No Excuses

You know I signed up for the CrossFit Games Open. I can’t stop myself. I’m still not 100% injury-free and I’m tired from travel and I work way too much and I have kids and fifty other excuses why I should have kept my $20 in my pocket and just said “See ya next year!” Wah wah wah wah.

I have excuses … and they are simply not acceptable.

See, where I work, you don’t get excuses. There is success and there is failure. Excuses don’t get honored. It sounds tough but it’s brutally honest, when you think about it. Succeed or fail. There are only two options.

Why should the gym be any different? Why should the Open be any different? Why should CrossFit be any different?

You can produce, or you can fail. What’s not acceptable is believing there’s a valid reason that excuses your failure or that somehow makes your lack of success okay.

What if you adopted this attitude in your life? It’s brutal, but what if you tried it?

Stop making excuses. Stop explaining failure. Stop looking to take the heat off. What’s the worst that could happen? You could fail. SO WHAT? At least you tried and at least you didn’t flap your gums with some lame-ass excuse.

Sign up for the Open. Get your ticket to the party. I don’t care if you win, but I don’t care if you come in last either. I only care that you don’t make excuses … and that you suffer with me.

(Image courtesy of Nicole Bedard Photography.)

The Only Movement That Matters Is the One You Are Doing Now

If you don’t CrossFit, I’m cool with that. If you CrossFit, I’m even happier. But, there are some folks out there obsessed with hating CrossFit and CrossFitters. That’s really funny when you think about it . . . and pathetic.

I don’t care if you drive a Chevy, a Ford, or a Toyota. I don’t care if you smoke or drink a lot — unless your smoke blows my way or your drunken ass gets in my path. You have the right to make what I might think are dumb decisions.

I don’t care if you have bad teeth, a horrible vocabulary, and you like to wear tin foil on your head and private parts. More power to you. Live your life the way you want, right up to the edges of where it affects mine.

I’m too busy serving to get into the business of undermining. Really, who the fuck has time for that?

So, let me offer a piece of advice (my own tin foil, I guess), whether you want it or not: If you find yourself getting absolutely red in the face, pulse rising, teeth clenched over what someone ELSE is doing, STOP. Think. Redirect yourself.

You cannot control anyone else — really — no matter how hard you try. But you can control yourself. You can direct your own efforts. You can make a difference. And in doing these things, you can better your life and the lives of those you love.

Work on you. Help those who want and need and will accept your help. Fight where you need to fight and where your efforts can yield results. Drive on past the other battles. Ignore the tin foil. Build. Live. Love. Succeed.

(Image courtesy of Nicole Bedard Photography.)

You and I

You and I. That’s what it really comes down. That’s really all we need.

We think we need more. We think we need SO much more. We THINK we need.

But we don’t.

If we have a barbell, great. If we have a room full of other CrossFitters, awesome. If we have a 5000 sf box filled with kettlebells and rowers and medicine balls and bumpers, fantastic.

But if we only have a stretch of dirt and ourselves?

We can still CrossFit.

Throw away the notion of what you think you need, and truly realize your actual needs. Maybe more really is more if you are okay with less . . . and, if not, maybe more is a big old anchor dragging you down.

You and I. 3-2-1-Go.

(Image courtesy of Nicole Bedard Photography.)

 

Beyond Broken

We are all broken. Show me someone who says they are perfectly unharmed and I’m looking at a liar, or someone trying desperately to put up a brave front.

None of us get through life in an inviolate state. There is no one left unscathed; only those who have managed to bounce back quicker or higher.

And yet we find our sanctuaries. Places that help us to heal, to put ourselves back together, to make us stronger, to grow the scars over the wounds. For some of us, that place is the gym, it is CrossFit, it is the WOD.

Some of us come to these places to heal somehow through fire. Like a heat that cauterizes the wound, the new pain takes the old pain away. We go deeper into the darkness in order to escape, to free ourselves. We go through in order to get through, to emerge on the other side into the light, to fall in triumph, and exhaustion, and some kind of gratitude that such light even exists. We don’t want to escape for just right now, we want to go beyond and leave the pain, make it a memory, abandon it like a sandbag after the run, a barbell after the workout, an empty water bottle. We used that pain, and now we can walk away from it.

It makes no sense to the others, the people outside our circle, who don’t understand . . . yet.

It’s hard to understand that the tight cornering and jarring ride of the sports car is somehow preferable to the cushioned, soft travel of the Cadillac. It’s hard to understand that you can feel discomfort without being consumed by it — and that it somehow helps you to find your way.

But we know. And, hopefully, we’re moving beyond broken, with every workout and every day.

(Image courtesy of Nicole Bedard Photography.)

Evolving

Everything changes, or it dies out. Nature is pretty brutal that way. Adapters survive.

People love to reminisce about the early days of anything. That’s human nature. “Remember back when . . .” “It was better when we used to . . .”

And that’s okay. Things always seem simpler and better in retrospect.

Present day is hard.

Challenges are hard.

Changing is hard.

Life is hard.

CrossFit is hard.

Thinking about glories of the past is an easier task. Fun. You’d much rather talk about the first time that you did “Fran” than actually do “Fran”, right?

Good things don’t usually stay small, or quiet, for long. We love to share what we love. And that’s okay too.

Just because something isn’t new anymore doesn’t mean it isn’t still awesome. But awesome isn’t an end state anyhow. You just got to work hard for awesomeness every single day.

(Image courtesy of Nicole Bedard Photography.)