I know sometimes I blab a bit much about Crossfit this and Crossfit that, but it's my way of staying fit for a). my climbing endeavors and b). my memory training. Believe me, it puts me in incredible shape in both regards.
Anyways, this past weekend was a local Miami competition called the Pantheon Games. It was my first real Crossfit competition, and even though I was probably a bit in over my head, I always think just throwing yourself in the deep end is the best way to learn and improve. I did the same thing 4 years ago at the 2009 USA Memory Competition and look where it lead me!
I trained pretty damn hard for this competition over the past month and a half or so. As a result, I actually broke some of my long-standing barriers for my body. For one, my body weight. I've always been 205-210lbs. After my Peru climb I was down to 200 flat. To make things worse, I've always had trouble putting on weight, which I need more of to get stronger. So finally I forced myself to start eating a LOT more (healthier too) and now im over 220lb - and it's all muscle. And I keep getting so much stronger now. Lifting more, lasting longer during workouts, etc. It always amazes me what the body can do when you really push it and focus on a goal. I've been doing 2-a-day workouts some days and taking a rest day every 10th day. I thought my body would get burnt out but it hasn't. Instead, it started adapting to the frequent workouts and learned how to recover faster.
The same applies to my memory training. I've been boosting my training sessions for the upcoming World Championships in December, and even though I thought I'd been sitting at plateaus, not improving much, suddenly I've been shooting past my personal bests. It's pretty exciting.
For those of you who struggle with your own plateaus in whatever field it may be, just remember that whatever point you are currently at now, no matter how limiting it may seem, there are always ways to surpass them. ALWAYS. You just need to find a way to train differently, train harder, train more! That's probably the single most important thing I've learned over the past few years while doing all this memory stuff.