Posts Tagged ‘espn’
Sunday musings 4/5/15
Sunday musings…
1) Easter. For my young life two days each year were always tough. Easter and Halloween. Seems I always got sick. Turns out I’m allergic to chocolate. There you go.
Happy Easter, anyway!
2) Failure. “A stumble may prevent a fall.” Proverb of some sort.
That’s pretty good. Whether the endeavor is physical, mental, or spiritual, the act of righting oneself before calamity is instructive, no? One sees the upcoming fall and is somehow able to remain upright through recalculation, recalibration, and then realignment to the new reality.
Learning from a mistake in progress, as it were.
3) Competition. We finished up the Open season at CFB yesterday with the first competition held there in its brief history. We did something radical, at least as it relates to the various and sundry fitness competitions held at CrossFit gyms and elsewhere over the last several years.
We did CrossFit WODs.
I know, I know…that’s just crazy talk. Have a competition in which you do WODs that you do every month in your gym, WODs that have come up time and again on CrossFit.com. Classic couplets where the work lands squarely in the Phosphagen energy pathway. “Every Second Counts” kinda stuff. WODs where you have history, where you can track your progress, done in a competitive setting where proper form is required. Measurable, observable, repeatable with a dose of virtuosity.
The athletes did “Fran”, followed by “Grace”. The top five men and top five women then faced off in “Diane”. No epic beatdowns. No exotic or esoteric movements. Nope, this was the CrossFit we all thought of and all did back in the day when CrossFit.com and CrossFit Santa Cruz were all there was. Pretty much everyone came to the event with a history in all three WODs, and pretty much everyone left with a new PR in each one.
The strong did well. The technically proficient did well. Lots of lessons were learned by both the athletes and the spectators, most of whom are relative newcomers to the CrossFit world. Most of what they learned came from watching who won: the winners were both strong and proficient.
One lesson was particularly telling, although not at all unexpected by yours truly (10 years a CrossFitter). One athlete who competes at many an all-day slog-fest said afterwards that she almost didn’t enter the competition because she found the announced WODs “too easy.” During a congratulatory fist bump (she came in 3rd) she said how hard it was and how thankful she was that she participated.
Go back and read “What is Fitness”, CrossFit Journal vol. 1, #2. It says something about the evolution of CrossFit in the wild that a competition in which the athletes do “Fran” and “Grace” is considered novel. That classic “Girls” now constitute something that you program as a novelty. That after only 10 years an event named “The Three Girls Showdown” is considered somehow retro.
Once upon a time all you needed to stratify a group of athletes in a competition was one WOD per day, and I get it that the evolution of CrossFit as sport means that it is now necessary to ask more from the 1/%. I understand that there are individuals who need more volume in their training in order to perform at their highest level on the job. More of everything is called for in these small cohorts.
For the rest of us, though, whether in the gym getting our daily dose or in the arena competing against our last PR, we could certainly do worse than returning to what it was that made CrossFit what it is. Constantly varied functional movements performed at relatively high intensity. Start with yesterday’s WOD, “Angie”, the very first WOD I ever did. The one that left me in a quivering mass on the floor of a commercial gym 10 years ago.
Simple. Elegant. Brutal. Go get you some.
I’ll see you next week…
Posted by bingo at April 5, 2015 6:11 AM
Transference from the Gym to the Street
What have you done, or what are you doing, to make yourself better? Not just in the gym, not just more fit, but in general.
We talk about the transference of the stress response from the WOD to life, how our willingness to put ourselves under significant physical duress teaches us that we can, indeed, perform at times of stress. This really happens; your neuro-endocrine stress response really does require a bigger stimulus to fire in that way that makes you “freeze up” after you’ve been dosed with the CrossFit prescription.
There is more to be learned in the Box or wherever you do your own version of CrossFit, of course. We learn to look at people differently once we’ve done CrossFit side-by-side, or once we’ve shared our results on CrossFit.com. It becomes less “what do you look like?” and “what did you say?” but more “what did you do?” and “how did you do it?”. This trait has gone with me out of the gym, been transferred to the larger and more inclusive domains of my non-CrossFit worlds. In general, I’m more interested in what folks do and how they’ve done it.
