S02E80 COPING WITH NERVES IN CROSSFIT FITNESS AND LIFE

Do you ever have anxiety, stress, or fear related to daily CrossFit workouts? Maybe a competition, or even the Open? How can we manage those feelings and even harness them to be helpful for our performance in WOD performance, our fitness challenges, and even translate them to everyday life successes? Dave and Sam talk about the feelings we all get, beginner to experienced athlete, and different approaches to managing our nerves successfully.

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S02E80 COPING WITH NERVES IN CROSSFIT FITNESS AND LIFE

[00:00:00] David Syvertsen: All right. Welcome back to the Her Fit podcast. I am coach David Syvertsen. I am here with my co-host, Dr. And coach Sam Ree. We have a topic that was kind of given to us by one of our listeners, Keith Andrews, looking at you bud. We, he asked, it was a really good. About coping with nerves and we, this is not only applied to sport, if anything, I think it applies less to sport and has more to do with the day-to-day operation of CrossFit.

With you and your workouts. Because it's funny how your nerves are always there as a CrossFitter, like, but you know, coping with a nerve of coming to a gym for the first time, especially one like, CrossFit bison here, where it's just a big group. A lot of good athletes. You have a lot of accomplished athletes.

You have a lot of ambitious athletes. Always working hard. Going after it. It's a really hard place to start off at because you're just always nervous about whatever someone's nervous about when they go to the gym, whether it's insecurity, people are looking at you, you can't do what they can do. You don't know anyone, no one's talking to you.

It's a hard place to come to. And I always give a lot of respect to those people. That are brave enough to walk into an environment like this or any CrossFit and put their best foot forward and continue to show up because I know it's not easy. It is nerve wracking. And as you get deeper into CrossFit, you start building expectations for yourself.

Maybe you start comparing yourself to others, or you start comparing yourself to your previous life. Whether it's pre-K or pre-job. , your college athlete self, you're just always nervous about not meeting expectations or not being able to do things or about getting hurt. And it's something that I think holds a lot of people back from realizing their potential and really getting the most out of CrossFit that they can.

It's that they're simply nervous. And this can go a lot of different directions. I'm not a psychology expert. There are some people out there that probably know about this a little bit more than me. Like where did nerves come from? How to really cope with them. So I'm just gonna give some like anecdotal advice on some of my previous experiences.

Sam will have some things to share. We are both, not to toot our own horn, but we have both made good progress with our own fitness levels since we started CrossFit. We'll just put that general statement out there and it was not easy. I've had a lot of nervous moments. I still do, and for different reasons.

And I'm sure Sam does as well. I'm, I coach him. I could tell he's nervous sometimes, and that can go in a lot of different directions. But Sam opening thoughts on how to, and just the topic of coping with nerves. .

[00:02:30] Sam Rhee: I am nervous. Every workout . I have to admit that. Yeah. Every workout, if I'm not nervous, it's maybe because I really stink at it or something.

, but any, I would say 95% of the workouts, I am nervous. I will never not get nervous in CrossFit. Good. My, that's going to be a given my. , my approach to it is how am I going to deal with my nervousness for that day? Yeah. And it can be coming from different sources. , I can have a lot of, there are a lot of different reasons why I might be nervous.

That day I was nervous. I ju I came back from a trip, I dropped in at a box. I was nervous walking into that box. I was like, I was scared. I was like, may, maybe I should just walk. I was almost at the door. I was like, maybe I'll just go home or back to the hotel and do a work workout. Super. I was so close to that and I've been doing this for eight freaking

[00:03:17] David Syvertsen: years.

You're a coach. I'm,

[00:03:19] Sam Rhee: I know. I've done I just did my L too, like I should know, but I was so nervous. Like, what do I do about this? And so nervousness is part of life and it's part of CrossFit and it's just, it's not that you're not gonna be nervous, it's how do you deal with it. Right.

[00:03:35] David Syvertsen: And I think that we can kind of compare daily wads like he did when he was dropping in and competitions.

Like, I don't always like separating the two. I want to compare them to two and kind of go in as one. And I know that Keith the founder of this question, but I know a lot of other people have it as well. He was looking at it from a sport perspective, if at some point he competes and he's out on the floor and you have a lot of people watching you and there's, you're about to do something that other people are doing too, and you're being compared, right, you're gonna win or you're gonna lose.

