Open Magic - Week 3: What If Discomfort Is The Whole Point?

Transcript

elcome Back And Week Three

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Train for a Great Life. This week we're talking about the open magic week three. I know every year that we're gonna get so many awesome moments and awesome stories. And it's part of part of um we've learned a lot over the years. This is the I think the 13th year that we've done this intramural open. It did not look like it does in the first years. Um and I would say even five, six years ago, it was quite a bit different. And there's little things that we've done along the way to get people um engaged and participating, right? So I'm gonna pull from a couple of uh things that have been posted in our in our group already um after asking for the the third week extra points challenge. So um yeah, the I'm gonna pull from what Sarah posted. So this is um week three. We asked people, what are you proud of? What are you proud of and what do you maybe what are you gonna do next? What maybe has there been some sort of spark or or new goal? Um and she said what I'm most proud of is just showing up and doing the dang thing, right? When Coach Andrea sent out the the video to explain what the open was, you know, the first thing she said, it's it's a competition held inside of the gym, and her first instinct was okay, no to that. And that is almost everybody's first reaction to it. Unless you're coming from some other sport or some other, you know, you're you're trained up and you know you're you're looking for that type of thing, which we can absolutely deliver. Most people's reaction to it is not this year, maybe next year. And like that is just not the way to live, right? So what we do is well, we're doing it anyway, it's just a workout. You're gonna figure out it's just a workout, but it's also kind of not, which I'm gonna get to as well. Um, and we're just gonna we're gonna draft the entire gym onto a team. And if you really want to avoid Fridays, that's fine. But you know, just know that you're gonna miss out on an experience that might be the whole reason that you're still doing this stuff a year later. Um, for some people, maybe it's not their thing, but my goodness, it's you you take people, you give them something hard to do, and a little bit of an unknown, and just magic moments happen. Okay. Um, and we know that, and that's this is why we do it the way that we do. So, you know, she showed up, um, had a a bit of an experience with week one that was uh you know humbling, as you know, your first open workout would be. But then, you know, by week three she says, I'm praying to the lifting gods that for a barbell. And you know what, you got that with a bunch of burpees. Um, but you know what, she she did it. Seems like there's a little bit of a fire um lit inside, and after the third one, she was showing her eight and five-year-olds a video that Andrea had taken of a bunch of them doing cleans in the workout, and later that night caught her oldest playing CrossFit with her Barbies in her room, and it just felt like that's the whole point of this thing. It is a fire was lit in you, and your kids noticed like that is so powerful, and you gotta keep it going. That's the way to to keep you know, that that feeling and that them noticing is to keep finding things that challenge you. Um, I'm gonna pull from Nicole as well. Um so another one, you know, uh the first workout was humbling, super frustrating, but instead of shutting down, the failure lit a spark and it showed me where my limits were, and more importantly, that those limits could be pushed, right? Um, the open doesn't uh made me see that my growth doesn't come from choosing the safe option, it comes from the harder option, the one that challenges more patience, resilience, and effort from me. So for 26.3, I chose the more challenging option, the RX, right? For me personally, high volume burpees and heavy thrusters are a struggle. Well, Nicole, it's not you personally. Those are the two hardest movements that we're gonna do. Um, just inherently because of the range of motion, which is directly related to the workload for each reps. Your body weight, burpee, your body weight all the way down, all the way up, thruster, taking a barbell through as much range of motion as we can. They're hard. Um, but yeah, the the you know, she finishes with the open was the experience I needed to push me to that next level. Getting comfortable with feeling uncomfortable is my new motto. Guess what? I have a photo album in CrossFit in uh in in Facebook with my early CrossFit experiences that's called Get Comfortable with Uncomfortable. It's from 2010. This is what happens when we're when we're when we're in these situations. Um it's it's such a beautiful thing, and you have no idea where it can go. Like, I I just read to you, you know, you know, two women that have come through our postnatal program and are having this like, oh my god, athlete inside of me, woken up feeling. Um, we've got coach Stefan right now that's been in our gym for 10 years. He showed up as a 17-year-old kid with a resume. And I took it and I told him I don't really know what to do with this, and and nothing happened for three months. And then um we fired a cleaner that we were working with and we asked Stefan to come in and clean. That's how he got started in the gym. And 10 years later, he's been writing our programming for four years, and he's in Miami competing right now, right? Even Lacey and I, there was no intention of opening a gym. Um, you know, so much of so many things that have happened in our life are are, you know, related to consequence of going all in on this stuff, you know. Like I I you know, I won't go on and on about my story, but it was just there was just something I recognized about CrossFit within literally a week of doing my first couple of workouts that it was just this thing that I'd been missing. There was like a year and a half gap from finishing uh structured sports, track and field, and everything, and it just lit something in me. And that turned into you know, quitting a job and starting as a personal trainer and working, bringing it to other people, and then coaching in a CrossFit gym, and then eventually opening this gym. It's just this thing that you know, once you once you see what it can do, you want to bring it to other people, and and the open is a huge um moment in time where we're able to do that because listen, you're already in the gym, but this is where I said it's just a workout. That's that's the like, hey, it's not that scary. Just come in for a Friday, it's just a workout. But you kind of know that it's it's not just another Friday, it's it's a it's a day that means more. I still feel it 15 years later, and and you know, well past competition, like competition days. You just want to give your best, you feel different. You you want to to put forth your best effort, and you're proud when you do, and you're pissed when you don't, and you you you you look at the workout and strategize and you analyze it and you scrutinize it after the facts. Oh, I could have done better. You know what? That's that's it. That it it it gives you a moment where you stop and say to yourself, I want to do better, I want to figure out how to do better, and I want to work harder. So we're gonna read so many awesome stories of why people are proud of themselves, and like there's gonna be similar themes throughout them all, but every story is just so meaningful um in its own right. So I really, really look forward to uh reading these over the the next couple of days, and I would encourage everybody to participate because uh your experience matters too. I'll see you in the gym.