Random Thoughts from a Restless Mind

No matter what the story eventually turns out to be, there is very little that is good that is likely to come out of the Trayvon Martin debacle and the ongoing Zimmerman trial. Not for the Martin family, not for Zimmerman the neighborhood watch guy, and probably not for society as a whole, at least for quite a while. Why? For the simple reason that it is now 2013, we’re still having this conversation about race and profiling, and nobody has yet demanded the kind of change that would have prevented this tragedy.

Let’s go back a bit, shall we? How about a trip to 1979 and suburban Rhode Island. I’m driving the family beater, my close friend in the passenger seat waves at a police car as we drive by on our way to the mall. My close friend, STILL my close friend, happens to be a very large Black man. You guessed it–flashing lights followed by “license and registration (no please).” Why? A version of Driving While Black. Not a lot of young Black men in my home town. At the time this particular young Black man was a student at Williams College and would go on to have considerable business success as adult.

“Come on, Darrell. That’s ancient history. Things are different now.” Well, let’s move forward a bit. Dinner at the White house (ironic, huh?) sometime around the year 2000. My good friend the Rev. Mel and his beautiful wife are joining us at our house for dinner. Mel, a black Baptist minister, drives a bullet-proof Mercedes sedan. Never more than 5 mph over the speed limit. The Woodards were late for dinner. When I teased him about it Mel just shrugged his shoulders and said “DWB.” Even impeccably dressed for a dinner out, Mel was still a Black American man. Apparently not a lot of Black men driving Mercedes in Cleveland at that time.

Now? A young Black man in a hoodie returns from an errand, surely guilty, in the mind of the security agent, of something until proven innocent; apparently not a lot of young Black men in hoodies in that neighborhood. A non-Black man approaches the youth, surely someone to be feared (by the young Black man) until proven otherwise. The fault, my friends, lies on BOTH sides of the conversation. At this late date in history it no longer matters what came first, you know? One side of the conversation needs to openly acknowledge that the vast majority of the other side does NOT participate in violent criminal activity. This part of the community needs to openly acknowledge this unassailable fact and aggressively teach that lesson to people of all ages. The other side of the conversation needs to openly acknowledge that their ARE small parts of their community who DO engage in violent crime, and to go about the hard work of isolating the criminals as the outliers they are and shunning them as a pox on BOTH communities.

We need to be done with the blame game. Indeed, indulging in finger-pointing at this late historical stage is also a type of enabling. By taking the easy way out, blaming this one for not fighting harder against unsupportable prejudice, or pointing the finger at that one for some weak justification for criminal behavior based on whatever, is quite simply enabling the prejudiced and the predators to both continue their pathologic behavior patterns. In my opinion the fault lies on both sides of this divide. There is no rational way to decide who goes first when it comes to solving these two problems.

NONE of us could have personally influenced the tragic outcome of that encounter in a random Florida neighborhood. ALL of us…Black, White, and other…have the duty and the responsibility and the ability to do the hard work necessary to prevent what STARTED it. There is no “you/he/they” have to go first.

We should all start now.

You can’t do a search for “CrossFit” without wading through countless articles about CrossFit “injuries” and whether CrossFit is safe, or how to do CrossFit safely. Heck, half of my “Zite” CrossFit section is polluted with that genre. The CrossFit community itself is awash in comments and stories of folks who are over-worked. Rashes of niddling little injuries pile one upon another until the recipe brews up not a finely tuned soufflé but rather something more like the cheesy crust rimming the pan that contains the remnants of over-baked mac n’cheese.

How can this possibly be? We watch our Games athletes in this run-up season to our Games, parse their programs and compare their 3-a-days to our 3-a-weeks, and yet it is we who fall apart, not them. We marvel at the Princes and Princesses of our kingdom like the wondrous Christmas above, see them parachute into view leaving behind shock and awe, only to find ourselves reading about this or that danger or catastrophe or calamity from an “over-trained” CrossFitter. How come?

It’s simple, really, and that’s probably why it’s so hard. The sensational stories about danger? Meh, nothing more than tabloid folderal, no more common in reality than teenage vampires in bikinis on page 3 of some magazine at CVS. Oh sure, they both exist, but the noise made about their existence is laughably out of proportion to their true numbers.