How do you deal with that? And, I think that the nerves I get at a daily wad on a Monday in April are the very similar to what I get at a competition. I've drive, I have dry heaved before. At a competition to the point where like, I don't want to do the event because I'm too nervous and it, and I've always said this, I say this to everyone that has, they call it anxiety issue or they're just nervous.

It means you care. Yep. And it's a good thing. Sam just said, I'm always going to be nervous. And I said, good, because that means you're always going to care. I feel like if you ever come here and you just stop being nervous right now, there's different levels of being nervous. But if you're never nervous, I actually think that's a red flag.

that you might have lost your pulse a little bit here. Yep. And it's probably slowly deteriorating your fitness and your health. And I would love to know why you're no longer nervous. Is it because you're too confident or do you just not care? , what thoughts on that? Yeah.

[00:05:02] Sam Rhee: I, the times I'm not nervous is where I have no.

nothing invested in that workout for that day at all either. I think I'm gonna stink and I have a really negative attitude. , so I'm like, I literally don't care. Like, that's where my nervousness is not there. Right. You're right. If I have anything invested in that day, which I should, in terms of my performance, in terms of how I'm going to do, I am going to be nervous.

Right.

[00:05:24] David Syvertsen: Right. So where do we think our nerves come from? Is it fully intrinsic? , is it extrinsic? , is it both?

[00:05:33] Sam Rhee: I have some athletes that I work with that are not, the nerves don't bother them. They relish it. Right. The people they like, I love that adrenaline. Yeah. I want I'm, I wanna chase after it.

Right. So they use those those. Feelings of nervousness in a very positive way. And I try to channel it that way too, but some people are just naturally like really into that. Yeah. And I admire that it's stimulating. Yeah. Yeah. And then there are others like my spouse Susan, who just

[00:06:01] David Syvertsen: the open comes around, oh my gosh.

Someone

[00:06:03] Sam Rhee: gets in her face and says, you gotta get this. It's so even every day, like she'll look at her workout and be like, Man, there are wall balls in there. Yeah. Why do there have to be wall balls? And she just starts like, focusing a little bit on that. Yeah. She's gotten a lot better over the years. But, I think some of it is your intrinsic personality, so you should know what your own personality is about how you deal with

[00:06:22] David Syvertsen: this.

Yeah I know that a, as a coach, right, like I. To some people have a reputation that like, I am only into the competitors, or I'm so performance with how I coach. It's not always true, but I can understand how some people can think that, but I, because I've also had people tell me, like, I make them nervous.

Right? Like, you're the coach. That makes me nervous, like, and I've always been confused by it because I have very rarely over the years gone to someone and said like, you need to get this score in this workout, or You need to hit this. If you're gonna, if this is gonna be considered a good workout, you need to hit this number, I will do it occasionally.

I will only do that to someone I know can handle that because you might fail and it's okay if you fail. If you don't fail, you're not trying. But to me, extrinsic pressure, those nerves that come from other coaches or other people, I still think in most cases, It's you creating the narrative in your head that someone is putting the expectation on you.

Like you might have this story in your head that Davis looking at me workout and Dave thinks I should be sub form this workout, or I should hit over 200 pounds on this lift. And in my head I know too much now to not do that unless it's a very specific setting. And. I mean, have you ever been nervous about like, oh, my DA Dave thinks I should be getting this kind of workout and this kind of

[00:07:44] Sam Rhee: score?

Yes. There have been a few times where you've put that on me. Mostly for the open. Yeah. Or there was one I forget it was , I have it recorded on video. Where you, like in the workout was telling me like, I have to hit this. Yeah. Yeah. But you know, you don't say that before, like, you didn't say that like a week before the workout.

Right. It was literally right before the workout or in the middle of the workout and it was like to push me. Yeah. And honestly aca a couple times in those occasions I have hit it. Yep. And occasionally I have not. Right. The three three rep Max. Front squad. Front squad, yes. He told me to hit 2 75. 2 75.

Yep. After failing, like I forget. and I got two or one or two and I failed. Yeah. Maybe it was a four written max. Right. And and, but that wasn't after I failed, it wasn't that I sat there and was more nervous because of it. Right. It was bec it was it was your faith. Right. You, You're not saying this to put more pressure on me.

Correct. It's to tell. I believe in you, right? You can do this. Yeah. I have faith right now. Whether or not I live up to that faith or not, I don't know. There's a lot of variables there. Right. But it was it's not putting pressure on me. You're doing it to build my confidence. And that's, every time you say something like that it's, it's.

