Gym Zen - The Will to Truth

I don't remember the exact time that I started to stop lying to myself about sport, but I have a pretty good idea. I had just gotten back from a very successful dryland bobsled camp in Park City. I made all the qualifying times for the combine and actually scored relatively well (numbers translated to "World Cup brakeman", whatever that means). One of coaches had said I should stick with it and keep working because I had great potential. Surely my invite to winter camp in Lake Placid was just a phone call or email away.

I checked my email religiously. Nothing.

I checked voicemails like it was my job. I "star-69'd" three telemarketers in the hopes that one of them was the head coach of USA Bobsled, extending a heartfelt congratulations and asking when I could move into the OTC.  Nothing.

I can't pinpoint the exact moment when I realized that this wasn't a communication breakdown. I think it was somewhere around the time that summer combine dates were announced in the following spring. Yes, I have a very thick noggin from rugby.

I can, however, tell you when I finally stopped lying to myself about sport. It was about twenty minutes after I finished an awful Olympic meet (see "How to go 2/6 in an Olympic Meet") last December. I spent that summer/fall training as Ivan Abadjiev had trained his Bulgarian champions. I trained every day, twice on the weekends, and did the classic exercises daily. I also squatted daily. For some variety, I did a max jerk and some chins to give the legs a "day off". I also managed through a new job working in derivative trading. There was only work, training and sleep. My body felt great and set PRs for the first eight weeks, then went to hell in a hand basket right before the meet. My results speak volumes.

Where does this incredibly long-winded example get us to? Shobogenzo! Dogen believed that the Will to the Truth is a vital aspect of Zen Buddhist study. And it sounds great, right? So easy; just seek the truth and accept the truth as it is. Everyone seeks the truth, right? Everyone wants the truth and everyone wants to accept the truth, right?

Can I handle the truth?

Everyone thinks that they seek the truth and they will accept it, but do we really?

I think most people see "Seek the truth and accept it for what it is" as a call to identify all of your faults and all of the shitty things that you've been glossing over. This is FALSE. Well, it's sort of false. It's true that we should fully realize and accept the faults or things that we have been lying to ourselves about, because this is the first step in addressing them or at least the first step in reducing their power over you.

One of the biggest issues as it relates to acceptance of the truth is the need to compare ourselves to one another. We measure our success by creating an imaginary battle in our minds between ourselves and some we classify as a "measuring stick". Conversely, we find someone at the top of the sport (Klokov, the strong guy in the gym, etc) and logic dictates that, if we train as this person trains, we will have comparable results. We "know" that these methods aren't rational and untrue, but we haven't accepted it.   

I think that I'm starting to seek the truth. Well, I think I've always looked for the truth, so it might be more accurate to say that I'm starting to accept the truth. The main thing I'm starting to wrap my head around is as follows:

"I am no longer qualified to train myself as a competitive athlete"

This stings, as I have what you'd consider to be decent credentials and previous experiences. I've held CSCS and USAW certs, an undergrad in sports medicine, two years spent as an intern and as an assistant strength coach at a Division I university, a couple Top 3 finishes in lightweight strongman, an All-American year of collegiate rugby and some close calls with the US National rugby team plus the previous brush with bobsled glory. I troll EliteFTS and I consider Michael Keck, Jen Comas Keck and Jen Sinkler to be friends. Surely I'm qualified to train myself for athletic endeavors, right?

No, I am not. That is the truth. I am qualified to make adjustments specific to my body. I'm ok at coaching other people as far as technique and making suggestions, but not in writing any sort of full training program. In no way, shape or form am I qualified to be giving myself a full program. I also have too many biases to previous training experience and certain methodologies. Upon full realizing this, I made some decisions and reached out to some coaches to provide higher level guidance. This has lead to some PRs and a nice reduction in BF from 14%-sub 11% through some nutrition coaching from Michael Keck. Yes, I mentioned Mike twice (now three times), because he knows his shit.

So what can I say? Find some truths (positive AND negative) and fully realize them for what they are. In realizing and accepting the truths, they cease to have power over you and you can either address them or simply move on from them. As with most things (especially as it relates to the gym and sport) this is a very simple endeavor, but it is not easy. Fully realizing truths, whether they are positive or negative, will lead to making good choices. As the below scientific diagram shows, good choices = awesomeness.

Thanks to Steve Pulcinella for the above graphic as well as his help writing my training program and providing some coaching for Highland Games. Steve's lifting program as well as throw coaching has yielded mucho PRs. Some slow-motion throwing breakdowns here, but be warned: I practice in Rehbands and they do not leave much to the imagination.

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:

Gratitudes of the Day(s)

I owe for a couple days here.

1. Grateful that all my friends and peeps in the Midwest and South seem to be unscathed from all the crazy storms that have blown through the past few days. I was totally scared of tornadoes when I was a kid in Illinois and I'ver definitely carried over some of that into adulthood. I remember looking outside when I was really young and seeing a tree get yanked out of the ground by the wind. That definitely left an impression on me.

