The Quietness of Quality
For the past three days, I’ve been in Greenville, South Carolina for work. Each morning, I’ve gotten up to take a walk on the local trail that I can access right across from the hotel, and without fail, each morning has brought me something new, different, and refreshing. I have been able to center on smells, sights, and sounds all because I chose to walk during a time where quiet reigned over all.
I’ve noticed the calls of local animals to one another, saying “Wake Up!” I could feel myself exhale as I listened to the river run over the rocks that I walked beside. I’ve smiled because I’ve taken deep breaths, and let autumn fill my lungs. Quietness is powerful.
I let my thoughts wander to the gym (per usual) to think about my reflections from the past month, and realized there is a quietness at the gym as well sometimes, if we stop and pause to find it. More often than not, most of us are looking for that “cool” workout, the one that looks challenging or has one of our favorite movements in it. We tend to glaze over the workouts that require us to practice technique with lighter weights, workouts that ask us to work with static positions, or workouts that just don’t look “hard” all because there is a craving for intensity most times, rather than quality.
But, there is a quietness to quality that can strengthen you in ways an intense workout cannot. This month, I really tried my best to focus on grabbing a new PR for my squat snatch. Not my favorite lift…at all. Each week, I approached the strength sessions with this question in mind” “What can I do today that will make me better tomorrow?” Through that focus on position, form, and speed, I came out on the other end with a new PR (120!) and more left in the tank. My lift had felt better than ever!
To be clear, this is not because my barbell was heavy each strength session. In fact, I started this cycle using an empty barbell. That’s right! Almost eight years into CrossFit, and I am still training with an empty barbell. There is a quietness to the barbell that still manages to be incredibly loud if you listen closely as it tells you what to do. What other quiet moments led to that PR?
Static Holds - This quiet movement helps to stabilize the joints throughout the body while building a base for stronger, more explosive movements. We’ve seen planks, front rack holds, and a mix of odd object holds over the past month. If you do these right, they are so hard! But they pay off.
Tempo Warmups- This quiet movement changes the stimulus of our warmup and lifting because it immediately calls out our weak links as we overload certain areas of a given movement. I’ve used tempo overhead squats, tempo snatch deadlifts, and pauses throughout my lift to work on position and give my weak areas nowhere to go but up.
Mobility - These quiet moments happened at the gym, at my home, or in the sauna. Mobility and recovery matters. It’s not intense, it’s not the “coolest” thing to do, but it matters so much. In the quiets moments of my mobility, I was able to reflect on goals, set new ones, or just create space for myself to breath. When our bodies feel better, we move better.
So, what’s the moral of the story? The PR sounds like an obvious win, and while I was happy, it actually wasn’t the coolest part of my workout. My hard work, in the quiet, was noticed by someone else. They had been watching me warmup and lift from across the gym, and came up to me after the lifting session to let me know how much better I’d gotten. They had seen a noticeable improvement in my speed, in my mindset, and in my overall approach to the barbell. THAT was the win, crew.
Even though we are wrapping up strength cycles, we still have endless opportunities to embrace the “for quality” workouts that are coming our way. There is a quietness to quality that can be under appreciated, and yet, it is often the most game changing element of how we move, lift, and feel.
As we welcome November, I invite you to find the piece of a workout that can offer you a quality moment to get better. I’m going to seek out the movements that I can dial in my focus. What will you really work on this month? Share with me, so I can celebrate that forward momentum and progress! As always, I’ll see you at the gym!
Big Hugs,
Coach Kady