That's why I take

[00:08:58] David Syvertsen: it that way. Right. And it definitely, and it comes from that right place because I will never go to anyone in any workout, whether it's in a big intense environment like that or on a random workout. I will never go and tell you that you can do something if I don't think you can do it.

I promise. So if you ever, and there are times the reason I can remember that squat like yesterday, that I remember watching your previous lift and just knowing that you had more in the tank. It wasn't, I think you do. I know you do. I've watched you squat so many times. Now, whether or not you execute, whether or not you believe it in your head, that's a different story.

But the nerves that come from the other coach, I think that you also have to, if you trust the coach I think those kinds of lines or those kinds of expectations from a coach, they actually, in my hope, my desire is that it calms your nerves. , that it takes away some of the doubt because we doubt ourselves.

It's a natural trait that a lot of people do in any in area, any area of life. Like we're always weighing the potential negatives, the potential failures. If you have someone you trust that has credibility, they says, Hey, you can get that muscle up. Hey, you can hit that lift. You can do this workout in that time, but you're gonna have to go.

I just recently shared a workout result with Dave Boak. It's a conditioning test that I can probably count on my hand how many people that I think can do it at the gym and. , I think he can do it. And he's like, dude I'm admitted away that I can't do it. I'm like, you can do it. You will do it at some point.

And I will never say something along those lines without like data in my head or an experience in my head. And it's meant to not put pressure on him and make him more nervous. It's to build the confidence. And I think that's a big part of coaching athlete relationships and some of your self-talk, that if you have an external voice coming into you that is making you more nervous.

But the line that they're giving you is positive. It's really meant at calming the nerves and building the confidence and taking away the, this negative

[00:10:53] Sam Rhee: self-talk. When Susan talks to me about how she's nervous about a workout a lot of times I'll just break it down with her, right? And I'll say, Hey, listen, what is this movement?

How many times do you have to do it? Well, you've done this a million times before, so. To stop you from achieving this type of score or goal. Right. And I will say, I think that's very reasonable. I think you should be able to hit this or that, or whatever it is. Or not. Cuz she just worries about crapping the bed sometimes.

Like, oh, I'm just gonna fail at this. And I said, no, you've done this so many times before you can do this. . And sometimes having that voice from the external sort of, Yeah. Talking to you about that. Right. That can sort of. To address some of those nerves. Yeah.

[00:11:35] David Syvertsen: And to build off that, right?

Like the next two parts of the outline are what are we really afraid of? Like what causes the nerves? Like is, are we afraid of pain? Do we lose sight of the fact that your discomfort does lead to victory? Right. Like you are not going to get in better shape unless you work really hard. Working really hard is hard.

It can be painful sometimes. Not injury, pain. It's just like, think about a lot of our workouts, like the Thursday workout coming up this week with like burpees and sorry, max effort, burpees after max effort rowing, and same thing with dumbbell snatch and max burpees. That workout, it hurts. It's painful.

Your heart rate's going you're losing control, you're breathing, but at the end you walk out. How often do you walk out an equal? that discomfort, those negative thoughts with the, with pride, like how many times do we walk outta the gym? I see this, I mean, it's as automatic as going to the bathroom now where CrossFitters after a workout, they're disappointed.

They're not proud of their effort, they're not always proud of their score, and. I'm on the opposite side of it. Like I, I'm proud of everyone that shows up and puts the work in, whether you crush the workout or not, to me, it's less relevant on a day-to-day basis than you coming in and putting in the work and just giving yourself an honest effort that day because again, there's so many variables to performance and you're probably only focusing on the one that you just did, the effort that you put into it, that your sleep, the previous few nights, your drinking habits, the holiday, the stress that comes along with this time.

A lot of people in the gym are sick right now with like their own version of the cold or the flu. There's a lot of variables that go into how well you performed, but you never hear anyone say like, you know what, like, I'm really happy that I came in today and I'm proud of myself. They might feel that way, but I wish I heard it more.

And I don't think you're a cocky person or overconfident person that thinks that way because I think those kind of thoughts and those kind of responses to the workouts will help you with your nerves because instead of you thinking about this negativ, Throughout your entire workout. I'm not good enough.

