One thing I have been very focused on lately is mental training. This is a subject that means different things to different people but one thing I know for certain is that the most successful people of all time all had a strong sense of purpose and strong mentality’s. If we want to be the best of ourselves we all need to find what drives us and creating our own version of what Jason Kalipa calls his AMRAP Mentality.
Here at DCL, we have our own mentality. I call it the EMOM Mentality. Yeah, it’s very similar in name to Jason’s but I feel this mental strategy works best for applying a workout to life. To break it down, an EMOM stands for “every minute on the minute”. What that means is every minute I will do a certain amount of repetitions of a movement and rest until the top of the next minute and then do a certain amount of repetitions of a different movement. For example 30 minute EMOM on minute 1 I do 12 wall balls, on minute 2 I do 12 pull-ups, and on minute 3 I do 10 calories on an assault bike. I continue that pattern for 30 minutes, eventually doing 10 rounds of each movement. Now, this is a style of workout that is used throughout the CrossFit world as well as several other programs. This is nothing we created; however, I do feel we can create a mentality with this style of workout. Our goal and our mission, in everything we do, should be to give 100% quality effort into the task at hand. Not worrying about the next round, not worrying about the next movement, and not going for all-out speed at the expense of quality. We need to focus on this task. In an EMOM format I can do just that.
Why do I do EMOM’s? Not because I like them but because I hate them. My first introduction into this mentality was several years ago from one of my best friends Haku. He would always make us do them and I was horrible. He, on the other hand, dominated them. Partly in my belief was because he never concerned himself with what I was doing, while I was always concerned with him. Keeping up with him and doing the same weight and reps. He focused on him. He would always tell me to scale as needed but my ego got the best of me. He taught me a valuable lesson which I continue to learn these days, focus on me and my efforts and not on what others are doing. What he also taught me, and he probably didn’t even know he was teaching me this, was to stop looking ahead. Stop looking at how many rounds and reps I had left and focused on the task at hand. In life stop looking for the future. The ancient stoic philosophers teach us that the future is coming, no need to worry, focus on today! Today I follow this EMOM philosophy with another good buddy Isaac and he pretty much has the whole gym doing EMOM’s every day now. I use this as my 30 minutes to think. To focus on my mental health and to teach myself to worry about the task at hand, not emails, not Instagram, not coaching, just me vs the task. For years I was obsessed with the future. Can I pay my bills next month? What is the gym across town doing? What is next month going to be like? I am not saying to not be forward thinking and create a plan but I am saying to not get so caught up in the future that you let it overwhelm you so much that you forget to live in the present. Focus on your best efforts today, at this moment, and on this task and the future will take care of itself.
The EMOM mentality is not something that I came up with on my own. It is a combination of influences from many different people. This mentality is helping me become the best version of myself. I stress that it is an evolving philosophy that will hopefully help your life as it has helped mine. Focus on today and on the task at hand and your efforts will show in your results.
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