Mat Fraser stretching at his garage gym in Cookeville. Source: Mat Fraser

– Anxiety management

Fraser has been pretty vocal about his intense pre-competitive anxiety. Before each event he vomits, dry heaves while this idea reverberates in his mind: “everyone is better than me”. It’s mind-boggling that one of the most successful athletes in the sport carries the same fears as the rest of us regular mortals… but it’s in our nature.

The difference is that this pessimistic expectation – which is out of his hands – makes him re-evaluate the things he does have control over: his effort and execution in the event. In a certain way, thinking he’s already lost relieves some of the pressure, allowing him to focus all his energy on his own execution and the pain he’s willing to endure to perform at the highest level.

Turns out that from a psychophysiological point of view, anxiety can be positive and actually enhance performance (for more information on this matter, check out this article).

– Problem-solving

Any deficit in our fitness is a problem, right? To fix it we usually have to implement all sorts of actions; and Mat Fraser has proven to be a master at fixing weaknesses. How else would he have gone from sucking so bad at cardio back in 2013 to winning the 7k trail run in 2016 (among other examples)? But… how does he do it?

His method was born thanks to a Thermodynamics teacher he had at college. Fraser says he “learned how to learn”. He never understood a word during the teacher’s lecture so he developed a habit: reading the chapter, taking note of any concept he didn’t understand, look for information on these concepts until he fully comprehended them and then read the chapter again.

This method was then applied to CrossFit. Generally speaking, it’s a very intuitive strategy that we all follow at some point; but the details make a big difference, what he calls “1% advantages”. He trusts that all these 1% advantages will bring him closer to the end goal. Meanwhile, the rest of us tend to slack off or half-ass it when we work on our faults.

  1. Weakness identification

Fraser is very meticulous in his observations and has a special ability to narrow in on his weaknesses. Also, he doesn’t rest on his laurels for a second; he looks for execution errors even in the events he’s won. For example, during the Suicide Sprint in 2016 he realized Ben Smith got ahead after coming out of each pylon; meaning his acceleration wasn’t up to par yet.

Once he identifies a hole in his fitness, he breaks it down into a thousand smaller more manageable steps. Then he proceeds to the next step: tackling them one by one.

2. Pounding weaknesses into strengths

Mat Fraser has an undying desire to progress as an athlete. Wanting to become the best in every physical challenge he’s presented with sounds like madness; but that’s precisely the kind of ambition that allows him to stay two steps ahead of everybody else.

This inner fire is kept alive by polarized thinking. His famous “second place sucks” belief, or his dislike for goals that allow opinion; or his suicide pace on the last event of the Games in 2019, risking it all for that gold medal…lead to believe that Fraser lives by and “all or nothing” code.

When he works on his weaknesses, he stays true to that same code:

  • After 2013 Regionals he bought himself a rower because he did terrible on the rowing portion of Jackie. He spent the better part of the following year rowing 5 km a day.
  • In 2016, after crashing and burning in the sprint event and the Soccer Chipper with the Pig, he spent the year training twice a week with 14-year old track athletes to improve his sprinting technique and he also bought a Pig to flip it and flip it for days on end.

And these are but a few examples he’s been kind enough to share with the general public. I’m pretty sure that’s how he’s worked on each and every one of his physical skills.

Will it work for me too?

Fuente: Facebook de Mat Fraser

Probably not. Especially if you try to follow it word by word. Fraser has learned to take advantage of his personal traits so he doesn’t have to depend solely on his supernatural athleticism; but there is no universal formula for success. We all need to find the right ingredients for our own recipe.

However, getting some ideas here and there is a good place to start. Truth is, Fraser’s repertoire is filled with many tools we may find useful.

Desiree Mejia-Naranjo 0 Comments