Life is a crazy and amazing journey, it brings about all kinds of ups and downs.  There are endless reasons for why our lives can go from one second we’re king of the mountain to the next second being down in the dumps.  We tend to search long and hard for why this extreme change has occurred but have little success.  It’s natural and in our nature to assume that we’re not the cause for this drastic change; it has to be do to some sort of outside influence.  So we continue to search and point fingers and hide from the truth.  The truth that the cause of your problem has been right in front of you this whole time looking back at you in the mirror.  If your anything like me turning your finger on yourself and admitting that your wrong is huge task, because no one likes to admit their wrong, RIGHT?  This can occur with any aspect of our lives, for this post we’re going to focus on Functional Fitness. 

I was introduced to Functional Fitness almost 5 years ago, and throughout that time I’ve had a ton of roller coaster experiences.  Experiences where one month PR’s seem to come no matter what I do, and then the next I couldn’t hit a PR if I used a clock that doesn’t work.  Yes, it’s natural that PR’s don’t come as easy as they once did and that is one of the greatest things about Functional Fitness, the consistent challenge.  However, it is during these months or down in the dumps times, where it’s extremely easy to start pointing finger elsewhere.  I start telling myself that this isn’t working anymore, I’m not doing it right, my training program isn’t working anymore, no body is helping me, I need to perform more WODs, perhaps I need to add a 6 day a week strength program, and so on…  Once again my natural reaction is to search long and hard for a solution to my problem, because I know it’s nothing I myself could be doing wrong.  After weeks of frustration and not being able to perform movements or WODs the way I could previously perform, I finally decide to take a long hard look in the mirror.  As I look into this mirror I begin to realize that I’ve been sleeping 3-4 hours a night, my nutrition isn’t anywhere close to what it used to be, I’m stressed out of my mind and my family and friends are driving me crazy, and finally I’ve been fighting a cold for the last two weeks.  These are all hypothetical answers but have been true at one point and time throughout my 5 years of Functional Fitness.  As coaches we see and hear these things on a daily basis.  Most of the time it beings with an athlete having a nagging injury that just wont seem to go away.  This athlete will begin the infamous search for reasons behind this injury.  Some times this search does result in a legitimate reason, but more times then not it has to do with some sort of mobility issue.  Which doesn’t make any since considering this athlete shows up 5 minutes late for class, which doesn’t allow them to warm up correctly, and in addition they don’t do any type of mobility on their own and they have never even seen the mobility WOD videos we post daily.  Along with that most injuries or plateaus in training and body composition change can be a simple look at an athletes nutrition.  No matter what is going on the number one thing to always analyze is an athletes nutrition, if their nutrition is bad everything else will follow.  I would have to say this is the most common obstacle athletes come upon each and everyday.  We see athletes who work their tails off each and everyday they come in, but are not reaping all of the rewards they could be.  The question of “does what I eat, really mean that much?” is a question we hear quite often.  And the answer is it’s the only thing that matters.  You can train hard but no matter what you can never out train a bad nutrition plan. If you look around and wonder why it seems that other athletes are making changes and gains, I guarantee they are eating enough good quality food 90%-100% of the time. There is no “secret”! What you put in you body affects everything in your life. Remember everything you eat, either makes you more or less healthy. It’s that simple, so look at what you are putting in and honestly ask yourself, is it making you more or less healthy. It is helping to make you leaner, stronger, faster? If the answer is the no, then the solution is simple! Admit it and make the changes you know you need to make. Even you if start small the changes do matter!

Life is hard but also very rewarding.  One thing I have learned over my 5 years of Functional Fitness is to not be prideful or stubborn when it comes to looking myself in the mirror.  We can learn a lot from others but we can also learn a lot from ourselves.  None of us what to think or admit we’re not doing everything the way it should be done.  But when we do finally decide to look it the mirror what we see could be the difference we’ve all been searching for.