Manny's Pro Tips

I just finished reading my copy of Ben Bergeron’s book, Chasing Excellence. The short version of this post is: It doesn’t suck and it's not just a cool coffee table display book. Go buy it! Go read it!

...And now for the slightly longer version of this post…

I bought this book because I’m the biggest CrossFit whore ever and must have all the cool new products that Reebok and all the other CrossFit merchants have come out with. If I could afford a rower and a pegboard (that I would probably never use) for my garage gym, I would probably get them in a heartbeat. After the book arrived, I let it sit on top of my desk for a few days until I finished another book I was reading. I had no rush to start this book since Bergeron is known to be an excellent coach and workout programmer, not an author.

When I finally got around to reading the Foreword of the book, I noticed that it was written by Katrin Davidsdottir, Bergeron’s star pupil, and not by Ben himself. This was a terrible omen as the Foreword of the book was absolutely terrible. It got so bad that I almost stopped reading at one point to put the book away for good but I soldiered on. It felt like Katrin was presenting Ben with an honorary award and just driveled on and on about how great Ben is but they forgot to put a time limit on her speech so she carried on for what felt like 300 pages.

I finished Katrin’s rant and decided to give chapter 1 a shot. Not because of desire to do so but because the book was paid for and I didn't want it to go to waste. Within a couple pages I was hooked on the book. The way he simplified mental processes and organized the chaos that can keep an individual from attaining success was spectacular. Each chapter covering a different discipline brought to life by an anecdote of his time with Mat Fraser, Cole Sager and Katrin Davidsdottir during the 2016 CrossFit Games.

On a more serious note, I want to share something that happened to me last weekend that I thought was pretty cool. I’ve been reading Ben Bergeron’s new book Chasing Excellence and got to the chapter about Control. In this chapter, Bergeron explains how to improve your competitive mindset by eliminating all thought of things that are outside of your control and just focus on the things that can be controlled. He lists that the 5 main things we can control are: training, sleep, nutrition, recovery and mindset.

Last Sunday in was getting ready to go to Open Gym hours to work out and couldn’t decide what I wanted to do. I reflected on my fitness goals for the year which were: comfortably squat cleaning 225 lbs which was my 80% max, and to get a PR of 185 lbs on my full snatch. Two lifting goals with two different approaches. I realized that I had already become comfortable with the squat clean by concentrating on form and technique on a regular basis with my lower percentages, but I was nowhere close to hitting a personal record on my full snatch. This brought me back to Bergeron’s chapter on Control. I cannot control some of the variables that’ll lead me to snatching a 185 lbs barbell but I am very capable of controlling my training. If I can’t hit a higher number, I'll improve the way I lift my percentages. Last Sunday I did 3 rep sets of overhead squats from the rack and worked my way up to 155 lbs. I took some recordings and when I replayed them shortly after I didn’t recognize myself. Every time I set the bar back on the rack I obsessed over detail and fixed something else in the positioning of my body. My first lift at 75lbs looked clumsy and mediocre while the last one at 155lbs looked like I was the best overhead squatter this world had ever seen.

The purpose of this blog is to entertain all who follow it as well as give me a platform to vent about everyday stuff. I love CrossFit and for the last 3 years it has been my only hobby. Now I’m  ready to change things up completely and pick up a different hobby: I will give blogging a shot and I will distract myself from always talking about CrossFit by blogging...about CrossFit.

The idea was suggested to me after i posted on social media a “Pro-tip” on how to kill time while doing plank holds. I suggested that you should work on breathing exercises, clear your mind, do your taxes, build a website, think about glute pain or anything that could distract you from thinking about time in the plank hold. My friend Chris said jokingly that i should start a blog called manny’s Pro-tips. I non-jokingly said: “Challenge Accepted”.

...And here we are.

I’d like to post about humorous things that happen at the gym just as much as I’ll also be documenting the small victories that occur during training like a PR, mastery of a skill or the time i didn't die during a WoD that had more than 5 wall ball shots.