2. Grateful that the transmission in my truck seems to have been "fixed" by an oil change and topping off the transmission fluid. Fingers crossed on that one.

3. Very grateful to be taking my mom to the airport today for her trip to Australia. She is long overdue for an adventure and hopefully this gets her mojo working. She's giving a series of talks down there on parallels between Native Americans and the Aborigines. I'm hoping they video some of them and I'll get them posted on the YouTubes.

4. Grateful that Kaladi Bros opens in a little while. The water is out in my building and I need a little pre-gym caffeination. Highly recommend them to anyone in Denver looking for an unbelievable cup of coffee.

5. Grateful that the scale finally started moving in the right direction as I'm down to 209 this morning. Feels weird to say "I'm losing weight for throwing season." but that's the move. No desire to weigh 220-230 any more.

6. Very grateful to see some old teammates and friends at the CU/CSU rugby game today in Glendale. Go Rams!

Gratitudes of the Day

1. Right now I am grateful for the PERFECT french press of coffee that I made this morning. For whatever reason, I woke up at 1:30am wide awake a ready to tear the world a new one. The may be the best cup of coffee that I've ever made in this press. Seriously.

2. Grateful to be getting my mom's mutt for the next month while she's in Australia looking for jobs and hanging out with friends down there. She's doing some work for a Buddhist centre down there as well as Aboriginal Heritage, but she's also looking at places to live and interviewing for some jobs. She's very due for an adventure and I'm excited for her prospects of moving down there. This also compounds the possibility that I make a move to Singapore/Hong Kong/New Zealand/Australia in the near future, so 2012 has a new purpose: chew up everything that the US has to offer.

3. Grateful that my scale moved today, albeit in the WRONG direction. I'd been sitting at 211.6lbs for the past 5 days and this morning I awoke to find myself at 213.4. I think I got a little spoiled. Nice little reminder from the universe that things DO work in the opposite direction as well.

Gratitudes of the Day

1. Grateful there were some tickets left to my friend's improv show tomorrow night. I totally slacked on picking any up until this morning.

2. Grateful that the kids at Judi's House let me hang out with them and make candles last night. I volunteer there a few nights a month and it is easily one of my favorite ways to spend a night. I wonder if the kids realize that the volunteers get as much out of them as they (hopefully) get from us...

3. Not to be superficial, but I'm grateful that tomorrow's payday. Gotta pay some bills!

Gratitudes of the Day

1. Immensly grateful for this steaming hot cup of Novo Coffee that I'm currently slurping down as I type this. My sleep patterns got all screwed up over the weekend so I've been waking up between 3-4am the past few days instead of my usual 4:50. Easy to do on off days from the gym, but coming off of workout days makes that a bit more of a challenge. On the plus side, it allowed me to get these written down before I hit the office, so I'm grateful for that!

2. I'm grateful for a couple emails yesterday with Steve Pulcinella. Steve's one of the US's best ever Highland Games athletes and strongman competitors and I reached out to him looking for some training info for the upcoming Highland games season, as well as Olympic lifting. I've always prided myself on programming my own training, but I'm really getting hooked by the idea of being able to get programs written specifically for me by great coaches and then being able to rotate through them.

If you're frustrated by lack of progress in the gym, I encourage you to hire an online coach and have something written for you. Almost everyone out there who writes articles on any of the popular training websites (T-Nation, EliteFTS, etc) does online coaching (nutrition, training or both), and the pricing is very reasonable.

3. I'm very grateful to Shelby Starnes for introducing me to the books Sit Down and Shut Up and Hardcore Zen, both written by Brad Warner. I've always gravitated towards Buddhism but I've found it difficult to really digest many of the writings of Buddhism outside of the Dalai Lama. Brad's writing and breaking down of some of the Zen Buddhism concepts has made for excellent reading and I'm gravitating towards a lot of these ideas and teachings.

Gratitudes of the Day

1. Very grateful to get out with the Prowler this morning and do some pushes and some sledgehammer swings. We also built a makeshift Bulgarian Bag from an inner tube and 37lbs of sand. We hooked a couple carabiners for handle attachments as well so we have a makeshift hammer or weight for distance as well as a core and conditioning toy. I Like!

2. Grateful for the opportunity to sit down with my mom today and have an awesome conversation about the world and where we (collectively, not just she and I) are at. I always looked forward to flying home to see her when she lived in Utah because we would have these deep, meaningful conversations all the time. We'd talk about my dad, she'd tell stories about going to Alaska, I'd regale her with tales of finance (yawn); really special moments to me.

3. I'm grateful for a text a just received from my mom. Friends in Australia just called, said they have a flight for her covered and they want her to come out for a month starting next weekend. A MONTH!!! She's seriously considering a permanent job and moving to Australia and I could not be happier, because that means I have a place to stay in Australia!