Mastery

Posted on May 21, 2007 - 10:32pm by MarkFu in Gym, Training Log

In 1992, George Leonard wrote a great little book titled "Mastery", in which he defines mastery as "the mysterious process during which what is at first difficult become
progressively easier and more pleasurable through practice", a
"…long-term, essentially goalless process…" He also talks about "loving the plateau".

This is helpful to me right now as I am on a plateau.

It is ok and I am fine with it. I have a had a good run of PR’s in my lifts, lower times in some of the timed WODs. I have many more personal bests in me but right now, I am in a maintenance mode and even in some areas, have dropped off in performance a bit. A couple of reasons I can attribute is the lack of a similarly motivated training partner. I have said before that training with Brent was helpful in improving my times and skills and was also a lot of fun. I have had some outside stresses that affect performance and sleep and my diet is not as dialed in as it has been. It is all good though and it will not last. One of the benefits has been that nagging injuries have been healing nicely.

Today, after 3 rounds of the CFWU, it was time to do a max effort in my push-ups and I did 60, which was 10 less than 2 weeks ago. (Love that plateau!)

I moved on to do some back squats, a 7×3 session which turned out better than when I last did it on the 12th. On further review, the last time I had done squats was in the second week of March, so I was definitely rusty. I did go up 30# over the last workout.

The stats for the squats were:135/155/175/185/195/205/215/, all x 3 reps.

Now, go ahead an order a copy of "Mastery". there is a lot of wisdom contained in that book.

Doing the Work Americans Don’t Want To DoWith this piece of crap legislation in the Senate,completely against the will of the people who elected these bastards, we are told we need to have these people and their families here to do the jobs that Americans don't want to do. Is that right? Why just today, this American...
How To Lift For PR’sKeeping score is something most of like to do in sports and life. It provides a measuring stick for our progress and achievements. "Score" can mean a time in the 5K and the lower the better. In sales and weightlifting, higher of course, is better. If you know what your...
Friday Nite LiteThis hasn't been one of my best training weeks, but it has been interesting training around a few injuries. In the day when I essentially did one thing, i.e. run, mountain bike or speedskate, if I got injured, I was on the shelf until I healed. With the wide varieties...
Deadlift Mastery, But Not TodayEric Cressey has a good article in this week's T-Nation, "Mastering the Deadlift, Part 1." It is a good read with embedded video as well It was deadlift time again for me and I felt good about doing deads today. I did 3 rounds of the Crossfit warm-up before lifting...
The Best Performance Drink EverOf all the sport drinks out there, and there are many, which one is the best for optimal human performance (excluding beer)? Gatorade, Powerade, Cytomax? How about Endura or Muscle Milk? How about H2O. Water. Water is not only the best sports performance drink, without it there is poor performance...
MarkFu’s Week In Review, August 17, 2008This week, most of the world's attention has been focused on US swimmer, Michael Phelps, who is poised to break Mark Spitz' gold medal performance of 36 years ago and will go down as one of, if not the greatest Olympian of all time. The United States has had very...
Val’s In the House!Val came to the "Northwest Corner" at the gym to get in some crosstraining while she heals from a nasty groin pull. (Oh yeah, I KNOW about those)! While she warmed up elsewhere, I got started with several rounds of Burgener's famous warm-up I continued with 5x3 of High Hang...