Rewarding yourself

I think a very effective method to keeping yourself motivated to an exercise plan is rewarding yourself for achieving short term goals. Goals such as, "when I lose 10lbs I'm going to.." and it can be anything (hopefully its not a food related goal but lifes too short to not enjoy french toast and ice cream). One of the positive externalities I've been facing lately is that my pants are no longer fitting. Work pants that I used to have to suck in to get buttoned and zipped in the morning are now being held up by a belt that is on the first notch. Well because of this "problem", I've decided that I'm going to reward myself with a new pair of jeans that actually fit. I'm not sure what the goal is I'm going to set, it might be something like "if I make 90% of workouts during the summer" or "whenever september rolls around". I'm also going to have to reward myself by getting my suit tailored. These might be expenses, but these are the fun expenses of getting in shape.

Its funny how when something I post about "I should be doing" presents itself in real life just a few days later. It's also funny how I make a post about how I "don't get sore anymore" and then have spent the last week in a state of constant soreness. Today was particularly bad, and I felt relieved when I was talking to some crossfitmates (classmates? Not sure of the term I should use here) and they confirmed they were sore as well. Apparently the "Cindy" workout really got everyone yesterday. In an earlier post I talked about needing to push myself out of my comfort zone and continue striving to get better. Todays workout was one of those opportunities to do just that.

Warmup:

2 Rounds:

15 Back Extensions

15 Kb swings

15 Box Jumps

15 Double Unders

The warmups are designed to do exactly what they're called, warm up your muscles. It amazes me how little I used to warm up when I was "doing my own thing" at the gym. This warm up was great because it really got your back and legs loose and ready to work, which is important because the wod today had deadlifts.

WOD:

400m run

21 Deadlifts

21 Handstand pushups

400m run

15 Deadlifts

15 Handstand pushups

400m run

9 Deadlifts

9 Handstand pushups

My usual deadlift weight is 155lbs, but I decided to force myself to do an uncomfortable weight, so today I upped it to 185lbs. I knew right from the first rep that it was going to be heavy, and required me to focus on every rep. I'm glad that I fought through it and completed every rep, but as I lay here now writing this (from my bed with a wireless keyboard and mouse, really the best computer setup ever) I'm FEELING it. The handstand pushups, which is one of those 'man-maker' (sorry for the lack of pc-ness ladies) exercises that I can't do yet, so I had to scale and use a box. My "victory" today felt hollow because of scaling the handstand pushups, I watched some guys really fight for it on those and expressed to them how awesome it was. One of my goals is to start practicing handstand pushups before class, but I'm a ways off from knocking out 21 in a set (of course I talked this way about pullups just a few weeks ago)...

My time for this WOD: 16:28