The Angry Typist

“Trust the Process” is a phrase that I have heard many times from many different coaches. Whether it is OrangeTheory or CrossFit, the phrase has been preached repeatedly but I have never fully understood nor paid any attention to it until recently.

This past week we were doing Power Snatch and although I have developed a liking to Snatch it is probably one of my weakest lifts. There are a lot of mechanics involved and it’s easy to get intimidated by all the mental gymnastics necessary to be successful with this lift … as least this is true for me.

The strength portion of the WOD:

Power Snatch – 7 Sets every 2 minutes

• 3 Sets 1.1 @75%
• 2 Sets 1.1 @80%
• 2 Sets 1 @85%

The first three sets I completed at 45# without issue … dare I say maybe even bordering easy.

The second 2 sets at 55# was a little more challenging but doable.

When considering the weight for the third set, my knee-jerk instinct was to go up only 5# for a total of 60# but I just felt really good that day – had over 7 hours of sleep, had my pre-workout snack, I just felt like I could do more so I tried a 10# jump for a total of 65#.

I hooked gripped the bar, I double checked that my grip was wide enough, I looked out in front of me, I cranked my arms so that my ‘elbow pits’ were facing forward, I got down into the starting position and began my first pull and failed.

Now Jules 1.0 would have panicked. Removed plates. And maybe tried the lift at the lighter weight, but more than likely would have just quit.

Jules 2.0, however, went into this odd automatic robot mode and mentally regrouped without hesitation.

I repositioned my feet in a hip-width stance and repositioned the bar over the balls of my feet. My shoulders and knees are slightly in front of the bar, I grabbed the bar in hook grip and at the proper width, I cranked my arms so that my ‘elbow pits’ were facing forward, my hips are in the hinged position, my eyes looking forward, and I push off the floor with all I have and was successful in my second attempt.

The last set, I again failed the lift. Jules 1.0 if she hadn’t already quit before certainly would have quit now. But Jules 2.0 had the cumulation of all the coaches’ tips & pointers rummaging around in her head which has grown much louder than the lingering fear & embarrassment.

I can hear Coach A telling me to really hinge at the hips, Coach F telling me to really crank the elbow pits to face forward, Coach B telling me to really engage the lats and not have the rounded back. I heard all of them, each sharing a pearl of wisdom and I just focused on their collective voices and rerun through the lift mechanics which resulted in a successful lift in my second attempt.

‘Trusting the process’ is not really a mantra, or some magic spell. For me anyways, it’s a matter of letting go of the fear and having faith in what the coaches see and having faith that I have done the work to be successful. To be able to mentally rerun through the lift mechanics helped provide me with positive, actionable steps instead of giving into the overwhelming thought of “I can’t do this, this is beyond my capabilities.” It’s quite liberating and empowering. One of my biggest takeaways from Casey Johnston’s A Physical Education: How I Escaped Diet Culture and Gained the Power of Lifting was that to really progress in lifting, one should expect that one will eventually fail. That is just a part of lifting, and that somehow freed me from my internal self-berating voice of ‘I can’t’ to at least try.