Author Archives: Mstillman

The workout at my beloved Crossfit Virtuosity was

CrossFit Open Workout 12.4
Complete as many rounds and reps as possible in 12 minutes of:
150 Wall balls, 20lbs/14lbs
90 Double Unders
30 Muscle ups

I have done this workout twice before and did about the same each time. I got to the muscle ups and did four the first time and five the second.

Today I was excited to “do better” which means more muscle ups. Obviously.

Ask anyone who knows me at the gym what my favorite movements are and they would (should) say – Deadlifts, Double Unders, and Muscle Ups.

Double unders are relaxing bliss to me.
I’m totally solid at them.
I have a special rope.
My mind clears.
Get me to the double unders.

Muscle ups just feel good to do.
I even like failing at them because they just fit on me.
I am no magic gymnast by any means but I am friends with muscle ups.

Wallballs. Does anybody like them? I can certainly do them…I find them a little heartbreaking.

But my attitude to the WOD today was

Get to the double unders. They are easy. Then muscle ups.

Which left my attitude towards the wallballs…

Forget you. I want to get you over with to get to the part I like.

12 minute AMRAP…145 reps. My Karen time (150 wall balls) is somewhere close to but under 8 minutes.

I had to laugh. I did laugh. What happened?

Spurred by my desire to get to my dear, sweet double unders my first set of wall balls was an impressive 35 reps. Which smoked me. Legs. Lungs.

My next set was 10 or 12 and I puttered along with valor sets of five and ten the rest of the way.

But my constant motivation along the way was “get to the double unders.”

I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t upset. I was just motivating myself by going to the future.

Totally. 100%. Out. Of. The. Present. Moment.

The reason many people meditate is for the peace. To connect to your higher/deeper/truest self.

We all want that.

The reason many people struggle with meditation is they hit impediments right away. Thoughts.

In our desire for peace we try to forcefully eliminate the thoughts.

My contention is that in our desire for this thing that we want we miss the medicine of present moment. That preferred future may or may not come but we can be gently and uncritically be with what it is.

Being present with the wall balls ten at a time from the start and letting that be the only reality instead of looking ahead was not only my downfall in the WOD, it actually extended the misery.

When we find ourselves doing a movement or exercise that we like (or one we don’t like) it is vital to stay with what is happening and not try to change it but be present to it so it can change and we can change with it.

In this way I missed an opportunity to be impacted in any truly deep way by the wall balls and changed by them from an exercise standpoint or a meditative one.

Beginning to experiment with making meditative altars devoted to the tools used in Crossfit.

22 miles per hour.

That is the speed that the average barbell travels when you drop it.

That is about 30 feet per second. Generously you have about a third of a second of airtime when you drop your weight.

That is not a lot of time. And that is a lot of time.

If you are reading this then you have heard of the word “OM.”

You may not know what it means or much about it at all.

That is okay.

It is a sacred word in the spiritual traditions of the Indian subcontinent and the spiritual traditions that spring from there.

Whether you meditate or not “OM” has entered the lexicon as a “spiritual” word. Some may mock it or repurpose it – but it is a word that is out there.

OM is also a mantra that many people have meditated upon.

Mantra based meditation has the practitioner take a sound or a syllable (sometimes a word) into their mind and then actively repeat that sound for a period of time and then let go of the activity of repetition and then just follow the sound in mind…and that is mantra based meditation in a nut shell.

In the “rev up” period at the beginning (called japa in Sanskrit) the idea is to create some energy, vigor, and volume so that there is a temporary clearing in the mind. That clearing allows some space for the mantra to do its work on purifying the mind and heart over time. But the intense effort of the active repetition of the mantra has to be released because, at best, we only can exert temporary control of the mantra.

The cessation of the active repetition of the mantra isn’t just a license to start wandering off into circling mental chatter-land. There is a type of open attention that the meditator must sit with that the mantra operates within (sometimes). We need both aspects in meditation. The active directed aspect and the mysterious open aspect.

