On Rain, Seasonality, and Being an Absolute Caged Animal

If you could imagine a six foot, two inch strikingly beautiful woman who at the time was an active Marine commander and (by the numbers) unequivocally stronger than everyone in your cell phone, you’d be imagining Taylor Drescher in 2015. 

Taylor is a good friend of DEUCE and, at the time, was a sponsored CrossFit Games athlete from my former sports nutrition company, Original Nutritionals. She was also a Westside Barbell athlete. Westside notoriously had infamous training methods, but even more an even more notorious mentality. 

At the time, I had been using Westside’s “Conjugate Method” to compete in strongman and became obsessed with the mental side of the method. In an interview, I asked Taylor about the power of Westside’s habit of reserving external stimulation and the risk of failure on one rep max days. She answered with a question. “As a coach, would you rather be pushing your athlete along to do more or would you rather having to hold your athlete back and them wanting more?”

“We’re caged animals and we always want more. That’s the superpower.”

It made perfect sense. And, I find myself projecting this on students at DEUCE in different ways. Frankly, I’d rather our students have a minimal membership with us and find themselves at home wishing they were at the gym than a student internally shaming themselves for only making it to the gym three times this week. 

Doing the training is Level 1. Being in the head space where you want to do the training is the next level. 

Life has seasons. Sometimes training less is important if it gives you a burning desire to be in the gym.

Sometimes it rains and that makes getting after it on sunny days all the more powerful.