Losing my cool

Normann Stadler once lost his cool in Kona to the point he threw his bike over a cliff. I didn't quite go to that extreme yesterday, but I did learn a valuable lesson in keeping focus and not letting frustrations get the best of me.

I've always prided myself on being a good weightlifter. I build muscle very easily and have some decent muscles for a 5'9" guy. Yesterday we went to the gym with the intention of doing some swim drills and then following it up with the Mark Allen Lifting Plan that we are incorporating into our training.

We went to SwimLabs to try to buy a pull buoy. They didn't have any. And they don't know whey they are getting any in. Frustrating. Ok, so we go to the gym. We can swim without it for now. Check the pool. Full to the nth degree, and more people are lining up to swim. More frustration. Ok, fine, we'll lift and then swim. Hopefully the pool will be cleared out and then we can do it. But as you can guess, I'm already somewhat frustrated with the day.

So we start lifting, and it goes well, although it's sad how weak I am now. I used to be able to bench sets of 210. Now, I'm struggling to bench 135. :-( We get to tricep extensions and the way Mark Allen wants us to do them, I, for whatever reason, couldn't do it. Not physically. Literally. I could not manage this lift. T was trying to help me get the elbow hinging motion down, but to no avail. I finally got so frustrated I snapped at her and berated myself in many ways. We finished off with the leg press and rode home in silence, any hope of swimming long past as I was too mentally out of it to even think about it.

I can laugh about it now, because it's a stupid thing to get frustrated over. I can easily get this motion down with a little work and thinking. There was no reason to lose my cool over it. Thankfully, I plan on rebounding tonight with a tough swim and tomorrow by pain caving it. :-)