Some people just have more of it and you can see it: the fight, the fire inside. They may not be the biggest or the tallest or the person you notice first when you walk into a room, but they’re the people you’re still thinking about long after you left the gym.
Scrappers. Fighters. The never-say-die folks. The people who would really rather bleed — a lot — than quit. The ones with fire in their eyes as soon as their feet hit the floor in the morning. The folks who grab each day and smash through it like every single breath was their last.
You know these folks. You grab them for a team WOD whenever you can. They may not be the strongest or the most talented, but you want them on your side because you know they’re never going to quit — and they’re not going to let you quit, or let up, or ease up for more than a second to catch your breath.
They piss you off sometimes. On days that you don’t feel so good, you look over and still they’re going hard: fighting, struggling, clawing to keep going. Why can’t they just stop being so intense? Ease up. Allow the rest of us a chance to relax too. Give everybody some more SOYA (Sitting on Your Ass) time.
And that’s exactly why you like them too. Because they won’t stop. They can’t stop. Ask them to dial down the intensity and you might as well ask them to breathe less. They’ve been scrapping all their life and they’ve just got to keep going. It’s the only way they know how to live. And, somehow, just by pushing harder, they make you want to push harder too.
So here’s to the scrappers: people who make us all better just by being there. Folks who are living proof that it’s never been the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog. Thank you.
(Image courtesy of Nicole Bedard Photography.)
