“The goal is to get fit, make it the best hour of your day, stay safe, turn up the music, high five some people, and blow off some steam. So remember that. Relax. Have fun. Work out.”
– Pat Sherwood
I love Pat Sherwood’s attitude toward CrossFit and really life in general — it’s not a big deal, let’s try to have some fun. If you don’t know Pat, he is one of the main commentators of the CrossFit Games, a former CrossFit seminar staff member (the guys that teach the rest of us how to be good trainers), and a former Navy SEAL. He posts some pretty interesting and intense workouts for his daily Instagram followers under the name CrossFit Linchpin. He also posts once in a while about a monster ice cream sundae that he’s about to devour. It’s about balance, and remembering that what we’re doing here is not life or death. It’s supposed to be fun.
May’s Hero Month and the 12-hour Heroes Challenge that followed it were intense, for sure, and had a sense of seriousness about them. And for good reason – we were constantly reminding ourselves of service members and first responders who had made the ultimate sacrifice, and then completing some grueling workouts to remember them by. That amped-up importance of the workouts on a regular basis gave a special feeling to the month of May, and we’ll repeat that again next May because it worked out so well. The performance results were amazing and the level of participation was unreal.
In June, it’s time to back off the seriousness as a general theme, and remember why we really get together in the gym. Of course, our collective goal is to get more fit, and we’re accomplishing that every time we put everything we have into a workout. But what keeps you coming back? Is it the love of thrusters, or the feeling that maybe Claire is going to bring an A-game joke to class? Is it because you’re hoping to rip your hands doing too many pull-ups, or because you can’t wait to shoot the shit with your 10am buddies?
At the end of the day, what we’re doing is not competing with each other, although the innate competitiveness of CrossFit athletes is what makes us fitter than anyone else around. What we’re doing is continually proving to ourselves that we belong to this amazing community that we’ve developed. And during the workout, but especially before and after, we’re having a hell of a lot of fun.
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