Every day, in countless CrossFit Affiliates, commercial gyms, and garages, folks who do CrossFit are engaged in the active pursuit of “better.” A thinner band, a first Pull-up, a kip, a butterfly…an endless pursuit of ‘better’ at what we do in our pursuit of fitness. This, too, should transfer, eh? We should be ever on a quest to be a little bit better in everything we do.
There is a willingness to try new things in CrossFit, often things that are at first glance simply unimaginable. “You want me to do WHAT with that Kettlebell?!” It’s a kind of knowing fearlessness, a faith in self and a belief in self that comes from choosing to enter that dark place where we know it will be hard, but we’ve learned it will be worth it. This openness to trying new things, to learn new stuff in the pursuit of a generally better you should transfer outside the gym, too.
The concept of transference from gym to life is one more of those things which was discovered after the fact of CrossFit. In my day job I deal with neuroplasticity, the re-wiring of the adult brain in response to purposeful stimuli. Al!ison Be!ger’s work shows us that our pre-wiring for connection in response to shared experience explains the CrossFit community. My experience with neural training to enhance vision explains in part the transference of the stress response.
Our willingness to try new things, to learn new things in the pursuit of greater fitness, can also become ingrained. Wired. It can become just one more example of transference. “Constantly learn” need not apply only to “new sports”, nor does “and play” necessarily have to apply only to “new sports”. I’ve found not only an increase in my curiosity about things far removed from my knowns and knowables, but also a willingness to brave what it takes to learn and play new ones in the pursuit of some better version of me.
So, what are you doing outside the gym today to apply what you have learned there in the pursuit of a better ‘you’ everywhere tomorrow?
The Dress, The CrossFit Open, and Jerry Tarkanian (Adopted from Sunday musings 3/8/15)
The Dress. You know what I’m talking about. Admit it. That picture showed up all over your internet stuff and you actually looked at it and thought about it. Admit it. So did I.
In my day job I spend my time thinking about vision. The Dress is all about wavelengths of light and direction of gaze and just-prior view. Not only do I understand the intersection of physics and physiology behind the color shifting, but as a semi-professional teacher I can actually explain what’s going on. Just not here. Sunday musings is a place for metaphor, more meta-physics than Mendellian. I see The Dress and I think Point of View, Frame of Reference, and of course since this started off as “Sunday musings” on CrossFit.com I go directly to The CrossFit Games.
Shocking, I know.
Last week brought us our annual kerfluffle about something CrossFit HQ did or didn’t do that will certainly be the ultimate destruction of the CrossFit Games. Happens every year. Usually not quite so quickly but, hey, The Dave Castro is getting better at everything CrossFit Games related so why not better and faster at Games controversy, too? For those who missed it (both of you), a few gyms and a few athletes figured out a “security flaw” in the rules for Open 15.1 and gamed the WOD. Once discovered Messieurs Castro and Berg “patched” the software as it were, and The Games 2015 were saved. Probably a penguin or two was also saved along the way.
If you read even .001% of the comments on internet posts that followed this “controversy” you had to be impressed by how broad and varied the viewpoints were. Who was to blame? Why did it happen? What should/shouldn’t be done? All of this with a heaping helping of ad hominem aimed at both HQ and the athletes/Affiliates. Like The Dress, what one thought or wrote about L’affaire 15.1 was driven by where you were looking from and what you had looked at before. Your POV, your Frame of Reference, the pre-conceived notions you apply color the issue and give it meaning that isn’t really there.
There really is no deeper meaning. What color dress you see when you look at your screen is a simple fact and has no extended significance whatsoever. The Dress does not provide any examination of your psyche or your soul, and the potential to game 15.1 provides no deeper insight into anyone involved.
HQ simply didn’t think 15.1 out the way a few competitors did. The Dress is just a dress.
Which brings me to Jerry Tarkanian the famous college basketball coach who died on February 11. You might find it odd that I choose to remember that today, right after talking about rules and rules enforcement in the CrossFit Open. For those of you who don’t know who Jerry Tarkanian was (no doubt the same two of you who didn’t hear about the Open rules Kerfluffle), the Tark spent much of his career battling the NCAA over what he felt was unequal application of the rules.
