It’s strange how the mind works. I’ve read, researched, heard, etc., about how crucial sleep is. It’s important for weight loss. It’s important for mental health. It’s important for physical well-being. I get it. I think that might be the hardest thing I will have to overcome to reach my goals. It’s going to be harder than motivating myself. It’s going to be more difficult than saying no to french fries. It’s going to be tough. I’ve been working in EMS for 5 and a half years. I have been doing 24 hour shifts, and 80 hour work weeks since I’ve started. I’ve been doing this since I was 18. This is all I have known for my entire adult life. Five and a half years is a lot of undoing to do. I slept in my own bed last night. I didn’t go to bed until around midnight, so I could see Mr. Mister off. I fell asleep fairly quickly, though. I didn’t set an alarm for the first time in I don’t even know how long. I was going to let my body take whatever it needed for sleep. I woke up at 7am. My body will very rarely let me sleep for more than 7 hours. Which is fine, that’s a healthy amount of sleep. The problem is, those 7 hour nights seem to be few and far between these days. Beyond that though, my body is just fucked. That 7 hours of sleep has been enough to keep me going 18 hours now. We’re at 1:38 AM. I should be sleeping. I should be tired. I’m not. I caught my second wind on my way to work, around 11 PM. So here we are. Most days, it’s choosing between an extra half hour of sleep, or working out. Unfortunately, many times, sleep wins. Which I guess is ok, because it’s important... It’s frustrating though. Changes need to happen. I haven't figured out exactly what changes, or how to implement them, yet. I need to though.
I worked out 3 times this week. Only went into the gym once. Still worked out 3 times. I wish it was more. It’s more than last week though. Baby steps. Friday was a long work out. It didn’t need to be. I let it be. I didn’t set at timer. I didn’t make the weights anything heavy. I didn’t have any tricky, or difficult, movements. I needed to spend a decent amount of time doing nothing but that work out though. My stress was through the roof. My head was all out of whack. So I wanted that time to think about nothing else other than moving my body. I did. And I allowed myself all the time I may need, and to figure that out along the way. I literally layer down during certain points of the work out. I stopped and restarted my warm up a couple of times. It was fairly pathetic to watch, I’m sure. I’m ok with all of it though.
Like I said, I have no idea how long it took. It was irrelevant. All I cared about was finishing. So I did. One of the reasons I enjoy CrossFit, is because someone else tells you what to do. I have no idea what to do on my own, at home. So I follow a lot of athletes and boxes on instagram. Pat Sherwood (@sherwood215), CrossFit Linchpin (@crossfitlinchpin), GORUCK (@goruck) are a handful of workouts I’ve followed at home recently. My options at home are still incredibly limited due to lack of equipment. Which means a lot of times, I have to do a lot of modifying. The one above that I completed was posted by Pat Sherwood, and was originally squat cleans and pull ups with the thrusters. I don’t have any means to do pull ups at home at the moment. I didn’t like the idea of squat cleans. It wasn’t heavy enough to force me to do them correctly, and I didn’t want to switch out plates every round. So I adjusted. Still worked. Still effective. Still a work in progress. Stay tuned to see if I ever fall asleep and if I’m nearly as productive tomorrow as I’d like to be.
