On Motivation: "Elevate" - Part 1 of ...

The song “Elevate” from the Enter the Spider-Verse Soundtrack is one of those songs that sticks with you. You can use it on a run for some direct motivation, or just feel pumped when you watch the movie and think, “well that was catchy” and move on with your life.

Or, like me, you can over-analyze it to death and take it entirely out of context.

So here we are!

I haven’t written in awhile, and the lyrics of this song are a treasure chest of writing prompts. Like the Hamilton of Animated Feature-Length Superhero Films (TM), the lyric density is huge, and for the next few posts, I’ll break down the lines that mean a lot to me.

I had to get out all alone (alone)
And figure it out on my own (my own)

One of the most frequent questions I get in posting workouts, the occasional recipe and my latest fitness struggle is - “How do I/you/my friend stay motivated?”

We are constantly barraged by our friends’ latest milestone - and we often applaud them, but more often, we make it about ourselves and our own struggles of wondering how to stay motivated. For now, I’ll keep this fitness-related, but it could really apply to anything - learning a language (this is very difficult for me), saving money, building a new habit.

Here are some tips I’ve shared with some friends in the past on how to break through when it feels like you’re going it all alone, figuring it out alone and today it’s just that much harder.

How to Find Motivation

I know it's tough to find motivation sometimes. I don't think there's an easy one-solution-fits-all but here are some things that have helped me and others find joy and a pull to train again.

• Make a list of all the things that you've achieved since starting your fitness routine. Even if you can't hit those numbers on any given day, you're not starting from scratch and you've already come a long way. On a given day, even just being that person who consistently shows up is inspiring. As a CrossFit coach for the past few years, I’m much more impressed with the person who steadily builds for 2-3 years than the person who comes in like a tornado, makes quick progress and then disappears into the wind. Even if you're not feeling inspired on a particular day, you're still firing up those around you.

• I say this with absolutely no shade to your current/previous gym, but try visiting some other gyms. The best chance to do this is when you're traveling and you can be honest about why you're there, but doing so helps you:

  • 1) Appreciate what your home gym has and

  • 2) Help you realize how respond to different types of cues, workouts, people, etc.

• The gyms you visit could be better or worse, but you may have an aha moment about your current situation

• Make a non-fitness goal - going to the gym and focusing on you an hour a day, is probably a great way to get closer to that goal which is independent of CrossFit (you will be healthier, stronger, and more equipped to handle whatever life throws at you)

• Make fitness goal - this was a good podcast about goal setting

  • Long term - what do you want to achieve? Focus on the why, not necessarily the goal. Write this down.

  • Short term - what incremental steps will get you there?

  • Likely stumbling blocks - you know yourself, and where you’ve tripped up in the past. How can you set up your life to make this trip-ups as hard as possible to stumble into?

  • Process - what excites you about the process of achieving this goal?

• Take a weekend fitness class - it could be the CrossFit Level 1, it could be a Weightlifitng seminar. Choose something you're interested in. The beauty of the classes isn't necessarily the knowledge taught, it's the passion of the people teaching that is infectious.

• If work or something else in your non-gym life is weighing on you, think about how to address it. It's totally understandable if gym motivation goes down the tubes if you're super stressed or not enjoying the other parts of your day.

• Learn and play new sports - try something new, or revisit an old sport/dance. If you start to see your time in the gym as a chance to improve at something you're really passionate about, it starts to make a whole lot more sense. For me, I hate stretching and mobility work. It wasn't until I realized that gymnastics skills are a natural result of mobility work that I could actually stretch somewhat consistently (not to say that I don't still hate it some days).

• Visit a friend's workout class - see above, bring the fun and social aspect into the gym. Try Barre, Soulcycle, Corepower, Orangetheory, Bikram, whatever the latest craze. It's really hard to always have fun dragging yourself to a small 6AM class in the dark. I get it. Choose a day a week to make it fun and something to look forward to.

• Bring a friend to the gym who doesn’t normally go - you will realize just how much you know, and there's nothing like a beginner to give a fresh perspective on what is different about your gym and what there is to look forward to

• Find inspiration elsewhere - If you're fired up outside of fitness stuff, it will translate to fitness. Listen to hard rock, Oprah, podcasts. Write/read a book. Make a collage of instagram quotes on your pinterest board. Go for a hike, see some nature. Find some beauty in the world. Worst case, you get fired up in another area of your life.

• Build some momentum - pick a number - 3, 5, 7, 15 days. And no matter how you feel, no matter what else is going on. Get to the gym. If you get that number, choose a new number. Make a visual representation of it, and cross it off each day. Doing something every day makes a difference. Give yourself a small reward at each milestone.

• Realize that doing any of the above is a choice. You don't have to go to the gym, you don't have to do Romwod. You don't have to wake up early. It's a choice, you get to do all these things. Celebrate being healthy, not having an injury, being able to pay for a gym membership, having a partner or friends who supports you in all these things.

I'm not saying that doing any of the above will flip a switch and get you to that motivation rainbow, but maybe one thing will help shake off the covers one extra day this week. And that's a start.