Did Tarkanian break any rules along the way? Was he singled out for more vigilant policing and enforcement of those rules? Kinda depends on where you are and where you’ve been when you are looking. I think there really is a difference between The Tark and the athletes/Affiliates who found a loophole in the rules. I’ll let the Sports Illustrated writer Tim Layden explain:
“Tarkanian was a basketball junkie with a disdain for rules that impeded him.”
Like golfers who not only seek to know and follow the letter of the Rules of Golf (always capitalized, BTW), CrossFit in general is populated by folks who also follow the spirit or intention of the rules. That does leave room for the Bill Belichek approach of knowing the rules so well that you can sometimes use them to your advantage (see Woods, Tiger: The Masters). Again, Layden:
“[Tarkanian] was about the scoreboard, the money, the wins.”
We all cheer for winners. We can’t take our eyes off them. The ones who seem consumed with the winning appear almost larger than life. Their quest for victory fascinates us. Love him or loathe him, Belichek commands your attention, much like Jerry Tarkanian when he was battling the NCAA while winning basketball games by the bucketful. The difference, I think, is in that disdain for the rules that Layden ascribes to Tarkanian. Does Belichek feel the same way? Woods? You may agree or disagree about whether walking through the loophole in 15.1 is in keeping with the spirit of the rules, but you cannot find that there is disdain for the rules, or the Games, or CrossFit in general on the part of any CrossFit Games Open athlete.
Layden: “[Tarkanian] wasn’t larger than life at all. He was just life…”
Life, and the Open, go on.
Sunday musings 1/18/15
Sunday musings (dogs up early)…
1) James Baldwin. “You have to go the way your blood beats.”
2) Charlie. “[F]ree countries are for peoples strong enough to defend them.”
3) Open. The CrossFit Open is now taking registrations. The Judges Course is available to all L1’s. Are you in? Of course you are! I sure am.
The Open serves multiple purposes, first among which is to identify those athletes who will compete to become the “Fittest on the Planet.” You and I are not in that group. Not even close. Should we bail on this incredible experience because we will not make Regionals? No way. The second reason to be in this game is to measure yourself against a couple hundred thousand like-minded souls across the planet. Take your fitness pulse, as it were.
To that end I for one am beyond pumped to see the Scaled Division announced this year. Frankly, the whole “get one rep” thing so you aren’t knocked out was/is less fun, at least for me. I’m old, skinny, and slow, but I’m in the game, even more so with the scaled division. And that’s the third reason to register. For a few bucks you get to be part of the conversation, joined for 5 weeks with maybe a million us enjoying the challenge. Raise a glass with us after the 15.X every Friday.
See you on the Leader Board!
4) Expectation. I have fought the beast that is expectation my entire life. As a father and a spouse I have tried my very best to teach my family the dangers inherent in having expectations. They can be small and trivial (a special flavor will be available at the Scoop), or so meaningful that they approach the existential (a best friend will honor a commitment). Writ large or small, expectation is inextricably tethered to its alter ego, disappointment.
The expectation that others will share your beliefs is particularly dangerous, especially if doing a right or good thing is part of your very DNA. The more common manifestation of this trap is expecting another to work as hard as you do, or care as much about the quality of an outcome in a shared endeavor. It doesn’t matter whether you are north or south on the org chart, either.
Try as one might, we all have expectations of others, even if they are buried so deeply in our subconscious we are barely aware of them. When these expectations are not met the disappointment is all the more powerful for the ambush involved. The action of the other is typically so far beyond the reach of expectation that it shakes your belief system.
Sitting quietly last night I contemplated just such an ambush and the need to be in the company of one for whom I had one of those deep, hidden expectations. Sadly and completely unexpectedly, unmet. My disappointment is like a bruise on my soul. How, if at all, should I respond?
After all, I am aware that people have expectations of me as well.
I’ll see you next week…
Reflections of an Aging Athlete
Old. Yup. “The Heir” turns 26 today. “Lovely Daughter” is 24 and my doppelgänger “Lil’bingo” is 22. My body is screaming from yesterday’s CrossFit WOD–I ran a mile. I’m answering emails and questions from CrossFit friends about CF in the “Master’s” category. I am closer to 55 than 54, closer in age to my cataract patients than my school-age patients. My Dad had a quadruple bypass at 54. Old.
