We all want everything now. Why? Because we know that major changes in specific areas would change our quality of life. It only takes about a month long process to purchase a house. A day for a car. And 15 minutes to eat a meal. These all provide us with a significant change in some way or another. If you buy a house then you are financially investing into your own pockets while having a sustainable roof over your head that you have the freedom to do almost anything you would like with. You buy a car and now your efficiency with time improves giving you more time to focus on other things! You eat a quality meal and now you have the energy to pursue mental and physical demands that will improve your life.
Fitness is not fast… and if it is… you lose.
If you gain any result quickly in life, it tends to not be long lasting. What is the point of improving fitness level if we aren’t going to keep it for a long time? Here is how you actually end up losing. Often times people gain levels really quickly and they continue to push themselves along the path, let’s say in strength. People get really strong, really quick. Well now the tendons and ligaments and even bones haven’t adapted as fast as the muscles ability. They now run a greater risk of injury. They likely haven’t trained a variety of stimuli like flexibility or power, so when they are challenged in these ways injuries tend to take place.
If you become injured, you are quite objectively, LESS fit.
So if focusing all our energy into one trainable component of fitness (like strength, stamina, cardiovascular endurance, agility, accuracy, flexibility, power, speed, coordination, or balance) for too long, we run a greater risk of injury (or burnout), then what should we do? I mean… CrossFit. Here is why.
In CrossFit we train ALL components of fitness, not just the sexy ones (strength, power, stamina, endurance)! In this approach we WILL make progress in some areas more slowly than in other areas.
Your perspective is THE MOST IMPORTANT PIECE!
If you go into CrossFit with the intentions of getting fit REALLY fast, you might be left with frustration, burnout, or injury, just like you would pushing too hard into anything. Instead just expect to change who you are in your habits. Become a consistent MOVERand EATER. Allow the coaches to open your eyes to improved mechanics. And once those 2 pieces are there, maybe you can accelerate a little more quickly.
Here is the juicy topic though. We approach all of the greatest desires in our life with a low trajectory into a distant horizon. Think about your significant other. We warn our children or have been warned by our parents to date for at least a year before committing to marriage. Why? Because every generation has bared witness to fast things falling apart. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Hitler took Europe by storm only to be left with the inability to defend it. Technology improved so fast, only for us to underestimate its utility and overuse its comforts to a point where our whole society has been weakened with a lack of creative problem solving and huge spikes in anxiety and depression which is now successfully treated with cutting back on technology. We have all seen a graph where we can chart progress over time. I know we all want to see huge spikes in the graph, but when you are reflecting on life in your 90s, what will that graph look like?
Here is what is should look like.
So when you sign up for CrossFit, THIS is your aim. Enjoy the process. Zoom out a little for gratitude, zoom in for focus. Have a frustrating day? Instead of being upset with yourself, your coach, the program… be thankful. If you never got frustrated at all, the process would be so easy that the reward wouldn’t feel at all worthwhile. Being frustrated also means you give a f***. But if every day is frustration, then you might be trying to spike the trajectory that doesn’t suit your future self.
Something funny about those spikes I mentioned in the very beginning, is that we often take them fore-granted. That meal that only takes 15 minutes to consume and your guts ability to turn that into energy was built over 9 months in the womb and over every year of life leading up to that! The car that took about a day to purchase, took many months or years to acquire the skills to have the financial freedom in the first place. The house that took 30 days to close on was saved for year after year. The appreciation you have for that roof over your head is something that you will continuously work hard to maintain, improve, and appreciate.
No spike is worthwhile…. Low trajectory, distant horizon. Let’s look forward not up. Something I find myself reminded athletes in the gym all the time is that the fight isn’t above or below… it is right in front of us. LOOK FORWARD, and surely enough, you will make your way there.
