I'm often impressed with our members. I've never met a more fun group of dedicated people who are passionate about improving themselves and helping others. Today I received an email in respose to an article I wrote for our competitors which I felt needed to be shared. Thanks Tom!
"Good morning fellow competitors!
I hope I'm not speaking out of turn here, but I wanted to piggyback on what Jeff said about our competition mindset and mental attitude.....
Like Jeff said, we should be doing this for fun. Crossfit should be a stress reducer, not a stress inducer. We all have enough stressors in our life to deal with and this should NOT be one of them. We should be walking away from the gym everynight with a smile on our face. There is no reason not to. Great workouts with even greater people, what more could we ask for?!
However I think some of us are nervous about the fact that we are competing against other people and other crossfit gyms. We're worried how we are going to stack up against the competition. Who's going to notice that I struggle with certain events, etc. We've allowed the fact that we are nervous about this to turn to anxiety, which in turn has caused us to stress.
When we committed to competing a couple of months ago, we all signed a contract saying we would come to the gym as much as possible, give everything we have etc. When I look down the list of what we agreed to, it's nothing this group didn't do before. WE WERE ALREADY COMPETITORS. We just didn't have anyone to compete with! We all bust our ass nearly everyday in the gym. We break PR's everyday. Shit, this group of people tends to shatter them. We've all overcome weaknesses in our abilities. There's no reason, if we keep it up, we won't overcome the weaknesses we have left. I know this for a fact. It took guts to walk into the crossfit gym for the first time. We all had to walk through that door to the unkown at some point. Either at Forged Fit or CFBR. We all watched on while the members of the class before our INDOC collapsed to the floor. I remember thinking "what am I getting myself into?!" Now look at us. We're simply taking the next step into the unknown. We're a little scared but we should all be confident that it will all be worth it in the end.
As for the actual competition goes. Here is what I'm guessing is going to happen. There's going to be some studs and studettes. But I'm guessing there will also be a lot of people in our shoes. They'll have weaknesses, they'll have strengths. No different than any of us. And for those worried about what others are going to think of you, I'm guessing noone will really be paying attention. And if they are, it's probably because you're kicking their ass. We do it everyday, we look at the whiteboard and see how everyone else did....................and then we forget what everyone else did.
I'm extremely proud to be competing with all of you. We push each other to the limit everyday. I think what we've helped create here is pretty special. And I think that's an accomplishment we can be proud of today.
Have a great day and I'll see everyone Saturday!" - Tom Duffy
Wednesday, January 11, 2012 at 12:00PM ;)
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