No, the real reason we as a group struggle with this is that we forget a couple of really fundamental things about CrossFit, the fitness and health program. The WODs here on CrossFit.com are openly described as created to challenge the fittest athletes on earth. Period. Sorry, but that’s not you, and that’s not me. If we do these as Rx’d and as scheduled the vast majority of us will have a “wheels come off” experience, either a little at a time or in one spectacular crash.

Again, why? Well, because of the other CrossFit fundamental that we all too frequently forget: OUR CrossFit is a training program to allow us to be fitter, healthier, and therefore better at LIFE. Christmas, Jason, Rich, Julie et al are our equivalents of Andy Murray (now playing in the Wimbledon Finals) or Danica Patrick (driving a car and turning left this afternoon): they are paid in part to excel at CrossFit. Each day is carefully planned and includes a healthy dose of rest and recovery.

Ah, there it is. Rest and recovery. Not only that but carefully planned rest and recovery. You talk to your Coach about loads and time domains but when’s the last time you sat down and talked with your trainer about your schedule? Have you EVER discussed recovery? Whether you work out in a Box or on your own, do you have an injury prevention plan? Think about it. If we are doing Crossfit in order to be better at something…anything…whenever we have some sort of Crossfit malady that decreases our functionality we’ve achieved the exact opposite of our goals. Maybe we can’t go to work. Even worse, maybe we can’t go to the Box. CrossFit is FUN and the gym is FUN; not being able to go to the gym stinks.

Here’s my bid: pushing ourselves to our limit 3 days on/1 day off is part of who we are, and we should continue to do just that. Go ahead and take a full dose of the CrossFit prescription. Be inspired by Christmas and her peers and occasionally give in to the temptation to do something extraordinary like “CrossFit for Hope” as Rx’d. Or really crazy, like “Eva”!

At the same time follow their example and consciously build recovery into your own CrossFit program. Can’t fit 10 hours of sleep into your 24 hour day like Jason? No time or money for a couple of massages and the chiropractor every week? Me either. My day job really messes up my CrossFit, ya know? I can’t remember the last time I took a nap. So go hard when you workout, but schedule in breaks. Make them mandatory. Allow those little aches and pains that prove that you are, indeed, working hard to heal before they become an unstoppable cascade of real injury. (Do a search on the Message Board for “Larry Lindenman” and “rest”, “scheduled rest”, or “de-load”). Accept that you may need to make tiny compromises in order to prevent injuries. For example, if you can’t afford to have your hands rip from pull-ups, do whatever it takes to prevent them regardless of the sniping you may encounter here or elsewhere about gloves, wraps, or tape.

There are three fundamental aspects of CrossFit: business, sport, and fitness. The few and fortunate among us who participate at the highest levels of the first two often have the luxury of fewer non-CF priorities and can apply laser-like focus on training, including recovery. You and I, on the other hand, must remember that CrossFit is a tool, the best tool, that we use to make ourselves better. Like all powerful tools it must be accorded respect.

We must plan our recovery lest we recover from our wreck.

The topic of “live to work vs. work to live” has been on the table in one form or another in our house for weeks now.  It’s a moving target for sure. What does it mean at 50+? How has the conversation changed now that Beth and I are living “Empty Nesters 2.0”? The inexorable, constant change that has been forced down the throats of physicians since January of 2009 has totally upended how I feel about my job. Since Beth is now intimately involved in my business she has been drawn into this part of the conversation.

Why? Well, how many folks do you know who have managed to fold together their vocation and their avocation? Their employment and their passion? How many people do you know who give the same answer to the questions “What do you do for a living?” and “What is your hobby?” Not many, eh? In the world of my day job I can name exactly two. Cleveland has been good to me, but the fact remains that I moved to Cleveland solely for the job.

Cleveland has neither ocean nor mountain.

Not every gig is like this of course. It’s quite a bit different in the CrossFit world, for example. One of my very good friends, met through CrossFit, is an attorney who openly calls his day job his dream. You guessed it…he’s CF’s corporate counsel. Work and passion, vocation and avocation all wrapped up into one whole. No real “live to work or work to live” stuff for him, or indeed for most of the 7500+ Affiliate owners like my sons. I’m not entirely sure if they, or Coach Glassman, truly appreciate how monumental this is. I know my friend Dale does.

