Decide

"Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Muscle-ups.  The thought of them coming into competition at The Fittest Games this past weekend made me more nervous than I've ever been.  You see, I've actually had my muscle-ups for over 3 years.  I stopped doing them for a long time (like several months long) because of elbow and shoulder pain and just never got back onto the rings until recently.  Then, not much to my surprise, they were nowhere to be found when I tried them the past couple of months.  

The problem was not that I was not strong enough, I weighed more, or forgot my technique.  The problem was, I had not made up my mind to do them.  I was still thinking about pain. I was still thinking about that stopping point right before the transition.  I was still thinking about how I failed the rep before.

I definitely was not thinking about getting ON TOP of the rings, but just that I couldn't do them right now at this moment.

Just like with any CrossFit competition, your "goat" always appears.  

"The Muster"  1-5 Muscle Ups, 5-1 Thruster.

Crap...  

"Please don't let me sit and stare at the rings for 10 minutes" is all I immediately thought.  I went home stressed over WOD 3.  That night I watched muscle up videos like this one for about an hour and a half visualizing myself doing the exact same movement.  I thought about how it felt when it was effortless the year before.  I did this until falling asleep late that night.  

On the day of competition, I realized my thought process was the only thing stopping me.


I said to Carey Kepler as we were warming up,"I've decided I'm doing muscle-ups today."  


She smiled and said, "That's all it takes."  Done.

3-2-1 Go....  

First muscle-up, EASY!!  It felt good.  While I didn't finish the workout, I completed 7 muscle-ups and that's all I needed to get me back into the groove and ready to challenge myself to achieve the goal I've had on my vision board for over a year... 5 linked muscle-ups.  It will happen this year... and it will happen soon!  When you've made up your mind, there's nothing in your way.  Now go do it.