The Blog for Steven Bereznai | Writer | Hypnosist/NLP Practitioner

December 30, 2012
by Steven
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Slowing Down Time

A phenomenon that I’ve been interested in is time distortion, experiencing time as if its moving in slow motion (it also works in the reverse, where time can “fly by.”) For sports purposes I was interested in the former, and today I think I got it happening at cross fit.

I was doing cleans, making mini adjustments to my technique for various reasons, and I hit a sweet spot where I’d clean the weight off the ground, go into my mini squat to catch it, and something really cool happened. Normally all of this happened so fast (or so clunkily) that I couldn’t keep track of all the different phases (they are all supposed to meld really, one into the other). But by the end instead of trying to force the weight onto my shoulders, I had these moments of waiting, one, two, and then the bar just landed there. It was that one, two moment that felt like time “slowed” down (of course it didn’t, but in theory I was in the right state of focus that extraneous material was shut out, and with my conscious and subconscious only focusing on what I was doing, I had a much greater awareness, creating a sense of time distortion.)

The other thing that really helped was imagining myself as a rubber band snapping the weight rather than thinking of myself as powering through the movement.

December 27, 2012
by Steven
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The Art of Learning

Just started reading the book The Art of Learning. Am already fascinated. It’s the story of chess genius and Tai Chi master Josh Waitzkin (the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer is about him).

Quote: I was unhindered by internal conflict–a state of being I have come to see as fundamental to the learning process.

Quote 2: I have come to understand that these little breaks from the competitive intensity of my life have been and still are an integral part of my success. Times at sea are periods of renewal, coming together with family, being with nature, putting things back in perspective.

December 20, 2012
by Steven
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Pushing towards strength

So today’s fun hypno experience… I’m working on improving my crossfit performance by pushing through. What came to me was instead of pushing to failure, pushing towards strength. Will see how that pans out in an hour

December 15, 2012
by Steven
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Box jumps

This week’s X-fit victory goes to… Box Jumps!

I was pretty proud of myself when I could do box jumps (as the name implies, literally jumping on a box) on what I thought was the highest height of 30″.

I foolishly believed this to be the max because that’s with the box turned on its side, and literally it doesn’t get any higher. It’s a box. Then in the past couple of weeks I was introduced to stacking plates on the box.

When this first happened, I declined to put a plate on. Today, I was told by “Dr.” Nic (I’ve Doctored him cause he’s got so many training qualifications I figure he’s earned it) that if he’s doing the workout with (I think) 4 plates on the box, then I was going to do the WOD with one plate on the box. He’s really good at scaling workouts for different abilities, and I found any voices in my head that might have wanted to argue quickly shut up. I did a test round, and got up on the plate on top of the box no problem. My conclusion? “That was easy.” Clearly I had been psyching myself out, something I’m becoming more aware of as I push myself to complete a few more reps than I think I’m capable of doing.

Also in the workout…hand stand push ups. I’ve struggled of late just to get into the handstand (feet against the wall) and have not come close to a HSPU.

Today I did the scaled version with my feet on a wooden box. So big goal for 2013 is to master the HSPU.

Penultimate note…building on last week’s victory… adding to my mental cues for overhead squats, tilting the pelvis back and pushing knees forward as I go into the squat. Thank you Coach Jordan!

And now the closing note… Dr. Nic struggled with the box jumps at the prescribed height (which was much higher than what I did). I mention this because it was a good lesson for me to see someone so skilled having to work at it. At times I forget that yes, this is still work for everyone, and everyone has their challenging moments.

And then there’s this guy…

December 6, 2012
by Steven
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Motto of the day…

Mind of a champion, body of a champion -Steven Bereznai (I googled this, couldn’t find it anywhere, so I’m planting my flag on this saying

So today’s cross fit mental breakthrough… when choosing a weight for my overhead presses, I was going to err on the side of light (though I’d already done a set with just the bar) and then I asked myself what might a champion do? (side note: I have historically fallen into the athletically challenged department and as a child was prone to calling it quits when physical challenges were involved. I am now taking steps to rewire my thinking). With this mind I decided to go heavier by 20lbs, realizing that if it was too much, I could just set it down.

On the “set back” end of things, my 1 1/4 split squats are very much a work in progress (think about how satisfying it will be when I master this! So I tell myself

December 6, 2012
by Steven
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Crossfit Breakthrough

Am dying to eat my post-workout oatmeal (yes, my attempt to go Paleo seems to have resulted in a resurgence of my acid reflux manifesting as wickedly incapacitating stomach cramps).. the antacids and the re-introduction of oatmeal and sweet potatoes into the diet seem to be doing the trick…should be off meds soon!) so will keep this short (I hope).

One of the joys of being a hypnotherapist is getting hypnotherapy done on me. Today we did parts therapy to work through a block I’ve had for as long as I can remember where I hold back in a workout for fear of running out of gas (the good kind!), with the result that I don’t push myself to my limit. Things got interesting when the part of me that holds back explained to my hypnotherapist that It does so for “revenge.” When asked to elaborate, I felt the part turn into this chubby (and petulant!) little kid, who explained “I won’t give them the satisfaction of seeing me fail.” When pressed further still, I realized this part of me was a dreamer, and was afraid to have Its dreams fail when put out into the real world. That insight was therapeutic in and of itself, but went further still. The “Dreamer” agreed to work with the “Accomplisher” in me. The Dreamer’s job is to dream (duh) and then to help inspire the Accomplisher part of me to go out and make things actually happen (rather than holding us all back

Courtesy Men’s Health

So flash forward a few hours later, and I’m at Crossfit, and I FINALLY (after 8 months) was able to do overhead squats with the 45lbs bar! Then I added another 20lbs to the bar! Granted this is not a lot of weight for a guy BUT it is a challenging movement that I was NOT able to do anywhere near this level until today (the most I had done in the past was with the 15lbs bar, struggling) so this is a HUGE breakthrough! I then went on to do a set of 30 then 20 then 10 with the 45lbs bar. This was unthinkable this morning. Looking forward to more fitness progress by making use of hypno to crash through my limiting beliefs and to make best use of my subconscious for learning new skills (NLP co-founder Richard Bandler has gone so far as to say that ALL learning takes place in the subconscious…I’m inclined to agree.)

December 1, 2012
by Steven
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