For the rest of us, though, we must sit down and have a little chat with ourselves. Is there something that makes us truly happy? Is there a place where we have a greater likelihood of achieving that happiness, some locale where it might be more easily attained? Sure, there might be additional responsibilities we must shoulder (support a family, repay an obligation) that complicate the conversation, but that still leaves room for each of us to LIVE. Could you do whatever that is? Could you move wherever “there” is? All of the folks I’ve met in Key West or Park City or San Diego who work at however many whatevers it takes in order to fish, ride, or surf come to mind.

How about me? How am I doing with this work/live thing? Actually, I’m doing better now than at many other points in my life despite the fact that my new business reality is a somewhat lesser version of past realities. I’m really good at what I do, and I accept and fulfill the responsibility of continuing to improve; the people for whom I work, my patients, fare better now than ever before.

But more and more what I do for work is just that…work. My day job is what allows me to do the stuff that is probably a truer indication of who I am, of what makes me tick. I live as fully as I possibly can when I am at work; I’m good at what I do and it’s easier to enjoy something when you do it well. But I work to live. I’m ever at the process of figuring out just what living means.

Must it be thus? Is it somehow my destiny to not share the lives of those for whom live to work is synonymous with work to live? Meh, I dunno. It takes a certain type of courage to make that leap sometimes, whether that leap is to jump back in or jump all the way out.  I have a friend who lives in Del Mar who once asked me “when are you going to leave that dead end job and work with me?” I clearly didn’t have the courage at the time to fully explore that. Now? Who knows? The courageous decision might be just staying where I am, jumping back “in” as it were.

In the end, though, I think it’s important to sit yourself down and have that conversation with yourself. Working to live, or living to work? It’s especially important if who you are and what you do are not both found where you work.

Think of it not so much as a work in progress, but more as a life in progress.

Real life in many ways is more like the CrossFit Games than it is like CrossFit training. In the Games we have winners and non-winners; in the Affiliate Gym we have you vs. you. We are trained it seems from early in life to not only compare ourselves with others, but to allow ourselves to be compared BY others. In this we somehow allow the creation of a zero-sum game of our own sense of self, and we allow the scores to be kept by others as well as ourselves.

Kinda like all those singing contests now on TV; the judges are supposed to be judging only the contestant singing at the moment, and the contestant is supposed to be focused only on herself and the judges. Invariably though, both judge and judged compare the contestant with others, for this is an openly zero-sum game. Someone will only win because everyone else has lost.

I’m more than OK with this for the CrossFit Games, CrossFit as sport, and I’m quite fine with this for all of those silly contests (which I admit are a guilty pleasure in the White house). There is a real problem, however, if we allow this kind of process, this kind of judging, to be a metric for how we view ourselves. We have an unavoidable frame of reference bias that threatens even the healthiest among us when we use these externalities to judge our internal outcomes.

Why? We tend to compare our “behind the scenes” moments, our rehearsals and our trial runs, with everyone else’s “highlight reels.” We are not usually privy to someone else’s practice runs, the failed efforts that eventually culminate in the masterpiece before us. We cannot forget our own struggles, the efforts we ourselves have made out of the limelight, and we all too often use these memories as the “compare to” when we evaluate ourselves against others.

I’m reminded of a story that my Mom tells often and well. I am one of 4 children. We were pretty successful youngsters, at least in the eyes of the community, and at least by the standards then in place by which we (and by extension Mom and Dad) were measured. My Mom would listen as fellow parents bemoaned this or that child-rearing difficulty, often followed by “oh Anne Lee, you wouldn’t know anything about this; your kids are all [whatever].” Grambingo would politely nod and smile, all the while thinking “oh boy…if you only knew!”

You see, Mom was remembering all of the hard work that went into raising us and not really thinking so much about the finished products we became. She was focusing on  the heartaches when her kids disappointed and the battles fought so that they, the kids, might succeed. The other parents were comparing their “behind the scenes” with Mom’s “highlight reel”, but she knew better;  she couldn’t help but remember her own “work in the gym” so to speak.

What’s the ultimate lesson here? We all compare, and we are all compared. It would be simply lovely if life were a non-zero sum game where everyone could win, where winning is not necessarily at the expense of someone else losing.  Alas, ’tis not the life we live. The lesson then is as simple as making sure that you are always comparing things that are alike. Your rehearsals with someone else’s. Their highlight reel with yours.

When you are comparing apples to apples you must be sure that you are either looking at the fruit itself, or recalling the labor required to fill the basket.