How do you do this “old thing” anyway? It seems I don’t have an owner’s manual for myself, just like I didn’t have an owner’s manual for the kids. What am I to expect now? What is it that lies just ahead, and what then beyond that? Is this muscle soreness a freak thing, the anomaly, or is it a harbinger of things to come? How about fitness gains? I’m now 9 years into my CrossFit journey. How much longer can I expect to achieve PR’s? As I contemplate these questions how far forward should I allow my gaze to roam?
There are no answers to those questions, of course. Any answers only lead to the next set of the same. To look too far beyond a couple of tomorrows is as dangerous as it is to look back beyond a couple of yesterdays. Looking behind even a little bit risks the indulgence of regret, what has always seemed to me to be a sure recipe for sadness. I have written elsewhere that to go even further back, beyond Creation or the Primordial Soup or the Big Bang is an invitation to madness.
To look too far into the future is to invite desire, to risk the creation of wants that grow into something that feels like need. If or when these fail to materialize a different type of sadness arises, this one born of resentment. If one projects these too far into the future, to retirement, to rest, to redemption and beyond, the risk of madness can arise once again.
I surely do not know the answer to the question of how to age well. There is no map for the journey that lies ahead, no cosmic GPS. I have only the strategies that have served me thus far, and the hope that they will serve me yet. I have faith, and that faith allows me to resist the temptation to look either too far behind or too far ahead. Faith is the vaccine against madness.
And I am happy. I realized it once again in a phone call with a dear friend, met through Crossfit, and once again when I said goodnight to my darling Beth last night. I am happy because I have very little desire and even less regret; I want what I have and this inoculates me against both resentment and regret.
Yes, indeed, I am older, but I have at least one more today. That’s just what I wanted.
Sunday musings 8/17/14
Sunday musings…
1) DOMS. Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness. The CrossFit gift that keeps on giving.
2) Rob Lowe. “Never compare your insides to someone else’s outsides.”
I came across a piece written by Mr. Lowe in Slate Magazine about dropping his first-born off at college. Quite well-written, I might add. I know nothing of Mr. Lowe other than the couple of his works I’ve seen (I do not read tabloids or bios of actors/athletes, etc.). From his article, in which he shares the pain of letting go of that first child and the fear that letting go might mean being forgotten, I get a feeling that he and I would be quite comfortable in one another’s company. The above quote seals it.
There’s a piece of mine out there somewhere in which I say “never compare your dress rehearsal with someone else’s Opening Night,” or something along those lines. Actually, it might have been “don’t compare your practice reel to someone else’s Highlight Reel” now that I think about it. But no matter, pretty similar to Mr. Lowe’s advice to a son having a sudden crisis of confidence wondering if he will measure up to his classmates. It was good advice from me then, and it’s good advice from Mr. Lowe now, both to his son and to each one of us. The courage to fail during the process, and the will to endure the endless behind-the-scenes effort necessary to create a “Highlight Reel”, should be a source of pride, a wellspring of confidence for all of us as we view everyone else’s.
Good on ya, Rob Lowe. First round’s on me.
3) Twain. “I used to remember everything, but now I only remember the things that never happened.” –Mark Twain.
Twain never disappoints, does he? There’s all kinds of meat on that bone. Is he saying that he no longer remembers things that really happened, only those things he imagined at the time, or imagines now? Or is he rather saying that looking back on his life he only remembers those things that SHOULD have happened, but didn’t?
Knowing Twain, my bet is that his answer would be:”yes.”
Memory is a funny thing. Partly accurate reportage, one’s memory is leavened by equal parts wishful thinking and regret. At least according to Twain. Think of your own narrative, the telling of your story. How much is fact, how much is embellishment (never let the facts interfere with a good story!), and how much is what you wish had happened? We were telling stories at dinner the other night, stories we all knew, ones we’d all taken part in creating and ones we’ve told countless times. Each time they are told they get a little better. Does this happen with you? Some of the stuff in our stories probably never really happened, but we remember it just the same.
But Twain also touches on regret in this quote, don’t you think? Things that could have been, or should have been, but for one reason or another, never were. Dangerous ground, that. Regret can turn the urn of happiness into a sieve. In his later years Twain was said to be increasingly bitter. One wonders if his regret fertilized the weeds in the garden of his memory.
Ticking time bomb, or soothing balm over time. Memory serves.
I’ll see you next week.
