Motivation? Look at yourself in the mirror, take your right hand and drive your face rapidly towards it. We’ll touch on that in a bit. After over two decades in the corporate world, I can safely say that I have learned a thing or two about people. When it comes to analyzing a person’s behaviour, there are several natural rules that can be safely applied: - People are, for the most part, good in nature. - For the most part, people don’t mean any harm. - They will generally use the path of least resistance. - Last but not least, you cannot teach anyone to be motivated. For some time now, we have been contemplating releasing the WOD for the following day the night before. However, we’ve always had the fear that the “less competitive” athlete would (inevitably) cherry pick the workouts they don’t like and only attend the ones they like, perpetuating their fitness deficiencies by making their strengths stronger, and their weaknesses even weaker. For example, If you hate Turkish Getups, and every time they come up you find an excuse to avoid them, then there is no coach in the world who can help you improve your performance on them. On the other hand, if you hate Turkish Getups, but every time they show up in a workout you make it in, you will inevitably get more efficient at them, and in time you may even end up liking them. In this second scenario, you continued to workout the days your strong movements showed up, but you have turned yourself into a more well-rounded athlete. This same principle applies to life in general: avoiding things you don’t like only perpetuates your inadequacies, deficiencies, or short comings. The funny thing is that even when I was just a member of our box, I always managed to coerce the daily workout out of my informants (you know who you are, and your secret is safe with me), despite the horrible burpee penalty they’d had to pay if Devay found out. There was an implied understanding that the only reason I wanted to know beforehand was to psych myself before the workout. If it was deadlifts, I would have butterflies all day (eye roll). If pistols came up, I would spend the entire day thinking of ways that I could make them more enjoyable. The main goal we have as a Crossfit gym (from my perspective) is to improve your general fitness conditioning. We want to prepare you, through functional movements to be ready for the “unknown and the unknowable”. Whatever life throws your way from a physical standpoint, from playing soccer with your kids to playing competitive sports, it shouldn’t matter - you should be ready. However, all good intentions without execution become nothing but pipe dreams. The fact of the matter is that whether we post the WOD ahead of time or not, people who want to take the path of least resistance will always find a way to do less work. And the ones who take their life and their fitness seriously will find a way to do the work and then some. The difference between these two athletes is nothing more and nothing less than one simple component: motivation. Motivation cannot be taught, motivation cannot be forced. Motivation has to come from the inside. If someone doesn’t have it within themselves to do the hard things, it doesn’t matter what you say or do to them, they simply won’t do it. Or they may do it for a bit, and at the first chance, they will revert back to their old ways. You count your own reps. Coaches are not there to count your reps, they are there to see that whatever number of reps you do are performed properly. The motivation you need to do all the hard things in life, requires you to get off your expanding glutes and get it done. So when we start posting the WODs ahead of time, and you feel a sudden pain you never felt before just because you saw Turkish Getups come up, you need to take a long hard look in the mirror, take your right hand, and drive your face rapidly towards it. Remember, I see you. Greg Carrasco
Posted on: Tue, 30 Dec 2014 03:46:26 +0000
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