SSG Alex Viola – KIA: November 17, 2013 – Kandahar Province, Afghanistan

6 years ago we lost a really good dude. Hard to believe it’s been that long.

Alex was the guy who started me on the path that I’m currently on. Around 2004 we started training together to go to BUD/s.

Back then the Navy had a buddy program in hopes of having less people quit while going through training because you’d be with someone you knew.

It was during this time we discovered CrossFit and never looked back.

Since I wasn’t able to curb my relationship with college and drinking at that time, trouble got the best of me and he went on to live out that dream on his own.

He spent his entire college career training and preparing for a special warfare crew which eventually led him to the Army as Green Beret.

Dude was a stud. He could do Murph with a weight vest in under 30:00. For those that don’t know, that’s fucking fast.

In the interim he would spend some time at Grapevine CrossFit and easily made friends with anyone that met him. I’ve heard the same from other affiliates he’s been apart of including Ironclad Crossfit.

After years of training and prep, he died on his first tour overseas. The world lost a good friend and teammate that day.

A couple years ago, CrossFit came out with a hero workout in his name which is below with a small story about who he was.

For those looking for a workout today or this week, give this one a go for him.

We miss you Sam Adams.❤️
———————————————
“Viola”

Complete as many rounds as possible in 20 minutes of:
Run 400 meters
11 power snatches, 95 lb.
17 pull-ups
13 power cleans, 95 lb.

Post rounds completed to comments.

U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Alex Viola, 29, was killed Nov. 17, 2013, in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, from wounds caused by an improvised explosive device. Originally from Keller, Texas, Viola was an engineer assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 7th Special Forces Group at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. He was awarded numerous awards for his service, including the Army Achievement Medal, the National Defense Service Medal, the Army Good Conduct Medal, the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal and the Army Service Ribbon.

Viola traveled often and worked out at many CrossFit affiliates. Some of his favorite movements were pull-ups, power snatches and power cleans.

He also enjoyed running.

Viola is survived by his parents, Margaret and Frank; and his sister, Christina.

Goal Planning & Finding Motivation

Over the past few weeks we’ve discussed a proven method for planning and setting goals. This same method was the topic of our most recent goal setting seminar that happened at the beginning of January. We would like to build of these seminars each time we do them so if you missed the first one you can read all these posts and catch up on what was discussed and be fully prepared for the next seminar. Check out the links below to catch up on the past posts!

1. Goal Setting: Tell Your Excuses to F*CK off!
2. Step 1: Planning
3. Step 2: Congruence & Consequences
4. Step 3: Develop Your Plan of Action

Today we are going to touch on a final thought in relation to above 4 posts, motivation. Motivation can be a funny thing. It can also be a very dangerous thing, especially if you try to rely on it all the time. Fact: motivation will only get you so far. You have to create habits that keep you going especially on the days that motivation is at a low. I discussed this topic in a personal blog post, “Habits Are Greater Than Motivation” if you’d like to dive in a little deeper on that subject. Despite that, it’s still good to lay out some motivators to remind you of why you started this journey in the first place, whatever that journey may be. Here’s a few ways to find some motivation while developing your goals:

• Act Small but Think Big
  • Thinking big about your goal helps you see the big picture. It encourages you to build a vision and become a possibility thinker. This can be incredibly motivating and inspiring. However, if big thinking isn’t coupled together with small action steps, then it can quickly turn into an unrealistic dream that never comes to fruition. The take home point: Create small steps to reach your HUGE dream!
• Make Goals Fun and Challenging
  • You must make the process of pursuing your goals an enjoyable experience. And joy comes through challenge. You must learn to love the process of attaining the goal instead of constantly looking at the end range.
• Focus Only on Critical Activities
  • Irrelevant tasks and activities can often sidetrack us. In turn, we get distracted we lose focus and progress will begin to stagnate. As a result, we no longer make forward progress, and that is when our motivation levels dissipate.
• Find Your Inspiration
  • This is a big one of the ones listed. We need motivation to keep us focused in the present moment, and inspiration to keep us focused over the long-run. To find your inspiration create a vision board or mind map poster that showcases your goal using key visuals and words. Vision boards may be hokey, but its proven that constantly reminding yourself of your goal daily through visual reinforcement makes things happen.
• Generate a Sense of Urgency
  • When you set a more stringent timeframe for accomplishing a particular task, you are at that moment challenging yourself to think differently. You begin to think outside the box, and subsequently, you find a way to accomplish that task within that timeframe.
• Find an Accountability Partner
  • Going through anything alone is ALWAYS daunting. It helps to have someone to share the load with and be able to complain to that will “get it”, but also be around to celebrate the small wins that happen on your way to the end range.

There’s so many ways to create or find motivation to keep going when thinking about achieving your goals. I would recommend thinking about all the possibilities when creating a goal, but also think about what has worked or not worked for you in the past when developing them. This will help to keep it simple and assure you’re not walking down the same path of failure as before.

Be on the lookout for our next seminar where we will utilize what has been discussed here and talk about visualization, creating small actionable tasks, and finally go thru the actual process of creating a goal in detail.

Nutrition Talk: Doing the work & Weight Fluctuations

Sometimes when you want to diet you just need to DO IT! Be actionable, follow the plan, and stop planning out cheat meals. Oh, and weight fluctuations are totally normal!

Goal Setting: Develop a plan of action

Step 3: Draw up a blueprint and develop a plan of action

Your plan of action does not necessarily need to be detailed. It just needs to give you some direction. Use it as a guideline to help you get started along the journey toward your goal.

Sooner or later you will likely face roadblocks whether you prepared for them or not. It’s better to be prepared somewhat in advance than to have to figure things out on the spot. Having to figure something out on the spot may lend to a disruption in the goal achieving process.

An issue with goal planning and setting is people usually don’t take the time to reflect on what could potentially go wrong. They don’t account for Murphy’s Law.

Murphy’s Law: Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.

Subsequently, when something “goes wrong” they are ill-prepared to deal with the situation. Unfortunately, we can’t predict everything that can happen, but putting some effort into the possibilities will go a long way and help you stay on the path. Let’s equate this to a roadblock when you’re on a road trip. You don’t simply turn around and go home right? You make a correction in the path that’s leading you to point B. The same application is true for goals. When you hit a roadblock, it’s time to make an adjustment, not give up.

Similar to the things associated with Murphy’s Law are negative thoughts, or our limiting beliefs. Your limiting beliefs will hinder your progress. You must plan in advance how you will deal with your negative thoughts. Sound familiar? The dark voice inside our heads is realistically one of the biggest hindrances to our goals every single day.

Lastly we must think of the other obstacles such as people, events, and circumstances that don’t play to your favor and always “seem to come up”. These are things that you may or may not be able to control, however, what you can control are your responses to these situations. It’s these responses that will dictate your next steps moving forward, or your ability to keep moving moving forward.

Given all this, take time to ask yourself the following questions:

• What potential obstacles/roadblocks could stand in my way?
• What are my routine negative thoughts and do they affect my plan of action?
• How could these things delay or hinder my progress?
• What must I do to successfully work through them?
  • All this combined is your Blueprint

Every obstacle you face is nothing more but a problem that you can work through with the right resources and the mental resourcefulness to pull it off.

You can be an incredibly resourceful person, however, if your environment does not support your goal then you will subsequently struggle to make progress. Your environment must support all the work you do in the pursuit of your goal (do you recall the congruence discussion??). If friction exists your progress will be affected. It’s at this point that you may need to make some modifications to your environment to optimize your actions and results. With this in mind, take the time to leverage your environment as best as you can so that it helps support what you are trying to accomplish. Simply put, change the things that will get in your way.

After writing out all the things that are related to your goal, things can get kind of jumbled. The notes are there, but it’s necessary to make some sense of them. It’s time to put it all into action.

Where many people go wrong is that they create this magnificent and detailed plan of action utilizing every aspect of the blueprint. When it comes to the implementation of their plan they soon get bogged down in the details and end up giving up on their goal prematurely. It’s necessary to keep things simple and refer to your blueprint as needed. Did a roadblock come up that you have detailed plans on how to overcome? Good, refer to the detailed blueprint.

Laying out your plans in simple easy to read steps and creating small milestones along the way will help to keep things interesting. Utilize your blueprint when things like obstacles and negative thoughts pop up, so you can recall how to overcome them.

We will close this discussion next week with a few thoughts on putting everything into action. Keep your eyes peeled for the announcement on the second seminar happening in February. If you have any questions of goal setting please feel free to reach out to brandon@grapevinecrossfit.com.

Nutrition Tip Tuesday: Measurable results, being accountable, and the dirty lying scale.

Friday Fire: Maggie Haley

???Friday Fire???

If you haven’t had the chance to meet Maggie McCarthy Haley then you’re missing out. Her and Allen Haley have been such a great addition to the gym. Maggie, it’s been such a pleasure having you around! Here’s her CrossFit story:

I am so grateful for Grapevine CrossFit. Thank you for providing such an awesome opportunity for me/Allen to improve our health while creating wonderful friendships.

Goal Setting: Planning

After discussing the excuses that tend to hold us back, we moved on to planning which is the first step in creating ANY goal.

Step 1: Define What You Want

Your first step is to get very clear about what it is you would like to achieve.
The goal you set is, of course, only limited by your imagination. You could, for instance, set goals for your career, for your relationships, for your finances, for contribution, and even for self-growth. The goal itself doesn’t really matter. What matters is that while setting these goals you are able to answer the following three questions:

• What specifically do I want?
• Why specifically do I want this?
• When specifically do I want this?

Not following this initial guideline is the first of many reasons why the vast majority of people don’t consistently achieve their goals. You’ll also need to describe the reasons why you want this specific goal. Without these reasons, there will be no motivation to pursue this goal in the first place. Lastly, you need to set a definite date for the accomplishment of this goal. Having a time frame helps build urgency. Without a sense of urgency, you just won’t make enough time for this goal in your schedule. Note that this can be anywhere from a few days to years depending on the scope of the goal that you’ve laid out.

Within this step, we can use the “S.M.A.R.T.” system of goal setting to help us define what it is we really want to achieve.

• S: Your goals must be SPECIFIC. They must outline precisely what it is that you would like to achieve. The more detail, the better. Specifically, focus on what you want and not on how you will accomplish these things.
• M: Your goals must be MEASURABLE. Spend some time developing a process that you will use to measure your progress as you work toward your goals. How will you know you are making progress?
• A: Your goals must be ATTAINABLE. This effectively means that you must wholeheartedly believe that you can achieve your goals.
• R: Your goals must be REALISTIC. Your goals are realistic when you have the time, money, resources, and skills needed to achieve the goal. If you lack in any of these areas, then you need to get to work or set a different objective.
• T: Your goals must be TIMED. You must set a deadline for the achievement of your goal. Without clear deadlines, you will likely succumb to procrastination and instant gratification.

Once you’ve defined what your goal is using the S.M.A.R.T. method it’s time to move on to Step 2: Finding Congruence. Nest week we will get into what this means and how it relates to real world goal setting.

Homework: Sit down and write out a list of goals that you have for this year. After that, pick one of them and define what it is you’re really trying to accomplish with that goal. Use the S.M.A.R.T. method to lay out how you’re going to tackle that goal in a time frame that is suitable for you.

Friday Fire: Katie Willis

Check Katie Willis out! A regular at the 6am class, we hear that she’s quite the inspiration to a group of people. Word on the street is that she’s become quite the runner in the 5k and 10k department as well!

Not only is Katie an avid Grapevine CrossFitter, she’s quite the business woman. She was recently recognized as the “Leader Under 40” at this year’s International CenterBuild conference.

Goal Setting: Tell your excuses to f**k off!

We had a very successful goal setting seminar go down this past weekend and I thought it was awesome. The amount of participation and involvement makes us want it to be more than just a quarterly thing. To set the pace from this meeting and get the year going, I thought it would be fun to share a bit from it. It’s too much to share all at once, so it’ll be over a couple of weeks. This is all in hopes to make you a better planner and creator of your goal system, or even get you to think about new ways to set goals. If you pay attention and take notes over the next couple of weeks, you’ll be all caught up for the next seminar!