Have you ever stood before a workout, hesitating, wondering how the hell you'll ever make it through this thing? Shoot, have you ever stood before anything, a barbell, a sports game, a meeting, a girl (or boy), and so on, wondering if you'll survive to see the end? Screw winning, screw setting a PR and announcing to the world you are the best; what if you don't even finish?
Well grow a set and make it happen! Who cares if you fail? Who cares if it means you lose, or get made fun of, or look like a fool. You'll even more stupid if you give up, or don;t show up at all! You came to the gym, to the platform, to the field, to THIS PLACE to get something done and the only thing standing in the way of you 100% effort is your doubting mind making excuses.
If you want to lift shit-tons of weight, train for it, and then attempt to lift shit tons of weight! If you want to tear it up at a CrossFit competition; you;re going to have to have no fear, no matter what workout is thrown at you. And the same goes with anything and everything in your life. If you fear a negative result, you are hindering your ability to have positive ones. At the most basic level, if you have an idea and never implement it out of fear of failing, well, you're idea will never have the opportunity to make it. I have found this out over and over again the hard way. I have lost opportunity after opportunity becuase I didn't attack the things I thought would be great to do. And what did I get? Nothing! It's like that wonderful quote: "you can't steal second with your foot on first" (I'm a sucker for baseball metaphors and such).
What brings this on? Well, I see it every day in the gym, and I always internalize these situations so that I can work at becoming a better person myself, and to help motivate others to stop holding back. Today I had a baseball player tell me he was tearing it up on the mound, throwing hard, yet he couldn't seem to get his off-speed stuff figured out. I told him to tone back the velocity and work on locating all pitches, because in the end, accuracy is rewarded way more than velocity. His response was: "well you know me, I try too hard and am so injury prone". No, no, no! If you know exactly what you need to do to be successful, DO IT! Don;t make excuses about how your personality is this, or that, or you can't be less social and drink less, or you need your crappy food, or your TV shows. If you want to do something, have the people around you to support you, and have all the tools to do it. Then do it.
I have no sympathy for someone who knows the best path for getting to his/her desired location, then chooses another and complains about how difficult it is. Be smart, and be good to yourself. Wild success will follow.
Never Stop, GET FIT.
Josh Courage
One of the things I love about my job is watching people do things they never thought they could. From forward rolls, to handstands, to box jumps to lifting crazy weights, it never fails that if you focus on the right things, you can do a lot more than you think you're capable of. I talk endlessly to clients, athletes, friends and family about the benefits of CrossFit/unconventional athletic training, and just how it can positively effect your life. Besides the obvious answers: less fat, reduced risk of injury (this one needs a post for itself, later this week), better sleep, so on, so forth, I always like to talk about an athletes ability to function in a greater amount of situations than others. The idea that being uncomfortable physically and mentally is not so scary it must be avoided.
For those of you who have trained with me, or have been to a good CrossFit gym, you should instantly understand what I am talking about here. That feeling that your about to fall apart, that if you do one more rep, or go for one more second you're just going to crumble to the floor. And what ends up happening when you actually DO that one more rep, or go for that extra second? Well, you just keep going. It's in that moment that you grow as a person. Its those moments that I am always hoping people will push themselves towards, and that I am always looking for myself.
Challenging yourself to push that extra bit will not only change your fitness for the better,but it will dramatically improve your life as well. If you become the type of person who is willing and open to push yourself beyond the comfortable, and to try new and potentially frightening things, you'll take those same challenges in other areas as well. Risks will become exciting, you'll see more, explore more, experience more and achieve more. Failure will become a stepping stone for all your successes rather than the thing that stops you from trying.
When you miss a rep in the gym, push yourself to the end, you immediately realize more about yourself then any amount of therapy (not a medical fact, just me trying to prove a point). When you make these realizations, well, the world just become a more exciting place to live in!
Just a thought I had today...
Never Stop, GET FIT.
Josh Courage
 Don't Know, Just Like This Picture Today I had track work programmed in and to tell you the truth, I was excited. I hadn't hit the track in a while and I was eager to see where things stood. To top it all off, I had a TON of energy throughout the day! Well, one thing led to another and I ultimately decided to hold off on the running until later in the evening. A couple points to make on this choice: first, I was comfortable with it because I really like the idea of changing up training times every now and then, especially if your goal is to compete. second, well, to contradict the first, I was uncomfortable with it. I don't really like training in the evening. So because of this, and the fact that I had a little extra energy flowing through me, I figured I could overcome my issues with evening training and put up some good numbers despite the time of day!
Well, I was WAY wrong. This turned out to be one of the toughest workouts I have done in a very long time, my legs were heavy as hell, my breathing was strained and it felt like I was running up hill the whole time. I literally hit a wall, and I mean a very distinct wall right at 200 metes, and it was pretty much crap after that. My times were legitimately depressing and I am pretty concerned about this. Sure, it could have just been a bad day, one of those really frustrating ones where you feel great, but just don't have the ability to perform to your known ability; but, no matter what it was, I just did not have it.
This got me thinking a little about failure. You see, every day we have something programmed in to do, whether it be fitness related, work related, family related and so on. We have certain expectation of ourselves based on passed experiences and we generally strive to meet or surpass our last efforts at a given task. But what happens when we fall short? What happens when we crash and burn? What happens when we fail?
Well, I'm not totally sure what you do, but I know what I do. I wake up the next day and get after it with the same intensity, 100%. I do this because I know I"ll pop out of it. I know that one day I'll run a 72 second 400 meters, and a few days later I'll fly across the finish line in 61 seconds. That's just how the body is. You can't expect to be "perfect" every day. In fact, you'll probably be a good deal less than "perfect" more often than not. But the whole idea behind this journey we all take is to pursue perfection, right? If we were to actually attain perfection, we'd have nothing more to work towards and that would just totally suck. If we have nothing to pursue, our journey is as good as done. No more training, no more challenges, no more glorious finish lines, no more progress, yeah, you get the picture. So, embrace the down days, let it be your fuel for tomorrows training, and keep on working hard!
Perhaps a little over-motivating there, but for some reason I am really feeling good about my training program, and having a rough day just pumps me up for tomorrow workout, so, it shines through in my writing. I actually have an article in the works about failure (along with two others...), so I'm sure I'll be touching on this topic a good deal more, and in greater detail of course, over the next few weeks or so. So, here's to our next workout! Here's to giving it our all each an every day, no matter what we define as our all that day! Here's to the journey!
Never Stop, GET FIT.
Josh Courage
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