When did my Dad get so small? Close your eyes. Think of your Dad. What does he look like? How old is he with your eyes closed? He’s younger, isn’t he? And bigger. MUCH bigger.

I spend most of every day in the company of people decades my senior. I’ve watched some of them age over 20 years or so. There are a few with whom I’ve bonded, who I remember and can conjure up an image if asked. I never appreciate the change in size in them, though.

It’s a strange phenomenon. It’s uncomfortable, no? There really IS a physical change that occurs as we age; we really DO shrink physically. No, it’s more than that when you look at your Dad, more than the physical decrease in size, the loss of vigor and all that goes along with it, the stuff I might actually notice in my patients. What makes it so striking when it’s your Dad is that it’s more than just physical, but a diminution in all dimensions and domains including the one inside your head.

He WAS strength when I was a kid. Literally, a rock. Immovable and unshakeable at all times. Unmoved by excuses or explanations when he knew he was right, or if he MIGHT be right. The final arbiter of discipline (“wait ’til your FATHER gets home…”) in a very traditional family, every thing about the guy was just huge.

When did he get so small? It’s almost scary, you know. He was the guy who stood between me and everything that might be dangerous, at least figuratively. At least in my mind. It’s hard to reconcile the guy I just saw in the hospital in RI with my Mom, and the guy who’s there–right in front of me–when I close my eyes. So small now, almost frail. That classic love/fear thing now replaced with something more like love/protect. Does he see it, too? How small?

Will I see it, when I’ve become small?

Sunday musings (on Father’s Day)…

1) Perfectionist. “His sense of pride was often too much for his ego to handle.”

2) Gift. This morning, chez bingo, there was an exchange of thanks, an exchange of “Happy Father’s Day” good mornings. The easy, traditional one came my way from Mrs. bingo, of course. I, in return, sent one right back to her.

Think about it for a moment. This “Father” thing is impossible without the participation of a mother. Oh sure, you can toss your genome at a vessel and take home a package, but to be a real Father on the ground, “in country” so to speak, you must have a mother along for the ride. The ride is most often better, smoother and easier, if both of the front seats are occupied.

If you are a Father somebody gifted you with that child. Carried him or her for 9 months, the ultimate “weight vest”, before handing you the job of Dad. Maybe did it more than once, too! Give her a hug today. Thank her for a Happy Father’s Day.

3) Memories. Most of us have (or had) a Dad who played a role in our lives. Mostly good, often hard, unfortunately not so good in some cases, but undoubtedly memorable in all cases. We have memories. At some point memories are all we have.

Most families have a “thing”, a certain activity or place or topic around which memories orbit. Maybe it’s a vacation spot to which your family returns as inexorably as the swallow of Capistrano or the Monarch Butterflies of Brazil. For some it’s not the location so much as what transpires there. Think family dinner here where the memories are of nightly discourse covering anything from poetry to pugilism, a travel of the mind more than the body.

When it comes to Fathers it’s often a case of the child inheriting the father’s chosen sport. As I think of this a hundred images appear of tiny children tagging along as their Dad does whatever it is he does. Invisibly tethered to their father by sharing his time with his passion, all the while being infected by that passion themselves. I see little girls in oversized wellies holding their Daddy’s hand, his other cradling a shotgun, as they trudge through a marsh. A Dad’s bare feet submerged just off the dock as a tiny son’s size 2’s dangle feet above that same pond while bobbers float just out of view.

For us it was golf, for my brother and me at least. Father’s Day meant getting up an hour or so before Dad, cramming in random calories, and then walking to the caddy shack for another Saturday loop. Except on this Saturday the caddy master tossed us a bone and put us in my Dad’s group. We were pretty good caddies, my brother and I, and my Dad was a more than pretty good golfer. He made sure to make his game with other of the better golfers on Father’s Day. Good caddies always make for better golf, and 4 good golfers squired by 2 good caddies makes for a very good round. Those are some good memories.

We grew to be good friends on the golf course, my Dad, my brother, and I. On one magical morning Ranbingo and I became men, at least in the golf sense. One Saturday morning (sadly not a Father’s Day) we headed to the first tee with Dad not as caddies but as real golfers. Partners in his foursome, with caddies of our own. In time we were joined by a brother-in-law as we towed our Dad along on a decades long golf odyssey. We’d found our connection, and like the little girl in her Wellies and the little boy with dangling toes we kept ourselves tethered to our Dad through his passion.

