At the moment I am studying to complete my CrossFit Level 3 trainer qualification as well as do my Level 2 again to get some good hands on coaching as well, a bit of what someone once said was sharpening the saw. Taking that time to keep learning and keep using that knowledge to help people live fitter, healthier lives.
There is actually a fair bit of theory behind CrossFit the methodology and how best to administer it to the broader population.
Going and reading all of the past Journal articles, the study and training guides, opinion pieces from the CrossFit coaching staff, and seeing one of the workouts they have used in the community cup that was the Hopper at the 2007 CrossFit games has had me review and get back to the roots of CrossFit.
Hopefully I haven’t lost you yet, because this will extend far beyond just some talk about the CrossFit methodology.
One of the founding tenets of CrossFit is that it should enable us to be ready for the unknown and unknowable.
When I started CrossFit in 2011 I would see what the workout of the day was on crossfit.com , see all the amazing times or scores posted underneath it and then go do it.
It was new, fun, and a bit intimidating sometimes, but those early lessons have helped me no end over the years.
So the topic of unknown and unknowable was also driven home to me on Saturday when I was driving over to the box to test a workout to include in the program in the coming months. As I drove past the old J&K building there were police, an ambulance, police tape, a really damaged car on a tow truck and the front of the building smashed up.
I did not know I would see that as I drove over, I am pretty sure the police and paramedics didn’t know they would be confronted with that exact scenario that day. Yet their training and experience would have had them ready for it.
All of us in life are presented most days with something we didn’t expect to happen, or it was completely unknown that it would happen.
You wake up with a tummy bug, the dog vomits on the carpet, you get a call to pick up one of the kids from school as they are unwell, the car won’t start, your boss asks you to do something that you have never done before, your favourite brand of yogurt is gone from the shelf, you get stung by a wasp!
All of these things could be the furthest from your mind on any given day, yet they could happen, at any time, on any day. All unknown and unknowable events.
And you usually roll with the punches right?
Not every time, sometimes there really is that proverbial spanner thrown in the works. But for me, and a bloody large number of other people I have seen over the years, the training we have done in the gym has led us to better equip ourselves to deal with these things.
When you do hard things that aren’t known before you do them it can callous the mind a bit and have you much better prepared for when life throws all the shit it can at you.
I want you to pause today and have a think about something that happened one day that you did not know was coming, but you managed to work your way through it, and you didn’t just survive, you thrived.
At the time you maybe thought you couldn’t handle it, that you might not get the task done that was thrown at you. But here you are now, today listening to this, having got through it.
Now it may not have been an absolute success! But you made it through, you are here, now alive and doing your thing.
Which leads me to the part of it that so many of us have a hard time with.
When things are unknown and unknowable, we are forced to deal with them at the time. We didn’t have a chance to worry about them beforehand. Now take another moment to think of something you KNEW was coming up, that you worried about! That you almost felt a bit sick or concerned you would fail.
And then you did it.
And well, it was nowhere near as bad as your mind had told you. In fact that event helped you and allowed you to see you could be strong, resilient, and determined.
I know you have done this, almost every single human has done it at some point.
“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.” Seneca
That quote is around 2000 years old. We have been doing it as a species for at least that long!
It isn’t to say don’t worry about anything. Some things need some thought and preparation, like planning your wedding, or having kids, or a career change.
But if the kids like the dinner you made, or they will be upset if you don’t let them do something, or someone might laugh at you for trying something new, or that the new shoes you bought won’t be comfortable, or that you won’t fit in with a certain crowd, or that todays workout will be movements that you find super difficult. None of those things are worth giving yourself an ulcer over. You will find those things out in time, and it won’t be a life and death scenario. It will just be a neutral event that passes quite quickly in the whole scheme of life.
My advice today, take care of the things you can control. The effort you put in at work, in a workout, with your family and friends. Your actions and reactions to what occurs. Not the way you think they will play out and what will happen, but what actually happens.
The things you can’t control, like the kids not eating your dinner, the kids getting pissy with you because you had them do their homework and not play minecraft, the new shoes not fitting well, the fuckwit that laughed at you for having a go, the arseholes that excluded you from an event, the three toughest movements in the gym being in your workout today. You cannot control any of these things. Just how you respond to them.
So if you give them power, they have it. If you don’t, they won’t.
Take the power away from the events etc by not worrying about them.
Think about them and how you might best handle them, but worrying that they will happen when they will anyway, and they aren’t life and death scenarios will only lead you to feeling bad.
And quite possibly missing some of the amazing things happening around you that also were unknown and unknowable.
You are so much more capable of handling life events than the anxiety in your head lets you believe.