10/20 Mental Toughness Thursday

Last week Coach Noah celebrated the one year anniversary of his Dojo, Makoto No Shin Kan. His students performed an Embu, a public demonstration of the art of Danzan Ryu Jujitsu. 
Over the last few weeks I have watched Sensei Noah's students do many incredible things to prepare for the Embu. However, this week I watched them perform a skill that seem's impossible. They broke chopsticks with a piece of paper. 
Sensei Noah began the lesson stressing the importance of belief and a positive mind set. Then I watched his students close their eyes, focus, breathe and break chopstick after chopstick with a piece of paper. 
When I asked Sensei Noah how to do it, he said, "You must know with certainty that you will break the chopstick." 
What do you know with certainty? Do you ever approach a workout knowing with certainty that you can do it?
Having a positive outlook and belief in your ability is an important mental toughness attribute to strengthen. Knowing that you can do something is the final, and most important, step in actually doing it. 
A few weeks ago I said that hope is not a plan. Hope is what you have when you first start working towards a goal. The final step in achieving your goal is to knowing that you can do it. 
In between hope and knowing is a whole lot of hard work, drills, progressions, step-by-step efforts, a regular practice working toward that which you want to achieve. 
Today, we are continuing our hard deadlifting work with a "weight across" all sets. Weight across sets, especially heavier ones like today, are equal parts mental and physical. You have to know with certainty that you can lift the same weight for each rep of every set. To do this you need to have confidence that all of the lifting you've done until today has prepared you for this workout. Good luck! 

​Today's Workout 
Deadlift 3-3-3-3-3
Use the same weight around 80-90% of 1RM across all 5 sets. 
Optional Cash out:
5 Min EMOM
10 DL @ 50% of 3RM
30sec L-Tuck Sit or Hang