I'm too fat. I don't eat well. I don't drink enough water. Or I drink too much alcohol. I wish I was looked like that person across the gym. Why do I work so hard? But I don't look like that person. These thoughts add to your nerves, where if you kind of couple your workouts with so proud of myself for being here.

I'm working hard. I'm with a great community, people. How fortunate am I am so lucky that I'm here. Right? Those help your nerves more than

[00:14:01] Sam Rhee: anything. One of the things that helped me is to try to just make it automatic and take it out take that responsibility of whether I should show up off out of the picture, right?

I mean, . I try to give credit to my athletes, especially when I'm coaching the five, six, and seven in the morning. , like if they were not sure why, if they wanted to show up, I said, listen, you have to give yourself credit for showing up. Forget about your performance. Yeah. The fact that you lay in bed, you sat there thinking it's f.

30 degrees outside. I didn't get, I don't feel like getting up and going and you forced yourself to . Part of what helps me in the morning to get up is like, it's, to me, I say this is like brushing my teeth, right? What choice do I have? I take that choice out of my brain and I say I have to do it right.

That helps me address the nerves. Whether that workout that day, I'm like, I don't know if I'm gonna do well on it. Maybe I'm gonna stink. Maybe I don't feel right about it. I. , I, if you take the choice out of your system and you say, I have to do this, I don't, I mean, Ben Bergron said, or as Ben Bergron would say, I get to do this.

Right. At that point, screw your nerves. Right? Like, just take 'em out of the equation. Yeah. Sometimes the best way of addressing those nerves is. Is just not even to address it. Just say, listen, I don't have a choice. That's

[00:15:16] David Syvertsen: why I'm so big on just saying thank you. Being genuinely thankful and appreciating everything.

Like we just got ton talking about how much we appreciate our health. Like I just had a rough week with being a little under the weather and it was probably the sickest I've been in since I was in college. I can't remember a time prior to that being this sick. And now that I feel better, even though my voice doesn't sound like it.

Sorry guys. Right. It. Like, that's all I wanted for a few days was just to feel normal and like that you, I appreciate this now so much more. And it makes you think about things a d in a different light that, Hey, I'm gonna go home. I have to go do some yard work. My son's a little sick, he's not eating, I'm getting a little stressed out about that.

Like, have to, get ready for the work week. Never know what's gonna happen when you own a gym. Like every week is just different and sometimes it stresses you out. We have this big competition coming up in 10 days that I hope I feel good for, but I appreciate feeling good and instead of me up my working, my emotions up and getting nervous and stressed out, I'm just thankful for being in the moment right now and feeling good.

And I think if you can work out like that right before your workout, during your workout, after workout, just being thankful, it really does. It kind of takes care of the nerves itself. If you don't think like that, if you're not thankful, if you're not appreciative for the little things. You, it's a lot easier to gravitate towards the nerves and when you're really stressed out like that, it just compounds the issue of the workout more and more.

So that's really how we feel the best way to cope with it. There are probably different ways to go in that direction, but I think those are the best ways is that you can control, there's a lot of different help that you can get and self-help and books you can read, and meditation, all that. I don't wanna get into that.

I just don't know enough. But I, and another thing I want you guys to maybe trust is your process. This goes back to like Keith's original question. How do you really fully cope with being so nervous right before a workout? , we have a lot of people here that are go-getters type A personalities.

They have expectations for themself. Some are realistic, some are not right now, maybe someday they will be, but one thing that helps me a. Is I look back on what I've done for the past 10 years. , I do not look back on my past three months. And that is what long-term planning and long-term goals do for me is I've been training for this for over a decade.

I've been thinking about this for a decade and that will help like a couple bad weeks when you talked about that kind of time domain is nothing. It's like one minute of a 90 minute workout. If you have a bad minute, it's okay. The other 89 can still count.

[00:17:54] Sam Rhee: Yeah I often wonder with high level athletes, How do they deal with those nerves?

And it's similar to life for me, so I don't want to I mean, I guess CrossFit is life in a lot of ways and life is CrossFit and you can carry lessons from one to the other. But I mean, I'm a surgeon and people had have asked me how do you deal with those nerves? And when I first started out of training, I did a lot of pediatric plastic surgery.

So I was working on six month old or three month olds and Wow. And I would be reshaping their skulls with a neurosurgeon. And I remember people asking me like, how do you deal with that with a mother's child? And, Trusting you with their life and did you have kids at this point? I had no kids.

