Some mornings you wake up and say to yourself, “today, I think I will be very unpopular”. Not abusively argumentative, more like so honest the walls shake when they hear the truth you just can’t keep to yourself anymore.

Popularity is one of the best and worst situations you can find yourself within. Usually, we did something great. Something we became popular. Unfortunately, that taste becomes our guide to our future making us question our very motives for progress. Are we trying to remain popular? Or are we trying to make a radical change; critics everywhere be damned. I don’t know about you, but I want to make a difference starting with the below;

Stop the copy

Everyone has talent. Natural, and more importantly, original talent that needs to be nurtured, not tortured. Cultivated not copied.

No matter how much you wanna be, your not that renowned CrossFit Coach with the viking beard, and v-neck fetish so stop trying to act like him. Also, there is a very good chance that your not the dude made famous by splicing a curse words with regular words and sarcastically ripping on CrossFit’s idiosyncrasies.

Right this second, stop trying to sound like someone else whenever you put pen to paper or finger to key. The bigger the imitation of success, the bigger the invitation of failure. The more we copy, the more ass-tarted (see I can do it too) we sound. Stop swearing for the sake of swearing, or bottom-feeding by plagiarizing off the success of others. In fact, humility and discipline is much more shocking, and honorable today, than aggression and cynicism.

CrossFit is not advertising

Once and for all, CrossFit is not advertising. The dynamic added by Reebok and ESPN is beautifully valued, and in my opinion, a necessary piece of the future of our the CrossFit world. But to all you new affiliates, or CrossFitters, or wannabe whatevers who stumbled upon CrossFit while channel surfing and thought, “what an awesome way to make money and meet chicks” stop emailing me about how much work it is to make a dime.

Practice CrossFit, and many other affiliates like us, were community before competition. We were a sanctuary before the TV crews, and awesome shoes joined the mix. You can try your damnedest, but a community like CrossFit can smell heartless and lackluster efforts a mile a way. A CrossFit box is a community in need of no gimmick or catch phrase, and if that’s how you found it, then one can only pray you get the true picture before it’s to late. If you still don’t get it after you watch this video then call me and I will gladly fill your community with someone dying to give, not someone trying to take.

Social media

I have no problem with Facebook, and twitter. I do have a problem when a glorious community is somehow defined more by it’s award winning, grammatically correct posts, than by it’s diligence on the workout floor.

Celebrations and motivation via a unifying thread on a screen is one thing, but success has nothing to do with who makes the best post, or who takes the best pictures. CrossFit success lies within a diligence to improve the self-image of those humans you care for, not within creating an image for yourself.

It’s not about sending a “private” message “publicly” via the world wide airwaves just so somebody else out their can see the “image” your trying to create via a lifeless entity called marketing. Jesus himself warned of praying out loud so that others may falsely think you holy. When “praising” someone becomes an expression of the marketing mind instead of the natural demonstration of a beating heart, all is lost. When you “fake it,” via Facebook the world can see the lies your selling, not the ideals your creating.

Competition clouding

A competition, or charity, or whatever, can be a beautiful thing…but not when there is one every week no more than three minutes apart form each other. It’s not much of a competition if your competing against the same people you do when you train. Its not much of a charity if you don’t get the entire community behind it.

In a community, a community bigger than any one person within it, you would love your neighbors enough to pick up the phone, settle your differences and create one huge gathering that will bless the collective, credit be damned. Competition is one of the best ways to improve and test, but if as many competitions exists as days in a year then why not just call them classes?

One sided relationships

Last but not least, It seems a little offensive that our CrossFit relationship is one sided. Dependent more upon the actions of one than the actions of both.

I would never expect 100% of your attention everyday when there are so many hurting souls that need the brand of help you were created to give. You and only you. Maybe yesterday was your day to help or be helped, maybe you got the handshake, the hug, the conversation you so desired. Maybe today someone else is hurting more than you could ever imagine and you should really focus on being part of a solution instead of becoming a bigger more selfish problem.

CrossFit is a community, and your part in that community today may be siting by doing nothing, quietly supporting someone else in need much more than you. Be thankful you are not they. Remember every single day that others reached out to you, instead of today, the one day someone needed it more.

Strength:

Back Squat
6×2@98%

For time:

2-UB power cleans+1-Jerk 135/185
7-Box Jumps 20/24
12-Pull-ups
5 Rounds

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