What CrossFit offers me that gyms do not
Lets face it, I'm fat, I'm lazy, I lack motivation and always have. In the past I've always needed good training partners that would come to the house and MAKE me go train to even get to a gym consistently.
CrossFit gives me a community, people that I challenge myself against and get motivation from both directly & indirectly!
CrossFit is something I actually look forward to... it has a positive environment, there is encouragement from coaches and members, lots of cheering, lots of good fast paced music, weights slamming down, grunting, people giving it their all. It's a contagious atmosphere!
It's also very challenging. I hate not being the best at something and I absolutely hate being the last, when I see a bunch of other people smoking me it causes me to push myself (alone I wouldn't). Last night we were doing strict presses before the WOD and I was done, man there was no way in hell I was getting another press done but... I hadn't done as many as we were supposed to and the coach starts barking out 'COME on Ryan' and I'm like "oh screw you, I got this, I got another one in me and I'll show you!" yeah I didn't have it. I pushed and pushed that bar up from my shoulders and didn't even get it eye level before it came back down. The coach keeps barking out encouragement and then a half dozen of my fellow members join in "Come on, you can do it" "don't stop" "come on push push" and what do you know... it got 2 more strict-presses out of me that I was 100% sure I did not have in me. I racked the bar and everyone focused their attention to a guy doing far far more weight than everyone else and guess what, they squeezed a few more out of him too. That community, that genuine positive encouragement from staff & members, that competing against yourself, that is the kind of stuff that is absolutely priceless to a lazy fat man like me. That alone is worth what my box charges.
Just three short weeks ago I was breathing with difficulty after having simply done warm ups, some high-knees across a room or air-squat side lunges. My first day we did some amraps... I did the first batch of v-ups and then got the wall ball up ONCE and never finished a single v-up or wall ball, yesterday I managed 2 + 7 and would have probably done 3 + ? but I'd experience 2 rips in my underwear and they were fast becoming boa-constrictors around my thighs and bunching up in the back. I'm adapting fast, my resting heart rate is down, I can swiftly walk up a flight of stairs at the movie theater withour breathing hard for 10-15 minutes. Life is great.
CrossFit is the first time in my life where I actually feel like part of something. I'm part of the team, the team is the members of CrossFit317, people that want to succeed and want to see me succeed just as bad. I might be a hair over 300lbs while I write this post but CrossFit is something I love, it's something I'll be sticking with. It's something I look forward to every Monday, Wednesday and Friday... and once I don't feel like a truck hit me on Tuesdays and Thursdays I'll be shooting for 5 days a week. While I HATE country music, Tim McGraw's lyric is exactly how I feel about CrossFit "I like it, I love it, I want more of it"