So that adds a different, trust me that adds a different dimension. But at the time it was actually easier cuz I didn't know what I didn't know. Right, right, right, right. And and you, I remember sitting there for the first couple cases when you're all by yourself and yeah, you have this kid's head exposed and you're in the middle of it and there's no one else helping you.

You are the surgeon at that point. And it goes to what you said you trust. Where you, what took you there all the time. Leading up all the years that I did in my training. All the years that I've been in that situation and I've helped others and I've been in that, I had been there so many times, maybe not as the lead surgeon, but as the assistant surgeon, like 5 million bit different times.

That's an awesome parallel thing and so you have to just trust what you do and. No one's going to help you in that situation. You have to take responsibility on your own. And some of addressing nerves is knowing, like you said, one, trust where you've been, and two, you have to take that responsibility head on.

, nobody's going to do it for you at that point. When you start that workout and it's a 3 21 go, no one's there to help you pick up that barbell, no one's there to help you Do one more burpee at the end. Yep. Yep. You are testing. And you have to rise to the occasion. Fortunately, CrossFit does not carry the same stakes as a lot of our everyday responsibilities.

Yes, in terms of the amount of money you put at stake or your job, or your children, or anything else that we do in life. But you know what it. In that second, when you're doing that workout, it means as much as almost anything else you've done. Yeah, absolutely. And if you can sit there and take that mini lesson from that workout and say, I rose to the occasion, or maybe not, I've been in those situations, like in comms where I crap the bed.

. But you can take those lessons, right. And say, I put myself in that spot. Right. And look at what I did. Yeah. Either awesome or not so awesome. . These are great lessons. And you know what? You wanna be in that situation, right? You don't want to avoid the nervousness, the the fear.

Yep. Keith asked like, what is it that you do like in a comp? It doesn't matter. You just put yourself in that situation. Yeah. You'll figure it out. I'll do it. And you know what? Whether you do great or not that's a great lesson for anyone to learn. And sometimes they're hard lessons. I think about the times where I've messed up in a comp and it still burns me to this day. . Yeah. Like I probably will think about it every time I pick up a goddamn jump rope like, I've been there, dude. Yeah. And so, , but it makes, it made me a better person. Yeah. And I think that it's not so much of a question of how you deal with those nerves, it's how often are you gonna put yourself in a situation where you're going to encounter those nerves?

[00:21:20] David Syvertsen: Yeah. No, that's, that was great. Those are great words, Sam. Thank you for that. And I think one thing you can, everyone can listen to Sam and relate to your life as you've been through adversity, careers, family, personal struggle. and I think it takes a certain level of emotional intelligence to be able to tie your experiences outside of the gym and bring them into the gym and help you.

But you can do it because you don't live on this earth for as long as we have and not seen some serious adversity. And we've all made mistakes with adversity. We've all risen above adversity. And the fact that you have experience on both sides of it, it should help you cope with the nerves. But it does take some mental processing and really reflection.

And it could mean a little bit less time on your phone, which a lot of us, we've too much time on our phone doing stuff that doesn't mean anything. And just reflect on some of these experiences that you've been through. Write them down, talk to people about that. Like. I think it can really help if you are someone that can't seem to visualize how you're gonna overcome nerves at a competition in a day-to-day workout, you have a judge on you in the open that's coming up, by the way.

Right? You can do it and you've, if you've done it before, but it might just take a little bit extra reflection for you to tie it to your experiences. A CrossFitter now, Well, dealing with objective information. All right, so, my, my thought on participation trophies, this is a little bit more going to.

the competitive side, but I'm gonna try to relate this to the fitness side as well, is when you sign up for a competition for that. So some people, it is a huge deal for them to put themselves out for the first time. I remember my first competition, like it was yesterday, very nervous, sat in a corner by myself, didn't have any support there, right?

Was competing. Its guys that were regionals and like I had just. Didn't even know what RX was, didn't have double unders, all this stuff. Right? And I did. I'm not a big participation trophy guy, but I went, it depends what kind of goal you're going in with. When I was signed up for a competition, I just wanted to go compete.

I just wanted to see what the day was like. Did I like this? Did I not like it? Right? And looking back on that, I was very proud of that. Right? You go there, you get a swag bag, you get a shirt. Some little plaque that says, blah, blah, blah competition. That to me was a participation trophy. I came in like 14th, out of 18 plays, I think, and I was really proud of that and I, I don't want Brock growing up getting a trophy for everything.