And we made memories.

That’s all that’s left now, the memories. We’ll not try to remember what we have now. These newer memories will not sing as sweetly and so we will try to erase them as soon as they arise. Rather, we will try to share those other, older memories with Dad as the tether frays. Until that one day when we hold our end of the tie and it lies quietly against our side, empty, nobody there to whom we are tethered.

If we are fortunate we reach out a hand and it is filled with tiny fingers, and we walk to wherever tethered to tiny little legs that struggle to keep up as they chase our passion with us. We feel the stillness, the emptiness on the other side where we were once tethered ourselves. If we are very fortunate we realize that maybe we still are. Tethered, that is.

Tethered to the memories of when we were the child of a Father so gifted.

Happy Father’s Day.

I’ll see you next week…

Posted by bingo at June 16, 2013 6:24 AM

You’ve heard this before: the more solutions you have for a single problem, the less likely it is that the true solution has been discovered. Once a real, conclusive solution is discovered it is accepted and implemented by essentially everyone who is presented with that particular problem. This process occurs unfettered in an open market or open system, and the cost of a particular solution depends on a combination of need for the solution and the economic incentives that exist to solve the problem.

Unfortunately, in healthcare in the U.S. this “rule” is not always the case.

Here’s a story about a solution that is NOT being used to the extent it should because private surgery centers are punished financially if they do the right thing. This example is truly a case of perverse economic incentives violating what we think of as a law of nature, that the discovery of a solution for a vexing problem will be adopted by all who suffer the problem if it is shown to be superior to all other solutions. Let’s look at the “Floppy Iris Syndrome” (AFIS) in cataract surgery.

The iris is the colored part of your eye, and the pupil is simply an opening in the iris, much like the shutter of a camera. The pupil is dilated prior to cataract surgery so that the cataract, a clouding of the lens that sits in back of the iris, can be reached and removed. Six or Seven years ago cataract surgeons began to be ambushed by pupils which spontaneously constricted or shrunk like a pursestring closing, or by an iris that started to billow like a parachute placed over a fan. Dubbed the “Floppy Iris Syndrome”, it turned out that it was caused by exposure to a certain class of medicines used for the seemingly unassociated problem of urinary retention in men with enlarged prostate glands; it has since been found to be caused by an increasing number of other medicines. It was a disaster. The complication rate for surgeries with AFIS was 10X or greater than those with a normal iris and pupil.

The search for the cause was important because cataract surgeons could now be forewarned that they might encounter AFIS during surgery if their patient had ever been on one of the medicine culprits. Once the cause and the extent of the problem were known the race was on to find a solution. Unfortunately, all of the intra-operative tactics we’d used in the past to handle small pupils were largely ineffective against AFIS. In fact, some of the standard ways to address a small pupil actually made the surgery MORE difficult because of the floppy, flaccid iris. Every week brought one or two new ideas to add to the dozens already on the table, proving the rule that many solutions means that no true answer has been found.

Enter Dr. Maluygen and his marvelous eponymous ring. The Maluygen Ring essentially solved the entire problem by simultaneously expanding the pupil and stabilizing the iris, and it was both vastly superior to all other solutions available and technically within the capabilities of pretty much every cataract surgeon. Bingo. QED. Kudos, heartfelt thanks, and a bit of profit to Dr. Maluygen and the company that marketed his Ring, right?

Not so fast there, Cowboy. Every week we STILL see articles on how to deal with AFIS in surgery despite the fact that not a single surgeon has stated, on or off the record, that there is anything that is as good as the Maluygen Ring. Here is where the perversity begins. It turns out that only hospital owned surgery centers can bill insurances for additional or special items used during surgery, and the $125 that the Maluygen Ring costs is extra and therefore not reimbursed. The majority of cataract surgeries in the U.S. are performed in private surgery centers, mostly owned by surgeons who operate in them. To begin with, private surgery centers are paid roughly 60% of what hospital-owned surgery centers are paid. $125 represents in most cases 50% or more of the gross profit (before interest, taxes, depreciation, etc)  generated in a case.

That’s right, there is a 50% financial penalty for using the best and safest method to avoid a preventable complication.

