I Can’t…

(This is Part 2 of a multi-part series of posts. Click here to view Part 1, "You Can't...")

Sure, I got told "You Can't..." all of my life. Sometimes that's just part of life that you have people who don't support you. When you're told "You Can't..." so much in life, you start to think it, and that's when you begin to say to yourself, "I Can't...".

I'm not neurotypical by any stretch of the imagination. Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia... I mean, it's kind of a miracle I can stand upright, huh? Because of this, my attention span is that of a fruit fly, OR I hyper-fixate on things. I dwell on everything I've done wrong, and if I'm not perfect in my first attempt, I often discard the idea as a passing fancy.

Most people have heard the phrase, "they're their own worst critic," but I truly am a horrible critic of myself. The good news is that I know this about myself. The bad news is that I know this about myself, and I keep damn well doing it.

This is particularly true about what I am passionate about wanting to do. Take drawing. I always wanted to learn to draw, but every time I work on it, I realize I'm just not that great right away, and my tablet gets put down, and I get distracted with other things. I get frustrated, get angry at myself, and then give up.

Doubly so for fitness. I dreamed of being the "athletic type" person all of my life. Someone who was physically fit, able to do extraordinary things, move with ease. Someone who can jump high, and let's be honest, look good doing it. This has not been the case for most of my life until I truly found the type of fitness that I loved.

A few years ago, just lifting heavy stuff and swinging a kettlebell felt pretty good. I was doing stuff, and it was this fantastic feeling. As I started to evolve my fitness, I wanted to do other things. After all, if I could go this fitness thing, then I could do that fitness thing, right? So I went off and joined a gym in early 2020 to do other fitness things.

What I found was that while I am a brick of a person able to quickly escalate the amount of weight I was lifting, I also severely lacked mobility. I also lacked specific skills for some things; pull-ups, Olympic lifting, box jumps, as examples. I can learn these things, right?

I never gave much thought to box jumps before. It was just something I wasn't specifically interested in. My old gym had these metal boxes that freaked me out, even doing explosive jumps off the box, much less into the box. My mind freezes; I just can't do it. I'm not sure if I can, or my mind is telling me I can't.

Then we have Olympic lifts. First up, my front squat when I started doing this stuff was horrible. I couldn't even get into a front rack position, much less squat that much weight. Through hard work and a coach guiding me, I didn't just get a front rack position, but I got a pretty good one that keeps getting better. 

Even with that front rack position, I still feel like I am struggling with Olympic lifts. After all, if I can deadlift over 400 pounds, surely I can squat clean more than 155? It's a lift of skill, power, precision, timing... and confidence. If you're not ready to get under that bar, you're going to be severely limited. My mind keeps telling me, "I Can't..." when I try to get under the bar, which means I don't even get the extension.

I haven't gotten pull-ups yet, to say anything of things like muscle-ups. I've worked on it some, but I don't feel like it has been consistent in terms of effort. Suppose the programming calls for pull-ups once a week; it's hard to move the needle on that. Mentally, however, I still see myself as someone who "can't" do pull-ups, so that also plays into that.

My wall walks are getting better, but they aren't fantastic. They are so much better than they used to be but inconsistent. Getting comfortable being upsidedown has been a huge goal of mine, but I still get queasy thinking about it. 

I see my problems with these things as three-fold; I lack patience for getting them done, I lack the mental willingness to take the risk, and I don't feel like I've enough practice on these things to move the needle. All of these things together lead to that "I Can't..." mentality I need to overcome.

So I start to think about how to overcome these things. It's about shifting my mentality from a "now" perspective to an "eventually" perspective while still keeping my eye on the ultimate goal. I need to focus on the long-term objectives rather than the short-term gains. I need to bring about a mental shift that says that I need to do the work to succeed. I do the work, but do I commit to it? Do I strive? Am I truly embracing the "Be Untamed" spirit? 

Late last year, I set myself a goal that I would want to do the CrossFit Open in 2023 and try to Rx as many of the workouts as possible. The way I'm going to do that is to be persistent and push forward with my goals. Meanwhile, I realize I can't perfectly do an Open workout this year and start beating myself up. Instead of just attempting it with an alternatively scaled version, I just said, "screw it, I'm not doing it," which was definitely not the right mentality.

If I truly want to do this, then I have to shift my thinking away from "I Can't" and into the "I Can" mentality. I need to embrace the ideals of "Be Untamed," which are perseverance, hard work, and never giving up. Never say "I Can't..." and not accept "You Can't..." as answers. 

Something that is in my wheelhouse, I jump all over it. Something I'm uncomfortable with, I piss and bitch and moan and do it, but I always ask myself if I give it my all. It's time to break this, gear my mind to success, and go after the things I want.

(The next blog post in this series will be posted later this week. As a hint, the name of the post is "Aesthetics Can’t...)