The Training Week That Was - 2/3 - 2/9

2/3 (I just realized that I trained six days in a row last week. That wasn't smart.)
Back Squat - bar x5x2 60x5x2 90x4 110x4 130x5 150x5 160x5
-Second back squat in about nine weeks and didn't wrap the wrist. Also only 5kg off my previous PR set of five. I'll take it.
Push Press 50x5 60x5 70x5 (caused pain/wrist too weak to keep going) 60x5x2
Lying BB Row bunch of sets
DB Row 105x8 110x8x3
YWLT x3
Pressdown/Curl/Pull Thru - 60 of each
1100lb Abs: 4x15 Standing Abs/Cal Back/Neck/Grappler/Ab Wheel

2/5
Sots Press 25 reps  OH Squat 25 reps (No wraps. Wrist getting more stable!)
Muscle Snatch 3x3 60kg (smoked these)
Snatch High Pull w/ Pause 70x3x3 90x2x2 100x2x2 110x2 120x2x2
-Snatch High Pull + Pause at Knee High Pull  4x2 100kg
Snatch DL from Deficit w/ Two Pauses 100x3 120x3 130x3 130x3 140x3 (140 prob too much right now)
Back Squat 135x5x2 205x5 255x4 300x5 315x5x3 (Last set was my best. Hate when that happens.)
1100# Abs: 4x15 Standing Abs/Cal Back/Wheel

2/6
OH Sqt/Sots Press/Ankle Stretch
Pwr Clean up to 90x3x3 (getting closer)
Front Push Press 3x5 60kg
Behind Neck Press 4x8 40kg
Meadows Row  5x12
Seated Row 5x10
Curls/Band Shoulder Complex/Pressdowns - 60 each

2/7
Sots/OH Squats/Sled Drag/GH Raise
Clean with a Pause: 50x3x2 70x2x3 90x2x2 100x1x3 110x0 110x1 110x0 110x1x2 115x1 120x1 125x0 (jammed the shit out of my RIGHT hand this time. Not bad, just ridiculous)
Down Sets: Clean Pull + Floating Clean - bunch of sets at 70-80. Just could not get the timing right and the hand was bothering me, so I left well enough alone.
Clean Pull - Two Pauses from Deficit: 70x3 100x3 120x3x2 130x3x2 140x3x3
Front Squat 60x5x2 95x4 110x4 125x3 130x3x3
1100# Abs - 4x15 Grappler/Standing/Cal/Ab Wheel

2/9
Sots/OH Squats (getting sick of seeing me write that down yet?)
Snatch up to 50kgx2x2 then pulls up to 130x2x2
Pwr Clean up to 100x2x3 then left well enough alone

Cupid's Undie Run: A friend of mine works for Children's Tumor Foundation and puts on the Cupid's Undie Run. Me, being a sucker for anything that induces shame for a good cause, have partaken the last two years. This year I somehow managed to pull not one, but both of my calves. Running in Chuck Taylors maybe not the best idea after spending most of my days in weightlifting shoes and dress shoes? I'm limping around like an idiot this morning. Will there be pictures? Only time will tell...

...OK so you get one:

This is a bonus video and goes along with my previous post regarding zazen. Andy's website is here. I can't personally vouch for it, but I've read some very good things.

Zazen (or Why I Stare At A Blank Wall Every Day)

Two places that I look for some peace and quiet are zazen and the weightlifting platform. For me, those are the two main places where I can get some peace and quiet. There's no Facebook statuses, Twitters, text messages, emails, friends, girlfriends, telemarketers, overpriced gas, etc; it's just me and a wall or me and a barbell.

Something that is tough for people to wrap their mind around is the idea that successful zazen IS zazen. By that, I mean that there isn't some sort of end goal. The point of the journey IS the journey. The whole point to doing zazen is to do zazen.

I will make this point: when I first started doing zazen, it was the exact opposite of what I expected. I pictured this tranquil, quiet time to not think. What I got was the exact polar opposite. My mind ran a million miles an hour and it felt like Heathrow with thoughts taking off and landing constantly. I learned how to calm things down a bit after a couple weeks of consistent practice, but this is a constant battle for me in zazen. This also illustrated a great lesson for me: if you want the fire to go out, stop fanning the flames.