Little he does, but I do want to give him credit for putting some putting himself out there. We have people competing in a power lifting meet here at Bison next week that have never done anything like this. and whether they hit their lifts or not, I'm already proud of them for putting themselves out there, and I think it's gonna help them cope with nerves down the road.

Thoughts on this whole, society comes down on participation trophies now, because like, we have to be so hard, right? And there's, rationale behind it, but in this conversation someone struggles with nerves and anxiety. What are your thoughts on rewarding someone that puts themselves out there?

[00:24:23] Sam Rhee: I know I reward myself every time I put myself out there. Yeah. Uhhuh . And the reason being is that experience is meaningful. Every competition I've done has been meaningful either on a good way or a bad way. It, like you said, you remember that comp like it was yesterday? Yep. I remember certain moments in every comp I've done like it was yesterday.

I remember. Doing a comp with Chris Tafaro over at Joey Dills place, Hamilton. In Hamilton. And I remember we did a lift sequence and I remember I, I lifted better than I ever had be before in my life. And I remember the judge saying, wow, that was really impressive. And it was a very casual comment.

And that judge didn't remember me on the next workout. Yeah. But the fact that she just made that. It made me feel good. Yeah, meant a lot. Yeah. Like, whether or not we did well or not or how we did it was irrelevant. At this point of our lives, as athletes. We cherish the times when we were in high school or in college where we participated and we did sports for sure.

There are so few opportunities as adults where we can put ourselves into situations where those things mean something. And. . You're right. For a lot of people, listen, you are a high level athlete. There are other high level athletes we have at the gym and they have expectations about how they're going to do.

Right. But for most of us to just put ourselves into those situations is nerve wracking. Yeah.

[00:25:48] David Syvertsen: Even

[00:25:48] Sam Rhee: signing up for the open, even signing up for the open. So I don't want to say they are participation trophies. Right. I would say they are putting yourself in situations where you have an opportunity to grow and learn.

Right. . You don't have to, it, it is exhausting. And you don't have to do that like every three months. Right. Or even every year. But for everyone who cares about their fitness, cares about being better, cares about improving themselves. If you care about any of those things, you should put yourself and pat yourself on the back regardless of how you did.

[00:26:22] David Syvertsen: Yeah. You want everything to be a positive experience, right? Like you don't want it to be such a negative experience. Like we use the open eggs example. And we try really hard here at the open to make it inclusive and fun and not too serious. If you wanna take it serious, we will help you take it serious.

But that's not the point of it for the gym. And I give so much credit to the people that don't want to naturally do it, but they still do it, whether it's for the gym, whether it's for themselves, whether it's a combination of the two, because it's a sign that you are willing to put yourself through some discomfort.

For a reward. A reward at the end, whether it's a trophy or a feeling that you did something that most people won't do, you did something that went against like your natural instinct. For, bettering yourself. And I think that's a lost art in the world today, is we just want comfort. We want our schedule, our routine, our friends, our activities, what we want.

And it just does not work that way. And you are shorting yourself so much more than you think. If you are constantly chasing after comfort.

[00:27:27] Sam Rhee: One of the things that I see myself now that I, that you asked if I had kids at the time is, yeah, I'm a parent now. And it gives you perspective. I see my kids putting themselves out there for their sports.

And how would it look like if I didn't put myself out there? And I'm telling them, try harder at this game. Yeah. Put, put yourself in a leadership position in this game. Put yourself out there at, and really try. When I'm sitting there doing nothing myself, I think one of the biggest things as a parent is look at yourself and see what you are doing, and are you consistent with what you're telling your kids?

When my kids see myself when my kids saw Susan competing at these competitions and they know she's not. An elite level athlete. She's not going to the games. She's mom. Right. And when mom puts herself in a situation where she's nervous, yep. She's scared. Yep. She's trying her hardest. Yep.

What does that do for them? And you should think about it. Maybe you don't have kids, but maybe you should look at what other people are looking at you. There are people looking at you and what are you going to do in that situation? Are you gonna say no? I'm never going to be in the open. Yep. Forget that.

That's not me. Yeah. I don't wanna do a competition. That's not me. Yep. Would you really want someone else to be saying that? Yeah. And you looking at them and doing that? Yeah. Like put yourself in that situation. Yeah. And I think you can be the best version of you if you actually looked on the outside and looked at you and said, what does this person need to do?