Posted by bingo at August 17, 2014 7:01 AM
Sunday musings 8/10/14
Sunday musings…
1) Blondetourage. Should be a word.
2) Donovan. Landon Donovan has announced that he will retire at the end of this MSL season.
In other news, Johnny Manziel.
3) Burpee. “Talk Burpee to Me”, a full length article in today’s NYT on CrossFit and CrossFitters socializing. All in all very positive.
End of the beginning, or beginning of the end?
4) Rank. In a similar vein, Sports Illustrated and Men’s Health magazines published Top 50 lists of the fittest athletes in the world. Kinda funny that they would publish them in the same week. Perhaps this whole CrossFit Games thing really is breaking through into the main stream.
Neither list is as outrageous as the Outside list of a couple years ago that ranked only endurance athletes; both lists include our own Rich Froning at 19 (SI) and 4 (MH). As with all such lists (50 greatest MLB players, etc) one should never discuss these lists without proper preparation.
Start with beer.
5) Villain. While I’m thinking about magazine articles, SI posited that MLB is less interesting and less compelling because it is without a single villain in its ranks. No A-Rod orRoger Clemmens, not even a Reggie Jackson to love/hate. It’s an interesting proposition, and one which naturally prompts me to turn to our CrossFit world (shocking, I know). Try as I might, at least in the competitive arena we, too, are notably lacking for a villain. Heck, we barely even have any intramural enmity among the competitors. What passes for anything like this is a single couple of Games athletes who ignored each other on the field, and the only reason this was evident at all is because everybody else was so busy cheering for each other.
What do you think? Is Sports Illustrated correct? Is it necessary to have someone to cheer AGAINST in order to have competition that maintains its interest?
6) Mission. As we exit our Games Season and enter the 8 months between the Games and the Open, this is a good time to remember the true mission of CrossFit, the program. Now is the time that we quietly go about the work of making ourselves, and others, better. Even for the 250,000 or so of us who signed up for the Open and made neither The Games nor Regionals, it’s not about 8 months to prep for Open 15.1, it’s 8 months to quietly go about the business of mechanics, then consistency, and then intensity. These are the months when those of us who coach do our most important work, helping people become better versions of themselves for no reason other than that, to become better.
The CrossFit Games are a spectacle, one meant to show the world that a wholly different level of physical and mental fitness is possible. They are an advertising vehicle meant to let the world at large know that it is CrossFit, the program, that best allows the creation and expression of this level of fitness. The Games and their run-up, like other fitness competitions in which CrossFitters participate, are also ways for us to commune with like-minded souls, to foster our rather uniquely positive community on a scale much larger than that to be found in a Box or a garage or the corner of a commercial gym.
For almost all of us, though, the competitive aspect of the Games season is not what CrossFit is about at all. The Sport of Fitness is our spectator sport, and for some it is our weekend warrior pursuit, but these 8 months of the “Quiet Season” are what CrossFit “the program” is really all about. Now, without the siren song of The Games or The Open, we quietly and not so quietly go about the business of the core, essential competition that speaks to the mission of CrossFit laid out so eloquently so many years ago in “What is Fitness?”: you vs. you. The daily effort to move along the health/wellness/fitness curve as we strive to become a better version of ourselves tomorrow than we were yesterday through the toil and effort we endure today.
The Games are over for 2014, but you and I are still in season. We are always in season, always competing. It’s you vs. you. Still. The most important mission for CrossFit, the program, is to help you win.
I’ll see you next week…
Posted by bingo at August 10, 2014 6:02 AM
Sunday musings 7/20/14: The Risk of Unshakeable Belief
Sunday musings…
1) Fonzie. Henry Winkler is 68 years old. Ayyyyy…
2) Open. Oldest golf tournament in the world coming to a close as I type. Sergio comes up jusssst a bit short. Again.
Dude’ consistent. Gotta give him that.
3) Aviary. Mrs. bingo is the “Bird Whisperer.” Who knew there were so many types of birds in suburbia?
I remember when a robin was an exotic creature.
4) Change. The only thing that is constant is change. This applies everywhere to everything. Next weekend will bring the latest edition of the CrossFit Games. There will be change. Count on it. I have absolutely no inside information whatsoever, but you can make bank on this. There will be change.
