Character and Failure

I know three things about character for certain:

I know it when I see it.

I'm motivated by the individuals who have it.

CrossFit builds it.

The presence of one person in the room who never misses a repetition imposes an implicit expectation on everyone else to do the same. If an athlete finishes first and stays around to support those finishing last, everyone in between will also feel responsible to do so. In this sense, character has gravity. It becomes much more than the individual and begins to snowball into something far greater (anchors and magnets...).

CrossFit is an avalanche. It  takes a lot of mettle to throw your hat into the ring and risk failure in front of your peers, but the example of one, or two, willing to lay it on the line eases that burden considerably. Those are the people I respect the most. This kind of perspective in the fitness community inspires people to be better than they otherwise would be. They begin to expect from themselves the same level of confidence, toughness, honesty, humility, and purpose they see in the leaders around them.

Failure leads to success. Get comfortable with that. If you're not failing, you're not getting better. If you're not getting better, you're getting worse. This is the SAID principle: specific adaptation to imposed demand. It means your body will only adapt to the exact demands you place upon it, and it will only do so until it meets those demands comfortably. As soon as the work can be done with ease, your body will stop adapting. Therefore, the only way to improve is to continue to fail.

Too often, people claim to seek improvement yet continually pick and choose WODs based on their perceived capacity to succeed. This blatantly illogical decison is the symptom of a very common disease: fear. People are so afraid to fail. This fact, combined with the knowledge that failure is essential to our ultimate success, makes this fear one of the toughest paradoxes for our psyche to overcome.

How do we conquer this phenomenon? We have to celebrate failure, and embrace the suck. We have to know that  unless we succeed in finding our limits during the course of a workout, we didn't succeed at all. Rather than focusing on the competition with other athletes, we must seek to realize the individual potential for failure in every session, and then, when we really need it, when you're just about to quit, and when you've been pressed to the brink of failure and can't take any more, then we use the abilities, and the fuel of those around us to will ourselves to the next step. That's when the community leans on itself, pushes collective limits and builds itself stronger than before.

Fitness requires failure. This process involves levels of intensity that most are uncomfortable with, but absolutely necessary. If you're not outside you're comfort zone, you're not going to improve. And if you're not going to improve what exactly are you doing?

CFJ 11/10