It’s no wonder that the owners of surgery centers continue to look for an alternative solution to the problems cause by AFIS. In a misguided attempt to save money, Medicare has led the charge to pay independent surgery centers less than hospital owned centers, and along the way has stripped the independent centers of the ability to pass on the cost of items that represent the “best practices” for certain situations. Rather than use the acknowledged superior solution (the Maluygen Ring) we continue to see inferior techniques utilized despite the fact that they often prolong the surgical case and fail to completely solve the problem. All because policies are created by non-clinical personnel who are only  empowered to save money.

We should be mindful of these perverse economic incentives as our American system of curing disease undergoes an historic upheaval. Do we really want doctors and others considering the economics of utilizing true, proven best practices? Do we really want non-clinicians creating policy that turns medical decisions into economic ones?

Incontrovertible data does not always lead to the expected outcome. Take for example the much-trumpeted call for “evidence-based medicine”, choosing courses of action or care patterns that have been shown to be beneficial with regards to outcomes, reduced complications, or reduced cost when no benefit has been proven. The recent movement in which several national physician organizations have been asked to identify procedures or tests that should be eliminated for lack of proven efficacy is a presumed “no-brainer” way to reduce the cost of healthcare. In my eyecare world routine pre-admission testing for cataract surgery has been singled out as unnecessary, a waste of time and money for almost everyone involved. A New England Journal of Medicine article from 1990 is cited which unequivocally  shows no benefit to the patient or the cataract surgeon. The data comes from the NEJM. From 1990. This is only a tiny bit removed in both historical context and gravitas from a couple of stones and a guy named Moses. Why are we even talking about this in 2013? Why isn’t this already a done deal?

Ah…there it is…”a waste of time and money for ALMOST everyone involved.” Some very powerful someone has an economic incentive that does not rest on either an outcome or on safety. Someone is getting paid for all of those EKG’s and blood tests for pre-admission testing prior to cataract surgery (I am a cataract surgeon; it isn’t us),  and they have found a way to interpret various and sundry Medicare and OR accreditation documents in such a way that pre-op testing is mandatory. This blatantly ignores the evidence because the evidence ignores the economic incentives: a hospital is getting paid for pre-admission testing. All those patients are being robbed of their time, and every one of them who has an “abnormal” test result is then directed down the rabbit hole to chase a “cause”.

I know, I know…you’re shocked. SHOCKED! As bad as that example may be, and as perverse as it is that the champions of evidence-based medicine ignore the evidence when money is on the line, a story of a hospital doing something extra to get paid more is kinda boring; it just seems to happen all the time. In the private world of free-standing surgery centers that are not associated with a hospital pretty much everyone gets the joke about pre-admission testing and would do pretty much anything to be able to quit. You see, the private surgery centers don’t get paid the same way and pretty much lose money on pre-op testing. If they could get away with it they would all drop pre-admission testing for cataract surgery. The barrier is the economic incentive for the hospitals that own surgery centers and their influence on how regulations are interpreted.

In the face of data that provides a pathway to cost savings in healthcare, evidence-based medicine will only be utilized if the incentives are such that the invested players stand to gain, or if lights bright enough and cries loud enough arise to point out the perversity of the economics at hand.

Do you travel at all? For work or for fun? If so, do you drop in on local CrossFit Affiliates for a WOD? Some folks do this just for fun on their home turf, bop around and visit local Boxes for variety, community, whatever. What has your experience been like? Did you feel welcome, regardless of your experience or your expertise?

The answers to this question will likely drive the conversation about our community’s next iteration. You know, CrossFit.com to Affiliate to international phenomenon, or something like that. What I hear is mostly something along the lines of “everyone was really friendly and I was welcomed by the owners”, and the collective experience of Clan bingo has been just that. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything other than that from any CrossFitter who can reasonably be described as “average” or more advanced.

There is a somewhat newer experience we hear of though, one that has become a bit more common as the Games have grown, and it usually comes from the less experienced or less talented CrossFitters. There are some Boxes that are focused on coaching only those folks for whom the Main Page CrossFit.com WOD’s as Rx’d are considered the CrossFit “starter kit”. Kinda like “unless you can do 95% of .com WOD’s as Rx’d we don’t have room for you” stuff. Pretty harsh, especially if you are an average CrossFitter (like me) and you are not aware of this before arriving at the garage door and getting ambushed.

By and large the CrossFit Games are a unifying force for our community of CrossFitters. One need only look at the FB pages of CrossFitters attending the Regionals these last few weeks, littered as they are with posts and pictures of their experiences. The universal thread is the thrill of meeting like-minded individuals en masse, the ease of talking with people who don’t need a translator to interpret the lingo. The advent of competition at an international level seems to have had a different effect on occasion in some quarters.

