You Are Not Your Score:
An Essay about Friendship, Self-Worth and CrossFit
*Post-Workout Sweating + Panting*
Friend: “What did you get?”
Me: [ a number ] + [ an excuse ]
Lately I’ve been talking to my friend @thesassydietitian about the pros and cons of CrossFit (of which there are many, on both sides):
The Pros:
*Location of daily happy place
*Lot of heavy circles to lift
*Rings and things to swing on
*Super strong, extra smart, fun-loving people
*A community where friendships form on the basis of lifting each other up and celebrating common goals, a place where people take joy in others’ success and push each other to do the things that they think they cannot do, but eventually accomplish through their own grit, bolstered by the encouragement of others.
The Cons:
*Needs more diversity (across the board).
*Sometimes “pushing ourselves” goes too far, when we ignore our body’s innate warning signals to slow down for a minute and focus on a necessary prerequisite capacity for completing a movement (or workout) safely.
*We want to come in first, or not come in last, or beat an old time from a different, younger, less-stressed stage of life, or lift a certain number of pounds that we feel as though we “should” be lifting based on a generalized standard which does not take into account our individual level of strength.
*We lose patience, fear judgement, or feed our egos, sacrificing the admittedly painstakingly-slow process of building a bullet proof foundation that forms the basis of sustainable fitness for a lifetime in favor of short term gain and pride.
By now, we should all know the difference between fitness and performance. In the performance world, training centers around shorter term goals, and cycles are designed to peak for competition. While the first priority of a strength and conditioning coach is to prevent injury and increase resiliency for sport, said sports don’t care about your body, they care about whatever physical and mental sacrifice you need to win. That’s it.
Training for performance is not a health-related goal, it’s a competition-related goal. Training for fitness involves a health-related goal of living your strongest AND most mobile life for as long as your days on Earth. While the cycles of sports performance center around off season vs. in season, the cycles of fitness center around *the rest of your life*. School, work, family, hobbies, travel, etc. create a natural ebb and flow of “in” and “out” of regular training - and that’s nothing to beat yourself up about.
This brings me full circle to my first sentence, when @thesassydietitian said, as a reminder to us both: “Being the best athlete does not make you a good person.” And that is when I realized, to my utmost relief and utter frustration, that I attach far too much of my value - almost my entire value actually, as a whole human! - to being ... fast. Just, fast.
I grew up feeding off of years of praise for being a ‘good’ runner and in the younger years, a good soccer player.... something I never learned to grow past. As embarrassing as it is to admit, for most of my life, all of my frustration boiled down to: “If I get the best time, then I am allowed to continue holding my value as a likeable human.” This whole time, I’ve done myself the disservice of failing to recognize that my friends would no longer be my friends if I decided to suddenly turn into a jackass - not because I suddenly cannot run a 5:30 mile (and I know this is true, because I currently can barely run, and yet none of my friends have told me “You are slow, and therefore no longer worthy of my friendship.”)
And so, the next time you feel sad because you wish your score in the workout was better - because you better believe I know you’ve felt this way too, in at least one point in your life, if you’ve ever competed in anything (and if not... please let me know what that’s like?!?) - look across your 6x6 foot socially-distance fitness square and smile at your friends, because you just inspired each other to come out from the other side of a hard workout sweaty, happy and with zero judgement attached to the number of pounds on your bar, time on your row, or reps on your metcon. Your friends like you because of the joy you bring them when they see your face, not because of the number on your scorecard.
Scattered throughout this post are the pictures from my most recent birthday, which I celebrated by asking as many friends as I could in this time of Covid to participate with me in a Federal Hill scavenger hunt. My friends Candace and Jen graciously organized the challenges, and what ensued was the most fun I’ve had since I was a kid. My friends are fantastic, and it has nothing to do with how much they lift, but everything to do with how much fun we have together. And I have a feeling they feel the same about me. :)