, what would I admire in this particular person? Right. And if you are. Doing those things that would say, oh, I admire that person is putting themselves out there. Yeah. That person is doing the, making the hard choice. , then maybe you should do those

[00:29:02] David Syvertsen: things. Yeah. And I think that your decisions and your actions are bigger than you think.

A lot of people say, oh, I don't have kids. I don't want to have kids. Take the kids out of it. This gym I like. I'm the first person at Bison. Back in whenever we opened, I mean, I say it's 2013, but it was 2014. Right. I coach a lot. I work out a lot. I try to be as involved as I can. I am inspired by people that have no idea that they inspire me.

Absolutely. Zero. They, and they have, it has nothing to do with what workouts they can do at the gym. It's, I know what's going on in their. Adversity wise, they're still here. I know what's going on with their bodies, adversity wise. They're still here. They're battling the comfort, right? They're fighting against it.

They don't want to, and it inspires me. It's what one of the luckiest things I have about this job is I can walk in here on any day, any week, any month, any year. And just observe and get inspired and motivated by someone else if I'm not

[00:29:56] Sam Rhee: feeling it. And are they nervous? Of course these people are, they're just living their lives, but they're,

[00:30:00] David Syvertsen: they're inspirational.

Yep. So the last two parts of this, right, and it's again, we are still trying to stick with this, coping with nerves thought is what to expect, but then also how to adjust when the unexpected comes. And I think when it comes to nerve, , you can have your nerves settled, taken care of because you're mentally prepared.

You've been through things a few times. You've done a good job reflecting and kind of tying things together, but you lose control of those nerves. The second something unexpected happens, it could be in a competition setting. It could be you don't get the pull apart. You want your jump rope breaks in the middle of the workout, something happens to your body injury wise or something, flares.

Or in the day-to-day workout, the coach changes the workout. Haha. , that's a good idea, right? You come in and I've had people come in and say like, oh, I thought the workout was this. I was looking at the wrong email, the wrong week. Makes them more nervous. Or you get paired with someone on a Saturday that you didn't think you'd be paired with and they're much better athlete than you, and you get.

How can you precondition your mind to cope with something that unexpected

[00:31:11] Sam Rhee: happens? That's a really good for me, repetition does count. It really does matter. So, Saturday workouts particularly, I've never, I've talked about this before. I'm never the biggest fan of Saturday workouts.

Yep. But the more I've have done them over the years, the more I know what to expect. Whether I have a really good person paired up with me or a really bad person paired up with me, you know how to roll with it. Right. I never. I try to do little things that sort of throw me out of my comfort zone a little bit.

If I get assigned to the super high pull up bar, I'm like super short. I have to use a two-inch riser. I don't I'll just work with it, right? Anything that puts you out of your comfort zone, you should always try to roll with it to the best. That you can. Right. I was actually more interested in your thoughts because I've seen you especially in competitions over the years.

Yeah. And I would say your poised that I see externally before competition Yeah. Has gotten, I don't know if you have a routine or how you deal with it, but you've gotten very, I don't wanna say professional, but you're very practiced at it

[00:32:18] David Syvertsen: at this point. Yeah. Well, I think you said repetition matters. The, this is where experience helps.

Right. But I think one thing I think takes me to that level of just feeling calm. Even though I know inside I'm not calm, I am nervous. I have dry heaved, right before workouts. I'm, I'll get nervous at legends, right? Is I have been able to develop the ability to just take on one thing at a time. Like think about this one thing that's in front of me, even in a workout.

, right? Where last year we had a workout that had the weighted double unders and there's gymnastics, heavy wall balls and weighted double unders. And like I know I'm not good at double unders , I'm definitely not good at weighted double unders. Right. And instead of me stressing out so much about that jump rope, which was the third movement of the.

I just looked at the pull bar and said, dominate this pull bar. Get to the wall ball, dominate this wall ball. If I was thinking about the jump rope the entire time while I'm doing these other movements, I would have not developed a lead to give myself a buffer at the jump rope. And because I wasn't thinking about the jump rope so much, I eventually get out there and two out of the three sets, I did a good job on the rope.

There's one set I got and got tripped up a little. , but I know that I've been here before, especially with the jump rope, right? Where if it's all you're thinking about, right, and you're so nervous and it impedes everything else that you're trying to do, you're just compounding the issue. Like the issue at the jump rope, it's going to be there.