On Climate Change - A Visit to an Indonesian Island

"Every day I wake and everything is broken /
Turnin' off my phone just to get out of bed /
Get home every evenin' and history's repeatin' /
Turnin' off my phone 'cause it's hurtin' my chest"
. -John Legend.

Our Earth is dying. That is not meant to be despondent, it's meant to be truthful. I am dying, you are dying, everything that lives is in some sense dying. We each get moments to take advantage of and we also are blessed enough to be able to take actions to improve our chances of prolonging our life as long as possible.
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At the end of my trip to Singapore I wanted to go to a place where I would have little occasion to travel to in the future. Being on a plane for 20 hours just to get to a destination makes you appreciate just how much of the world it will physically be impossible to see no matter how old you become. .

As I picked a relatively random destination, I had time to read only a few travel articles before making my selection. An article described an island not too far from Singapore with beaches, hiking, snorkeling and good local seafood. So I booked my ticket to Karumbesar island, part of Indonesia. Anyone familiar with the region probably would have questioned my choice immediately, as this island is mostly just a fishing village with a few passable hotels and a reputation for questionable nightlife. Whoops. This is why I'm not usually impulsive.

A few days before I left, there was news of Sumatra erupting with severe forest fires. The wind blew smoke particles across the rest of Indonesia toward Malaysia and Singapore. If you weren't paying attention, you would think it was just a foggy day and maybe cough a few more times than usual. But smoke particles cause hazy days and if it gets bad enough, makes it difficult to breathe. In any case, no matter how white the sand or blue the water, it will make it look like there's a film of grey invading your view.

But the Earth is dying - we have populated it without finding balance and just like the nights where we (I?) binge on too much ice cream, there's a hangover effect the next day. At this point we can either choose to keep eating ice cream fueled by fossil fuels and non-renewable energy sources mindlessly but aware of the sickness that will inevitably follow, or we can put down the spoon and look around. .

All of the plastic bottles we use end up somewhere, at best case reused directly as more plastic bottles, at worst case, at the bottom of the ocean.
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The cars we drive get the fuel from somewhere, at best case pulled from the ground in a relatively safe but unsustainable process, at worst case, spilling from tankers or pipelines on the way to be delivered.

There were some spots in Karum Besar that were nice, and admittedly I wasn't able to make it to the nicer beaches toward the north end of the island. But overall, things could be better. Imagine if the mopeds were silent electric versions instead of loud gassy ones. Imagine if when the tide went out, it didn't reveal the waste that had been dropped out of the window on a whim. Imagine how much better the seafood would taste if the animals did not ingest plastic by accident.

Pangung Tua Pek Kong Temple - Karum Besar, Indonesia

The Pangung Tua Pek Kong temple was a Buddhist temple within walking distance from my hotel popular at Chinese new year. I arrived to the temple, and it wasn't very remarkable - I've seen more impressive buildings in Beijing or Vietnam or Singapore. But the long walk there was important to take. It was a reminder that the Earth is dying - but it's up to us if it's a metaphorical death, leading to a rebirth of new environmental ideas and scientific breakthroughs or a literal one, marked by a few more mindless purchases of plastic.

There are plenty of possible steps to take and I know I don't do many of them. For now, maybe seek out funds to help fight forest fires in the Amazon or Indonesia, or learn about more long term future research to make carbon dioxide reuse possible.

Whatever you've had on your mind to improve the environment, do it sooner than later because it's important for you and for your future family.

Scooters on Karum Besar Island, Indonesia

8 Questions to Help Guide Your Fitness Development

Many are told that the best way to begin their fitness journey is to begin with a personal trainer. Like anything, not all personal trainers are built equally. What’s more important is how the personal trainer thinks about addressing the goals you want to achieve.

Based on my experience working with fitness clients for the past five years and more, people’s goals with fitness are most commonly:

• Improve body composition (look better naked or more often, in a bathing suit)

• Improve self confidence

• Overcome an injury

With the last of the above goals, that is more readily dealt with by a physical therapist who is open to strength training once the injury recovers. For the other two areas, there are a handful of questions that will quickly get to an understanding of what to include in your personal training regimen or if it’s just as good to jump into a group class that you’re excited about continuing wit a lot of frequency and consistency such as CrossFit, spinning, yoga, or other boutique fitness classes that provide some instruction and method of progression.

1. As a kid, did you do martial arts, gymnastics, or dance?

This question is meant to help understand how quickly you can learn something new. If you learned how to use your body as a kid, your “body awareness” is high and you can adapt to instruction easily. People without this background could also learn quickly, but this is often associated with a good ability to understand and apply instructions quickly.

2. Do you struggle with self confidence?

Embarking on a fitness journey is as much mental as it is physical. If you are not certain of your abilities or judge your worth by what you see in the mirror, it will be important for your training plan to give measurable progress areas so that you can see progress and keep motivated before it shows up on the scale or in the mirror.

3. Can you do a pistol (squat on one leg)?

4. Can you hold an L-sit for 10 seconds & deadlift your body weight?

5. Can you do a squat clean or have experience with Olympic lifting?

6. Can you do a pull-up?

7. Can you run or row 1600m in under 9 minutes?

8. Can you do a overhead squat holding fifteen pounds overhead?