You Can and You Will!

Today is a special day in the world of CrossFit!  We have ten athletes peforming at the Fight Gone Bad fundraising event today.  Its a free event at Sony Studios in Culver City if you would like to cheer them on!

That being said, if you did not perform Fight Gone Bad yesterday, you will have the chance to get at it today!  Check the post from yesterday for the rules, and standards!

Don’t despair if you did do it, because we have a nice lady named for you to meet!  She’s a classic bitch…

“Nicole” – Results

As many Rounds as possible in 20 min of:

Run 400 meters

Max Rep Pull ups

Note number of pull ups performed in each round.

Thank you CrossFit West Santa Cruz for getting me all fired up with this post, entitled, “New Way“…

The person who takes the banal and ordinary and illuminates it in a new way can terrify. We do not want our ideas changed. We feel threatened by such demands. “I already know the important things!” we say. Then [the] Changer comes and throws our old ideas away. – Frank Herbert.

CrossFit has done just that. It has taken the ordinary and illuminated it in a new way.

There is not that much brand new about CrossFit. Cleans, swings, pullups, sprints, presses, jumps, front squats. Yep, been around for a while. So why does CrossFit terrify? Its concept of intensity threatens mainstream fitness thinking. Its concept of athletic egalitarianism threatens mainstream strength and conditioning. It’s not the minutia of CrossFit, the movements and the lifts, but the essence. The philosophy, the pedagogy, the macros.

Take a 40 year old soccer mom and train her as you would a rugby player? Sprints, lifts, squats, jumps. Leave her on the floor and tell her “good job, but really work on keeping the arms straighter on the 2nd pull next time.” What? That’s not the way it is supposed to be. That kind of stuff is for college athletes, not family therapists and literature majors and my mom. It’s ridiculous to hold these people to the same regimen and standards that one would linebackers and wrestlers. We beg to differ, and the evidence, the results, prove us right again and again.

Along with it all, is the fear, the utter terrifying fear, that comes with being told “you can do it”. That is one of the most frightening phrases ever uttered. They may not know it, but people love hiding behind a perceived inability to do something.

Perhaps the greatest achievement of CrossFit is to absolutely insist that “you can do it.”

We don’t want you to just push your limits, a second faster here, a pound heavier there, one more rep now and again. That’s the little stuff, the micro. We want you to fundamentally reevaluate what you, as a human being, are capable of. Because, no matter what is thrown at you, no matter how impossible it may appear right now, you can do it.

And that, those four words, constitutes a completely new approach to health and fitness, to life.

A new way.