"A foolish consistency . . .

is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesman and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do."----Ralph Waldo Emerson.

(Just an aside, before I rant on consistency. . . . would you . . . if your middle name was "Waldo" . . . make sure everyone knew it, so that they didn't confuse you with the other Ralph W. Emersons?)

Still, let this not be a "foolish" consistency.

While I have been very pleased by my Crossfit progress over the year, there are things that could be improved.

Cheif among them consistency . . . tempered by my tendency to bite off more than I should chew.

Now here's the thing with consistency: If you practice something small, but correctly, you will make more progress in the long run, than if you try and do all the hard stuff first. This happens in music and almost any other thing you do. Yet, being human, and being a tard, I tend to push push push until I get frustrated at my seeming lack of progress.

So it is with Crossfit:

When I started: All buttercup and puppy scaled wods.
Now: Almost always pack, a few porch, and a couple big dog.

Strength: Up in all categories, as far as I can tell. For instance: I failed at a 167lb back squat, but not 6 weeks later knocked out 3 x 175.

Deadlift is probably somewhere near 225-235 (I actually ran out of weight at home, where I'd normally test this).

Those are the ups.

Downs: My shoulder: I think that trying to 'grease the groove' is part of what caused my pullup issues. Had I simply stuck with the wods and not done 20-40 extra pullups a day, I might have avoided the rotator cuff issues. As of now I've had some soreness for 6 months. Physical therapy helped a lot and I was doing full training and then an insane pullup/dip workout (10 rft of 10 pullups 10 dips) gummed it back up. To me that meant that the first time around I wasn't fully healed. So, I'm taking the next 12 weeks off overhead (okay so I did one itsy bitsy overhead squat last night, is that so wrong?). I may need to lay off pushups too, I don't know. I've gotten contradictory advice on that.

Knee: its kinda weird. Makes noise. As far as a runner goes, I've always had rock solid knees. Occasionally, I'd get some itb soreness, but they'd always resolve, and once I had what I think was runner's knee, caused by a patella tracking problem, but a little bit of quad strength work (isometric wall sits) cleared that up in like two weeks. But I think I torqued my knee slightly doing cleans or such and I think that the high volume of squats make my kneecap ever so slightly sore. So it's been weird. Not painful really, just more noticeable. But that can be how things start.

So, I've got my dents and dings. In a year, that's not bad. My back rarely gets sore anymore, because I know how to deadlift with proper form (not perfect, just better) and I know why my back gets sore from squats (losing the lordatic curve too soon after parallel, i.e. "buttwink", most likely from tight hamstrings).

So realistic goals for el proximo ano:

Rehab the shoulder COMPLETELY.

• Continue with the phys therapy stuff I know how to do
• See about the Active Release Techniques that folks swear by
• Increase my pullups in a logical fashion

Keep proper form and watch squat volume to care for knee.
Apply extreme effort to Pack workouts, and step onto the porch once in while.
Work in heavy lifting to increase my ability to do the wods as Rx'd.