How could I possibly know this? Well, a part of it is just a basic fact of life. Stuff changes. The other part is simply history. If you’ve been paying the least bit of attention the last, oh, 10 years or so, you’ve notice that the folks who run things in our little CrossFit world are ever and always changing things up. I’m not really sure if the Black Box is outwardly (or inwardly) any different, but the leadership team is constantly changing up the left side input to see what comes out of the right side. From where I sit each change has brought a net improvement. The only thing we know for sure is that there will be change next week at The CrossFit Games.
Now in reality, unless you make your living from The Games of from CrossFit, this particular change is more interesting than integral in your life. It’s the fact of change, the constancy of change, and more so how you handle it both tactically and emotionally, that determines your destiny. Prepare for change and plan for change, because change is what you’re gonna get.
5) Unshakeable. This week I spent some time talking to a couple of folks who, unbeknownst to them, were talking about each other. Well, talking to them is not really accurate–they were having a discussion and I was having a listen. Both were talking about the effects of a particular happening on a particular person, effects that both could surely see if only they cared to remove their blinders and look. They told wildly different stories. Their belief sets were so unshakeable, so impervious to penetration by petty inconveniences like facts and reality, it was as if they wore not lenses to clarify but masks to obscure.
The blind running from the blind, if you will.
I’m fascinated when I see this, and I do see this almost every day when I am plying my trade. So much of what is “known” about medicine isn’t really known at all but “felt”. I constantly run up against an unshakeable belief that is often expressed in a statement that begins “well, I would think that [you] would…” Indeed, I heard this from both folks telling me what was transpiring. I’m fascinated and exasperated in equal parts when I am on the listening end of this equation because of how completely this unshakeable belief nullifies the otherwise logical power of observable, measurable fact.
If I step back and think a little more deeply about this phenomenon I am also terrified that I, too, may harbor similarly unshakeable beliefs that blind me to the truths of a fact-based reality. This weekend brought a gathering of true experts in a particular field of my day job, one I was quite flattered to attend. There were a couple of points that I’m just convinced my colleagues got wrong, points of view it looks like I shared only with myself. Am I right? Is my insight so keen, my ability to analyze the data presented so much better, my advice so advanced that I am just a full step ahead of the rest of the group? Or is it rather that I am clinging to a point of view supported only by the virtual facts created by beliefs I am unable or unwilling to walk away from? The simple awareness that this may, indeed, be the case does place me in a better position than either of my conversational partners as far as ultimately being right, but is that enough?
Blinders of not, I guess we’ll see, eh?
I’ll see you next week…
Posted by bingo at July 20, 2014 11:06 AM
The CrossFit Open: You’re In!
Once upon a time I came to the “comments” section of CrossFit.com several times each day to check in on my cyber-gym mates. Heady days, those, with >1000 posts on a “Fran” day, for example. The explosive growth of the Affiliate model has drawn most people to a local Box, and what we shared so many years ago is now shared locally and regionally rather than in one central place.
Except during Open Season, that is. This is our soccer World Cup, Olympics, and Mardi Gras, all wrapped up into 5 weeks. More than 200,000 of us are signed up, doing the WODs, posting our results, and Scoreboard Watching, “Leaderboarding”. Who got what? Where do I stand? Did you see that score from Kenya? Even if you, like me, simply use the Open WODs as a check on your own fitness, or even as just another day of training, there is still something just enough different, just special enough to make it seem like a bigger deal even if you won’t even see the middle of the Bell Curve of results.
I think it’s because you’re in. For the price of 3 Mocha Grandes at ChichiBucks you are as in as anyone and everyone else. For 5 weeks the Leaderboard is today’s equivalent of the old Main Page CrossFit.com “comments” section. And if the previous 3 CrossFit Opens are any indication the WODs will allow pretty much everyone who signed up to STAY in, too. I’m sticking with my contention that the Open is a great, big, wide open funnel that not only feeds into the Regionals but also stays open at the top each week so that most of us will stay somewhere on that Leaderboard. Everyone with the CrossFit basics in their quiver can take a shot each week. The folks running this show will see to that. The CrossFit Open is nothing less than the largest single participatory athletic event in the world today.