When I'm doing zazen, thoughts bounce in and out of my head pretty much constantly. But they aren't really coherent thoughts; more like thought fragments or a half-molded piece of clay. When I latch on to one, it starts molding into something coherent. Once I figured out to stop giving these thoughts energy, they just fell away. Rinse, repeat and apply everywhere. Those little thoughts can be death by a thousand cuts and leave you exhausted when important, real life shit comes along. I think we tend to self-destruct by giving additional energy and stoking the flames on some things when we could simply let them go. To borrow an over-used and under-appreciated quote from Chuck Palahniuk (via Tyler Durden in Fight Club) that I'm still trying to really figure out:

“No fear. No distractions. The ability to let that which does not matter truly slide.”

In short: for me, zazen is like training my ability to distinguish between important and unnecessary and let the unnecessary go. So try it: sit down, shut up and see what happens.

Zazen: Burn Out or Fade Away?

"...the ability to let that which does not matter truly slide" - Tyler Durden from Fight Club

The are few real "goals" to zazen; the doing is the goal. You sit, stare at a wall and get yourself some peace and quiet from a loud and ever-changing world. You also get some coveted alone time with the universe, which is fairly tough to come by these days. Not that I blame the universe; it has an infinite number of constituents and a secretary who still schedules appointments on a Palm Pilot.

One of the main ideas of zazen is the concept of "falling off of body and mind". Brad Warner refers to it as "thinking not thinking", and I like that description very much. You just kind of think nothing and, when thoughts DO come up, you just sort of let them fly off. What happens to a small, smoldering ember when you don't blow on it or give it any kindling? It dies out. The same goes for thoughts: without actively giving them energy and cultivating them, thoughts fall away. 

Thoughts can be quicksand. The more you struggle against them and try to get away, the further down you get pulled. One of the biggest lessons of zazen practice is being able to actively control which thoughts are cultivated and which thoughts are allowed to burn out and fade away. Learning how to not energize undesirable thoughts and how to cultivate desirable ones is easily one of the most tangible and applicable lessons of Zen. 

Gym Zen: The Prequel

Shelby Starnes over at EliteFTS posted some quotes from an author, punk rock bassist and Zen Buddhist named Brad Warner. Brad has written a few books on Zen, his most notable are Hardcore Zen and Sit Down and Shut Up. I've always gravitated towards Buddhism but I don't know much about Zen, so I picked up Sit Down and managed to blow through it. Twice. I'm currently going through it with a highlighter in a vain attempt to retain all the good things in that book. It also inspired me to pick up the translation of Dogen's Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye (Shobogenzo), in order to find a different perspective and start to reach my own conclusions.

I tend to relate things through training and competition, since that's one of the things that has been a constant in my life for the past 12-14 years (give or take a couple injury years). So, with any luck, this will be the first part of a series relating some aspects of Zen to training and competing in sport. My intention is to focus on each of Dogen's main themes of Buddhist study and (try to) draw some parallels and applications to them in the athletic world.

I do my best to write things in the "this is me" tense, rather than the "Here's what I do/did, why you should do it and why everything I do is awesome" tense. One of the bigger concepts I've found in Zen is that we all experience the world uniquely. This seems like a fairly obvious point but it's something that we forget in our day to day lives. My experiences (in training and competing, in relationships, in professional endeavors, etc) are unique from yours and I try to keep that in mind.
So, Dogen. Dogen basically summarized Buddhist study into four basic principles:

1. Establishing the Will to Truth: You have to regard the truth, in all its black and white glory, as your ultimate goal. You also have to be willing to accept what is true, regardless of how you feel about the matter.

2. Deep Belief in Cause and Effect: Dogen believed that the entire universe follows the rule of cause and effect without exception. This is the toughest one for me to wrap my head around, because we as humans live to create exceptions to any rule. "This isn't right, but...".

3. Life as Present Action: Love this from Sit Down, "At best, past and future are reference material for the eternal now. You can dream about the future, but no matter how well you construct that dream, your future will not be precisely as you envisioned it. The world where we live is existence at the present moment." Self-explanatory, no?

4. Zazen: Zazen is the form of meditation in Zen. Dogen thought that zazen was a vital part of experiencing the world as it truly is. Whether or not you care to dabble in meditating or not, the root idea is getting some quiet time to not think (read that again: NOT think) about anything at all. I think we all agree that a little more quiet time would hardly be a bad thing, right?

So there's the primer. Fire away with questions, comments and concerns and thanks very much for taking the time. Now your daily affirmation: