What is a training practice?

I've literally spent most of my life in 'training'. First, training for competition gymnastics, then training for endurance sports that I didnt compete in near as much as I spent training for. Then bodybuilding which I did compete in quite a bit and the same with powerlifting. In my mind, I was always training for a competition, or a specific goal no matter how far off it was or long I thought it would take to achieve.

This was especially true during my "ultra" endurance years, as competitions were few and far between. But everyday I did my training I had very specific goals in mind. I didn't really care how long it took me to get there, I just knew if I didnt train as if I was going to compete I wouldn't go out the door.
Or, once out the door, when the going got tough, the weather got cold and wet or my will got weak I would cave and not push through.

This is what made my training more a practice than just sport training, or a workout.There was always something to get from my practice,some new piece of the puzzle, some new understanding of how my body or spirit worked, some new idea about the future goal or how to get there.
The competitions were as much about having legitimacy to all the hours I spent training as much as anything,lol.

I always told people I HAD to compete to justify the large amount of time I spent training and not making money.In truth I loved training( still do) way more than competition,which always seemed an artificial and inconvient disruption to my training practice.
More truth to be told , testing oneself( competition) reveals things that pure training alone can never reveal but that doesnt mean it's anywhere near as satisfying. But it's necessary. At least occasionally.

And I've always loved that space, that zone where you push yourself to new heights and instead of falling you fly. Sometimes literally and sometimes figuratively but you fly.
And almost nothing else feels like that. It keeps pulling me back again and again, for years now,just to experience the ecstasy of what feels like perfect and complete strength, or endurance or coordination or some combination of the above.
Where the internal editor, the critic, the judge, the censor is shut down and just the pure experience of pure movement is felt. It may take months of practice to get that moment just once but once had it is hard not to want again.And again. Simple, elegant beauty.Chasing God through physical effort.
But this too has it's price and the next step off a peak is always down.One just doesn't always know where the edge is until it's too late.

And then you are hurt and the new heights are replaced by new lows and the training that allowed you to push yourself further than you ever thought you could is replaced by REHAB and holding back, and resting and boring shit like that.
When you've flown enough anything else just won't do.
Til you can't walk and then you realize that walking can be flying too.It's just a different perspective.

So I've done my share of "rehab" training; stretching, foam rollering, thumping, chiropractic, stability ball training, etc.,etc,.etc.
And everytime after working my way from my current past high level of fitness or strength I have sworn I won't make THAT mistake again, that I will 'hold back' more.THis has been more apparent in the last couple years when I basically had one foot on the gas, and one on the brake in my training.Because if I didnt, if I pushed myself, if I let my body do what my mind said it KNEW it could do I would get hurt.And that's just no fun at all anymore.
After regaining so much of my lost function in the last year, especially, the desire to push myself
just a little bit more has gotten strong again. You forget the pain, the loss of basic functions, the fear.You want to soar again and as it seems so close, so doable you want to just take the foot off the brake and GO.

It always pisses me off when I see able bodied, uninjured people who don't want to use their bodies at all in any real way. It's like have a Ferrari in the garage and being too lazy to learn how to drive a stick shift.I would KILL to be able push myself as hard as I want to in the gym again, to scratch and dig and claw back to those heights again.But the price is too high and I know it now. It just is. But it still pisses me off to see people who have these wonderfully functional bodies that won't use them. Crazy.

So you enjoy the smaller workout and the ability to move without( much) pain and try to be greatful for what you have.
And then your back goes out for no descernible reason ,like it did right before the HKC and almost immediately after.
Ain't stress an amazing thing?

As I wrote in my snatch workout blot prior to the cert I had been very careful NOT to tweak myself, not to push the edge and I didnt think I had.But stress can catch up with you AND letting myself get dehydrated AND doing movements I know my spine doesnt like( two hand swings) ain't that smart.
It's just that I was feeling so good,lol.I thought I could do it all.
I could I just couldnt recover from it.

But there's nothing like having the feeling you have huge iron spike in your lower spine to let you know what's really important.
Yes I want to snatch heavy this week and damn, my Maxvo2 training was just starting to get where I wanted it to be I REALLY don't want to go back to 'light duty' rehab training. I really don't want to start over again.

What I really don't want, though, is for my back to keep me from doing what's really important in my life, doing my job as an instructor so I can take care of my family.
My real goal in my training, as it has been for a number of years is;
"to have a back of iron and legs that never quit",( my favorite kettlebell quote from Pavels first book, the book that started it all).

It's a stretch but as I wrote earlier the distance from where I am to my goal rarely deters me. I just see it as providing motivation for a longer period of time. Until I get it.
Since my back had been great for almost a year now I figured it was good, and that I could count on it, that I didnt' have to be so cautious. I was wrong.

And I also realized, as I was on the ground for the millionth time that day trying to ease the muscle spasms that coursed through my lower back, that I didn't have to stop training because I got hurt. I was training. Right now, on that floor, doing what I needed to do, not necessarily what I wanted to do. To achieve my goal, which was now not doing 200 snatches with the 24 kg or 60 sets of 8 in the max vo2, but standing and walking and working without this horrific pain. Of being able to move easily again, as I have been able to for so many months. TO do my yoga with my beautiful yogini wife and travel and teach all the new great things that are set to happen this coming year.

I will do 200 snatches in ten minutes with the 24 kg one day. I don't know when but I do know I can't push myself on too many levels similtaneously or things break. And that would be me.I don't like it but that's the truth and I have been too cavilier about my back and NOT doing enough of my prehab stretching and stabilization stuff. Just staying with the more fun, sexy stuff, the meat of the work. Oh well back to the floor.

And, as I said, it's all part of a training practice, just another section of it,as important as the heavy stuff, maybe more.The same principles and concepts apply, and as I release my back, as I regain stability, as I search for and find my 'new' center it's really the same as increasing any weight, or load or intensity.

And as I start over, again,I know it won't be long til I'm back to snatching and pressing again and pushing the edge a little and doing what I was doing a few weeks ago.But one can only handle so much stress and it all counts. It can come ALL from your training or ALL from your job or relationship or any combination of your life.Doesn't matter.When you fill your stress box completely up somethings going to give.So the practice is finding balance so you can continue to progress towards your goal.or goals.Sometimes it comes from a heavy kettlebell and sometimes it comes from bodyweight reverse hyper over a stability ball.

It's all training to me, which is my practice; searching for that zone, that place where I can soar, where what was impossible before is now effortless, where what was heavy is now light, what was pure pain is painfree.
I really cared about how much I could squat did I blew out my back and couldn't walk. Then I cared about walking. To be able to see the miraculous in the mundane is tough but take enough away and it all becomes very, very clear; what's really important. What's real.

So it's back to the gym tomorrow but not for max vo2. what I will be able to do I don't know but I will take it as seriously as I do my snatch training and make as much progress as I can that day.
That's all one can do.
The key is to keep doing it. No matter how many times you get knocked down.The only way not to get it is to quit.
I don't quit.