The Negative Post

See, I was nice enough to warn you right there in the subject line.  If you've been having an awesome Friday or are just generally in a good mood, you should skip this post.  There will be another one tomorrow.  Scout's honor.

I typically approach negativity as motivation.  The biggest reason I ended up at my alma mater is because enough people told me that I could never get in.  I'm not sure there is any better feeling than when you accomplish something that you weren't supposed to be able to, and then get to ask the person who doubted your ability "you were saying?"  Jenn tells me that I'm constantly rooting for underdogs when it comes to sports, which makes sense.  Once you get tired of hearing what you cannot do, you start rooting for others who have been told the same thing.

But there are days when you just don't want to deal with negativity at all.  Today was one of those days for me.  It could have been a productive day at work, but instead it turned into a waiting game followed by a tsunami of crap late on a Friday afternoon.  At times like this, I tend to turn to the gym as my stress relief.  Who knows, maybe it could have been, but I arrived too late to participate in today's WOD.  (The WOD, for the sake of posterity, was 15 minutes of practicing handstand walks, followed by 2,000 meters on the rower where every minute on the minute you had to do 20 double unders, or a scale thereof)

With that option gone, I talked myself into doing strength, but all of the racks were taken, so my plan to squat was off the table as well.  Pull-ups!  You need to work on pull-ups!  Oh yeah, that's right.  I made my way over to the monkey bars, grabbed a box, and set up my medium black band.  The 5 sets of 5 that I did weren't extremely difficult, but I still felt lousy.  I grabbed some abmats to test out handstand push-ups, but I quickly found out on attempt #1 that I had no desire to be upside-down and in a foul mood.  From there I made my way to the GHD, where I did 20 slow sit-ups, focusing on being explosive on the way up.  This was probably the best thing I did today.  Still, that wasn't making me feel any better.  Thinking that I needed some ab work, I headed back down to the other end of the gym again, grabbed another ab-mat, and did 100 sit-ups.

With the 6:30 class finished with the WOD, I grabbed my jump rope and began double under practice.  It was pathetic.  I already suck at double unders, but when you have no energy or focus, double unders simply become impossible.  I might have practiced for 5 minutes (could have been 2 minutes for all I know) and decided to leave.  I wasn't accomplishing anything and my mood certainly wasn't improving.  I probably should have skipped going to the gym altogether.

Looks like I ended up taking consecutive days off anyways.  Oh well.  Maybe I'll get up super early tomorrow and get my ass kicked at Competitors Class.  As for tonight, I'll see if my buddy Captain Morgan and the Music Choice channels can turn things around.