If you are a Crossfit athlete of any level then you have dropped a barbell.

When we lift a barbell we impose force on it for one rep or many reps strung together. This is a type of japa. An intentional act of repetition. It is work. That work builds a type of strength. And then we have to let go of the barbell.

Sometimes we control the weight and gently let it down – I’m all for that.

But Crossfitters drop weight – I’m all for that.

When a barbell drops it usually out of exhaustion or being done or rushing to the next exercise.

The next time you have a barbell in your hands and let go of it you have less than a third of a second to pay attention as it falls.

When it hits the ground it is like a gentle chime going off at the end of meditation.

No need to try to find or invent some sort of profound thing that can happen in that third of a second.

But what does happen in that space we drop the weight intentionally and keep our attention there as an act in and of itself.

Dropping the bar is integral to the act of weightlifting. We put a tremendous amount of attention, care, and time to lifting a bar and yet is our time away from the bar that actually allows the strength to develop. Let dropping the weight have as much attention and care as lifting the bar and report back what you find.

8000 hours.

That is approximately how many hours I have sat and meditated in my entire life. That is just shy of one year out of my forty one full years of existence.

Is that a lot? A little? Too much? Not enough? Am I good at it? Not good at it? Getting better?

No idea. I wouldn’t reckon a definitive answer on that.

But I value my meditation practice very much and that is why I return to it again and again.

Meditation can be challenging. Especially in world that is so opposed to being still and being present.

One reason (besides will, desire, impact, and interest) that I have had the steadiness in my practice for so long is that I engage in other practices that feed into meditation being possible. Just jumping from life at 100mph into stillness can be overwhelming. People often complain “My mind goes crazy when I meditate!”

Fair enough.

When I was very young (three or four years old) I was introduced to a practice called “The Pause” or “pausing.” Pausing meant taking a moment to connect with the senses (or just one sense if time was pressing) at the beginning and end of an activity – a meal for instance. But another instruction that came with pausing was to look for “natural points of rest that arise” during an activity and to pause there as well. An example of this might be at a party when somehow everybody stops talking for a moment and the music stops and it is just quiet.

To even attempt to tabulate how many times I have paused in my life would be impossible. But the practice has imbued in me the capacity to stop, slow down, be present and at rest during the most chaotic of activities.

In Crossfit everybody uses chalk to keep their hands from slipping on a bar. You may chalk often or not much. You may coat your hands in the stuff and leave big white hand prints on your clothing or just use a simple light dusting. But we all chalk.

The way that I see chalk used (and I often use it this way too) is as a distraction of sorts.

Frustrated from just missing a lift? Chalk.

Just hit a lift? Chalk.

Exhausted during a WOD? Chalk.

Want to do something workout related while chatting? Chalk.

The act of chalking up ends up being an activity that is absent minded or has us reflecting on the past or the future as opposed to an activity in and of itself.

Next time you find yourself at a chalk bucket and take a moment to stop there and connect to your senses with the chalk.

Feel the weight of the chalk in the hand. No need to try to guess the weight, just feel it.

Feel the texture of the surface of the chalk.

See the color. Note the variation in color if any.

Notice the temperature of it.

Feel the different size pebbles.

Notice how much or little pressure is needed to turn a small piece into powder.

Notice the smooth and rough texture as it coats the fingers and hands.

Hear the sound of the chalk spreading.

Doubtless you will discover other things there as well. Now you don’t need to go through all of these things, but you can. Just one sincerely connected with will do. Check what the state of mind was before and after being with the chalk and report back what your experience was.

Pausing frequently will condition the mind and heart and body to be used to rest, which is auspicious for being in a state available to meditate at other times.

“What music should we play today?” our coach asked the class.

“Ke$ha.” someone answered.

“No, bootyshaking music!” another chimed in. The coach that day was partial to this.

80’s music, rap, and metal all were suggested.

I volunteered “How about silence?”

That was voted down quickly with a low level of scorn. Silence always gets voted down in Crossfit.