This is fun. The CrossFit dinner table becomes a banquet hall for 5 weeks, the old CrossFit.com writ large. So pass the Kettlebells and don’t hog the Wall Balls. Yell and cheer as loud as you’d like. Don’t worry a bit about making too much noise. Grandma and Grandpa signed up, too!
Open Season 2014
It’s Open Season both in and on CrossFit. We are now as “In Season” as we ever get as athletes as we prepare to begin the CrossFit Open, the largest, most inclusive athletic event in the world. This is the time of year when more of us extend our competition beyond “you vs. you” and put our numbers out there, up against anyone and everyone else. The CrossFit Open is when we spend a little bit of time pursuing the “Sport of Fitness”, even if, like me, one is principally concerned with Fitness as a pursuit worthy of a singular focus all its own.
Since this is competition we will necessarily push ourselves in the same manner that all other competitive athletes do. During “Open Season” we will behave like runners, powerlifters, weightlifters, and all manner of people who train for a specific event or season. There will be evidence of overreaching, of overextending, and we will undoubtedly hear of injuries in the process. Hence my opening: it will be “Open Season” on CrossFitters and CrossFit. The CrossFit Open is gonna place a big ‘ol target in the middle of your back, as well as one right smack on the front door of CrossFit HQ.
Should you care? Not surprisingly the answer is “yes and no”. There’s no question you should care enough to sign up and then care about your own CrossFit Open. The cyber-gym opens up to the world and for 5 weeks includes everyone who belongs to an Affiliate gym, too. We’re all together as one. Yes, you care about that. You are part of a community now, and this is our annual family reunion, so to speak.
Your own Open is all about caring. You need to care enough to look objectively at your level of fitness, your collection of strengths and weaknesses, and plan on how you will address the tasks we are given. Will you taper into 14.1-5 or will you do them as simply the next WOD to come out of the Hopper? How about test driving the WODs, doing them to “get a feel” rather than just going for it? What if you don’t do as well as you expected? What kind of schedule will you create if you plan on doing each one more than once? Yes, indeed, you should care about your own CrossFit Open.
Everyone else is in the Open, too! All over the world we’ll be doing the same thing at the same time. Every Thursday for 5 weeks it’s all you’ll be thinking about. That, and where are you going to be at 5:00 PDT and how will you see the announcement of 14-point-whatever that week. Oh yeah, you care about everyone’s Open because you are just as much a part of the Open as everyone else. Yup, just like Rich and Sam, Jason and Annie. Heck, you might luck out and get to watch the announcement of the Open WOD with one of the Games athletes. It may surprise you to learn, but they react to each announcement just like you do! Yes, you should care about everyone else’s Open because their Open is your Open.
Now, about that target on your back. Once we go “live” on February 27th there will be all sorts of folks out there aiming at you, at us, at CrossFit. In a world filled with regular people who day in and day out push themselves in the gym harder than all but the tiniest percentage of competitive athletes, for 5 weeks we will likely push just a little bit harder, and there will be just a few more of us who end up “off the rails” as it were. There will be a barrage, a deluge of all manner of invective spewed at our world. “CrossFit is dangerous.” “High rep [you-name-it] should not be done.” “CrossFit programming is this-or-that,” where both this and that are bad.
Should you care?
For the most part I’m going with “no”. If your Mom is concerned, or perhaps your POOSSLQ, then maybe you need to pay a little attention to the haters, the attention grabbers, and the sensationalists so that you can reassure your loved ones that you are OK. Otherwise I’m going with “no”, there’s no reason you should care about the various and sundry sticks and stones being hurled at you and CrossFit. Seriously, why bother? Why help someone make a non-story (there are injuries in competitions) into a big story? Why worry that something you KNOW to be false (eg. “CrossFit is dangerous”) might be true just because it’s posted on the internet by someone who has no idea what CrossFit is, let alone the Open? Why provide credibility by caring to commentators who have none to start with?
What matters is this: it’s Open Season here IN the CrossFit world. What we have is measurable, observable, and repeatable, and we’re going to do just that over 5 weeks. You and I will push just a little harder, even if you, like me, have exactly zero chance of moving on to Regionals. There will be more precision, more perspicacity, more virtuosity. We will be drawn even closer to one another, with or without any targeting from those outside our community. For 5 weeks we will demonstrate that what we do and what we have is both very real and very good.
Yes, you care about that.