We have had a culture of inclusiveness, “CrossFit is for everyone”. The work being done by the mad scientists behind the curtain at HQ is very much geared toward measuring and enhancing the effect of CrossFit on the middle of the Bell Curve and below, attempting to answer the questions surrounding fitness as a measure and producer of health for the masses, not just the elite performers. This “CrossFit is for everyone” ethic typically extends to the classes at most Affiliates in which the Newbie just out of his on-ramp class does a scaled WOD on the platform next to last year’s Regional Team competitor. Boxes have traditionally been open and welcoming (for a drop-in fee, which is cool) to all traveling CrossFitters looking for a dose of the CrossFit Rx in the company of the like-minded.

I’m not saying that this has changed so much as maybe just saying I’ve heard a canary or two around the mines as it were. A chirp here, a squeak there. Nothing really, as long as the stories of average CrossFitters who felt unwelcome remain rare enough to be considered a kind of “urban legend”. It’s important to remember that the Games-worthy athlete is the exception, even in gyms that consider themselves the birthing grounds of such rare and wonderful creatures.

The true power of CrossFit and the true measure of CrossFit’s worth is STILL the fact that CrossFit really IS for everyone. It’s not the “man bites dog” phenomenon of a victor at the Regionals coaching and cheering for the stragglers, it’s the fact that the faster and stronger do that at every CrossFit class at every Affiliate every day. Allison Belger talks about the shared struggle as the foundation for our community and this is partly true; what builds the community is the support that radiates from the fittest to the still unfit, the message that you really can share this sruggle with us. The community is functional in much the same way that our movements are functional, from core (members and owners) to extremity (visitors, newcomers).

While we are all blessed (or cursed) with different abilities and potentials we shouldn’t forget that we were all once new to this wonderful CrossFit thing, too. The beauty of it all is that we are still more alike than we are different despite the fact that there are now so many more of us. Wanna know my “Fran” time or 1RM Deadlift before I jump into your 5:30 class as a visitor? Sure. No problem. Just use it to figure out how I’m gonna fit in, not wether I’m gonna be allowed.

Because ya never know, if you do I might be sitting right next to you at the Regionals cheering for that woman in your Box who kicked my a$$ in the WOD and then stood right next to me and cheered me on to the finish.

Everyone should have a friend who will tell them the truth, specifically the truth about themselves. At least the truth about how the world views them. It’s impossible to accurately observe our own footprints; we need someone to show them to us.

This is not to say that one should form an opinion of one’s self or one’s self-worth solely on the basis of some external view. Hopefully our friend speaks kindly to us out of love and caring in the hope that the truth will lead us to a better version of ourselves, or allow us to feel better about the present version.

I have such a friend, and we recently had such a talk. It turns out that my doubts about the man I am now are unfounded, that I have grown into the type of man with whom others genuinely wish to gather, despite my fears to the contrary. It can be hard to sit still for such a compliment, uncomfortable to hear it no matter how lovingly it is offered, the urge to demure nearly overpowering.

How I have arrived here is quite another story, and a painful truth that my friend offered as well. In my younger years, a time filled with the external measurable trappings of success, I thought I’d already reached a place where people of all shapes and sizes were comfortable and happy in my company, and I in theirs. Hmm..turns out, not so much. No, it turns out that I was much too pleased with myself, too pleased myself with having achieved that visible success. I held myself apart, above. I was liked, but mostly because those to whom I would be compared were less likable. Ouch.

Would I have heard my friend if she told me this back in the day? I don’t know. I doubt it. A massive dose of humble pie was probably necessary, not only to hear and listen, to be ready to hear and listen, but certainly to have become who I am today. The details of my humbling are not really relevant, it was the lessons taught by humility that matter. Chicken? Egg? Does it matter? I do wish that she, someone, had told me then, though.

Why does it matter now? Why is this not simply a case of a friend congratulating me on growing up to be a better adult than I once was? Some times we get a mulligan. A do-over or a re-start. I may once again achieve a kind of success with all of the visible trappings, and the truth my friend shared is not just a pat on the back but a kick in the pants. A warning that I should do a better job this time around.

Everyone should have a friend who will tell them the truth. Each of us should care enough to listen.