In every Crossfit gym I have been in from Maine to Costa Mesa, cranking music is de rigeur for a WOD.

Music is for motivation, for energy, for drive, for aggression, for fun…and that can all be great.

But music in a workout drives us to be pointed towards speed and performance rather than presence.

There is a fitness company that serves the Crossfit crowd called “Again Faster”.

Do we need more speed in our lives?

We complain about how fast time goes by.

At the rush of our lives.

At the difficulty in keeping up.

Speed. Yikes. In some places, sure, of course, we need speed.. Speed and force can counter some inertia. But beyond that? We have plenty of access to speed.

We need more presence.

But this shouldn’t shock us. There was a recent study that showed that people would rather give themselves electric shocks rather than sit in a room by themselves with their thoughts.

So where does this leave us? We are addicted to speed despite the fact that we feel plagued by it. We don’t want to be alone with the sounds in our head. We use music in Crossfit to facilitate this addiction and aversion.

While waking up even earlier and commuting with my own weights to workout is its own unusual discipline, silence is one of the reasons I really like DBWod.com. Working out outside early in the morning at a time that is traditionally embraced as a propitious moment for meditation is a joy.

Easily hearing my breath and each step in contrast to the still  morning air at the moments I need to rest or just the moments I need to be still is freeing.

So what to do?

First I suggest seeing if your gym will try silence every once in a while. But that might not work.

So here is what I’d like to offer.

Fall still wherever you are.

And just listen. Spend a few moments or even up to a minute at each step of this.

Hear the sounds that are most obvious around you. Don’t try to identify them. Just hear them.

Now listen for the sounds that are closest to you. The other sounds will still be there but bring your attention to the closest sounds. Thoughts will come up, commentary will come up. That is fine. When you recall, just come back to the listening.

Now bring your attention to the sounds that are furthest from you. Again, thoughts and movements in the mind will come. No worries or criticisms for that – just return to the listening.

Now bring your attention to hearing the sound of silence beyond the furthest sound. The other sounds will still be there but extend your attention wider than that.

And now hear how all the sounds rise up from and return to that silence that pervades the whole environment. Hear the silence between each sound.

Rest there.

There is stillness that pervades a chaotic and movement filled WOD.  Between each beat of the musical soundtrack there is quiet.

Crave to know that.

In 1803 William Wordsworth wrote:

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

There are at least four ways to do a WOD.

1.  As fast as you can. Weight is not an object.
2. As heavy as you can. Speed is not an object.
3. As fast as you can mitigated by as heavy as you can.

4. As mindfully and present as you can. Speed and Weight are not necessarily an object.

We are caught…I am caught…with the acquisitive quality that Wordsworth saw and that still haunts us today. I want, and I get stronger and faster in my WODs. But to what end? Am I more mindful? I certainly practice that too.

But how often do we rush to get in a few more reps and give up our piece of mind to an arbitrary countdown timer? I have.

So what to do about this? Wordsworth points a way forward with his observation of the “Sea that bares her bosom to the moon” and “the winds that will be howling at all hours.”

The Sea and the moon are registered with the sense of sight. The wind howling at all hours is sensed with our faculty of hearing.

Sight and hearing (all of our senses, really) operate only in the present moment. You can’t physically see into the future or hear into the past. They only work here, now, in the present moment.

Connecting to our senses and noticing them simply operate can bring us to the present moment and to a moment of stillness.

All movement arises from stillness and all movement recedes to that same stillness and rests there.

So here is what I’d like to offer as a possibility for meditation in your next WOD – during the full activity of the workout…stop and connect to the sense of listening. Fall still and just listen. When the movement in mind comes up, and it will, to “Go!Go!Go! Move! Move! Move!”…resist that. We hear that all day, every day and succumb to it. This is the world being too much with us. Fall still until you find a moment of stillness, rest there, and then start from where you were.

Practicing having access to rest while all else swirls around us is something we could all use more of and is meditation in action.