Like, I'm never gonna be a great jump roper, right? Never gonna be a great lifter. So now I've gotten to the point where, . I don't wanna say I don't care, but I've developed the ability to only think about one thing, what's right in front of me, and that's it. I zone everything else out and it's helped me

[00:34:03] Sam Rhee: tremendously.

I think in CrossFit, a lot of the times when I focus on workouts, breaking it down like that can be very helpful. We've talked about this Yeah. About approaching a workout. When I. I don't think about my pace. I think about my breathing now that I've done the hinge shot thing, right? I don't care how fast I'm going, I just focus on what's my breath count, right?

When I do wall balls, all I focus on is am I getting my ass low enough to I what I know now is acceptable, right? It took me a while for my. Body to know what, right. How deep is deep and if I don't worry about how fast I'm going or, whatever. Right. Same with dumbbell snatches all, I feel like this Saturday I was working out with Alan.

All I was focusing on was. Can I not use my back and sort of use proper form, right? All of those things help me not to worry about the overall picture. Right. What my performance is going to be, just a bunch of microlevel lights, micro level like, so if you, and that actually works for a lot of things in life.

If you just take micro bytes and focus on each little chunk, you put it all together and you actually did pretty

[00:35:09] David Syvertsen: good, right? Right. Yeah. Really. And that's, it's the sum, your result is the sum of all the micro. Right. It's not just the sum, it's not just the result. It's, all these steps that led up to the result.

Like, it's the sum. I think every result you have is the sum of several little things. And if you're not putting full concentration into the little things, the sum will be less. And if your goal is a high, the highest possible sum for that result, for that situation. It's going to come down to all those micro level things and I gave a specific workout example, but if you're nervous about the open and it's 80 days away, right?

Like we've already had some people sign up for it. And some people, for some people it's a huge deal. Like it's a huge deal that they signed up. And I'm, I give them all the credit in the world, they deserve a ton. It is a huge deal for putting yourself out there, especially if you've never done it before.

I give you so much credit because I know it's hard. Still a big deal for me. Absolutely. And. , I think instead of thinking about the open for the next 81 days, is you think about today's workout. . Think about this movement in today's workout, and I promise you, especially with how we run things here, that is going to prep you and build confidence and capacity and ability in the open more than anything you're gonna do.

So why not just say, stop thinking about the open and what you might rank this year and think about tomorrow's kettlebell swings, lunges, and deadlift. , that's where your mind's gotta be. Absolutely. The prep

[00:36:30] Sam Rhee: will help every time. I've been really nervous in a bad situation. I knew I was caught with my pants down.

I didn't do the prep properly. I didn't, I wasn't ready and I knew I wasn't ready. I think some of the worst case scenarios were in real life, were like I was a resident in training and I knew I had a big case coming up and I didn't read properly. I didn't really get ready for it, and I got eviscerated by an attending or someone just like crushed me and I knew it even beforehand.

I was like, I didn't do my job. I didn't read properly, I wasn't prepped. Right. And in CrossFit, it's the same thing. If you're nervous and it's a good nervous. You've done the prep work, you've focused every day on your workout the way you were supposed to, like you said. Right. The nervousness is good. Yeah.

When you have a bad, unhealthy nervousness, it's because, you shirked on some level, you didn't do what you knew you had to do beforehand.

[00:37:21] David Syvertsen: Right, right. No, I love that. So that's a good way to wrap this up guys. Especially, I just love the fact that we kind of brought the open to this. We didn't do that on purpose by the way.

That you know it is, it's a long enough time away for you to really start to make your mind shift, your mindset to, I want to perform to my highest ability in the open, whether it's foundation Scaled Rx, 11th year doing it, first year doing it. There's a good timetable right now. Just start shifting your mindset to be like, I'm gonna start prepping for it.

You don't need to think about the open. We'll do that for you. You just gotta show up and focus on that micro level bite. What's today's task? What am I taking on? What can I do to get the most out of it? And hopefully this guys can really help you cope with any nerves that you have right now, or will do, will have in the future.

Sam, any closing thoughts? No,

[00:38:10] Sam Rhee: I, I hope people can harness it and use their nerves for the better because if you can do that in CrossFit and in life, you're gonna, it's gonna make you so much of a better person. Yep.

[00:38:20] David Syvertsen: All right. Thank you guys. See you next week.