Culture, as defined by merriam webster, is “the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution or organization.” At 8th Street CrossFit, our culture has been shaped by many people, from many different walks of life. We are a place of fitness, true, but we are also much more than that: we are a community. Our organization has been around for some time now, and although some of the individuals who helped found our culture have moved on, they and our current membership have paved the way for our culture and what it stands for: we are tenacious, we have integrity, we are always striving to be better versions of ourselves, and above all we help others.
To get the most juice out of a piece of fruit, you have to peel it, and squeeze it until the entirety of it’s oh so sweet nectar gets into your glass. Unfortunately, this process gets your hands dirty, and to fill a decent sized cup, you have to labor over multiple items of fruit (unless you have a sweet auto juicer: ruins the point). This is work, and it is necessary to get what you want: in this instance, juice. The same goes for CrossFit. Think of every rep as you getting your hands dirty, trying to squeeze all of that damn juice out of the piece of fruit. When trying to get the orangey goodness in your glass, can you skip peeling the orange? Can you just peel it and lay it on the table? All of you know the answer to this, and it is a hard no. The point of this is, the juice is worth the squeeze, but you can’t skip steps to get it into your glass. And you can’t earn a sweet glass of nectar without putting the work in. Furthermore, it’s not nearly as valuable to you, if you’re not the one who labored over squeezing it.
This is how your progress works with CrossFit. You can’t get to the juice, without the squeeze. I want to make it very clear, that your time on the board does not matter. What matters, is that you do the work. Ego and pride have absolutely no place in a training regimen, and shorting reps is a direct violation of our communities principles. As coaches, we want you to get better, and we want you to work hard. What we don’t want, is inflated scores that set wrong precedences for benchmarks. This inflation will lead to injury, or stop your training progress as a whole. Squeeze the damn fruit, get your hands dirty, and enjoy the sweet nectar that is better health, fitness, and mental toughness.