Competition

This week kicks off the 2016 CrossFit Games season. It starts with the release of the CrossFit Opens 16.1 workout being released this Thursday evening. Members of our Being group will compete in the first event on Saturday afternoon, every rep counted by a judge, and then post their score up online to be ranked amongst everyone else in the world doing the competition. Last year that was over 272,000 people! The best of our region will go to a regional competition. And then, from there, to the CrossFit Games.

But are there really 272,000 people out there who believe they are fittest on earth?

The answer, of course, is, of course not!

So, what is it that brings them out to put themselves out there and be assigned a number? “You are the 136,000th fittest male in the world.”

Tempting as it is, I’m not going to delve into the “why” behind competition. One thing I do know: Competing is natural to the human race. It is something we have evidence of our ancestors doing across all cultures for millennia.

Honest competition… no cheating… the “spirit of competition”, is so important to us that cheaters in something so insignificant as a bicycle race, for example, can be considered among the scum of the earth despite the millions they might have generated for cancer research.

Competition is important to us as humans.

However, just as I would not put my 7 year old son into contact hockey when he’s barely learning to skate, I wouldn’t put someone who can barely hold a bar overhead into an event with over 100 snatches as fast as possible.

We are considered a solid strength & conditioning gym in the community, but for a variety of reasons we have lost our reputation as a competitors gym. Let me assure you that it is not the case. We love and care for competition. For my part, training for and participating in the 2011 CrossFit Games season was a hugely meaningful and important journey for me… one of the pieces that needed to be done for me to become the man I am today… Confident in who I am, and why I am doing what I am doing.

This year, to encourage some venturing into competition, we are making a few changes at Sublime.

First, I want to make it clear, that if is the CrossFit Opens or local CrossFit competitions that you want to be participating in, the Being program is the place for you. As long as your “Foundation” is good (you can front squat, shoulders are healthy, you are mobile and well balanced structurally), then you are welcome to join our group. It may seem intimidating at first, but the program adapts to its participants.

Second, if competition is interesting to you, but CrossFit competition, per se, is not (or you are not structurally ready to handle that type of competition)… we are offering a number of outlets for you to participate. These include, the Sublime Opens for our Foundation and Building groups, the CrossFit for the Community event in April, and a new series we are calling “Sublime Saturdays”. More details about Sublime Saturdays will be forthcoming, but in a nutshell we will be doing 1 competitive event every month of the year.

On a day-to-day basis in the gym we might not always offer that opportunity to compete hard (we do %-age based training a lot of the time… not very conducive to competition). However, this structure will mean that you can show up and train day-to-day, and show up to CRUSH IT on competition day.

I hope to put to rest, this year, this idea that we are not a competitors gym. We are, in my opinion, the best of both worlds. A place where you can be a competitor without losing your health to competition. A place where you don’t HAVE to be a competitor to receive equal priority. And a place where you might start out as someone on journey to getting healthy again, and someday find yourself achieving heights beyond anything you imagined you could do.

It’s time to abruptly put an end to this article before I let it drag on too long.

In the end, this is about action. Action to commit yourself to getting healthy again. Action to commit yourself to competing in one or two events this year that are appropriate for you. Or action to get yourself into the right program for your goals.

Any questions about what action you should take? Email your coach or brendan@sublimesc.com.

3-2-1 Go.

Suffer Here. Stronger There.