Competitions and CrossFit

I’m a pretty competitive person in general but I am not a fan of doing competitions.  I get myself all worked up, get a stomach ache for days and frankly it hurts, the next day you wonder where the truck is that ran you over and backed up over you.  You push yourself harder than you would on a daily basis and you learn a lot about yourself.  At these competitions I rarely win and I like to win.  There are always those that are better than you and there are always those that are worse and sometimes you are dead last but at least you know where you stand.

Why would I keep doing them?  Mainly because I love the adrenaline rush, the camaraderie of the team and the CrossFit community.  Beyond winning, everyone there wants you to do the best that YOU can do.  It’s one big team.  You can always feel it.  It’s palatable.

Yesterday in the final team competition the last task was to lunge with a 70 pound axle bar (fat fucker) over your head.  Let me tell you, it was not easy.  One of the women was struggling hard, dropping it without making the distance.  The crowd gathered around her cheering her forward.  Time was running out and she didn’t have anything left, yet she never gave up, drawing strength from the crowd.  It’s amazing to see, no one cared that she couldn’t do it they just cared that she was trying and giving everything she had.

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If we could pull this from the competition and translate it into the real world, think of how much better off we would be as a society.  Instead of belittling people and pushing them down, why don’t we pull them up?  Cheer for little victories because in life it’s all about the little victories.