You know how you know something — so you figure everyone else knows it, too? Turns out that is SO WRONG...

And for shits and giggles, let's start with the concept of "mobility" as applied to CrossFit. I thought that my clients likely knew why we do it, the end point, and how to go about it intelligently.

Nope.

Turns out that many of them are just taking a magical mystery tour of the foam roller, and wondering why this practice that we coaches rave about is actually just:

1.) Painful

2.) Ineffective

So let's take a few minutes to clear the air.

I want to see the elevation of running in the CrossFit Community (and not the endurance kind). Toward that end, some advice for athletes:

Run those 400s like you mean it. It's not a rest between barbell movements.

Know that your max mile time tells me more about your fitness than your max snatch.

Show (the fuck) up for running workouts. Don't stay home...

I believe that the Affiliate community is under threat from forces both internal and external.

We compete with each other on price while large corporate entities (with superior economics of scale) prepare to drastically undercut us with one-size-fits-all group classes.

We are complicit in a rapid race to the financial bottom, accelerated by our own strategic and tactical ignorance.

We charge semi-boutique prices (from the customer's point of view) without truly customizing instruction to the individual athlete. We refuse to take the time to enforce a culture of goal setting and accountability, whether due to a lack of time and resources or simple ignorance of the need to deliver high-touch service.

There is a firm and immediate relationship between risk and reward:  If you don’t take a risk, there will be no reward.

This lesson is easy in the abstract, and incredibly difficult when it’s your (whatever) on the line.  As we accumulate rewards, in the form of jobs, cars, spouses, and real estate, we forget the dynamic that got us there, protecting, hedging, and refusing further risk.  In doing so, it’s no longer rewards on the line.  It’s progress.

At some point, you’ve got what you need, be it financial or fitness, and the instinct is to stop, build the fort, and wait it out.  Fight this with every ounce of your being; your duty is no longer to yourself.

At 34, stuck somewhere between being young and being old, I believe I’ve discovered the secret to happiness.  A brave thing, claiming “the secret” to anything, yet if one’s principles are based in empathy, morality, and a keen understanding of the human condition, it’s hard not to believe one has stumbled onto a rulebook for further action.  Time and tide may paint me a fool, but I believe this is worth sharing:

Be ruthlessly consistent in the application of your principles, and joyously inconsistent in your choice of activity.

1.) Death. We have a limited time on this earth: 77 years for a U.S.-born male. Realize that life is a ticking clock, and you've got a small window to make a big impact. 

2.) Fast cars. There's just no better physical manifestation of man's desire to be unreasonable in the pursuit of the unimportant. I'd like to go 200 mph. Check. How about 1.5g around a traffic cone? Check. Fast cars are confirmation that the frivolous is absolutely worth the effort. It'll put a smile on your face.

3.) Adaptive athletes. No arms? I'm lifting. No legs? I can run. You might have an excuse, but it's junk, and after you hang out with these guys, you'll realize it in short order. If you want something, anything, badly enough, there is never a reason not to get it done.

One of the Affiliates that I mentor asked me if he should do a LivingSocial deal upon opening his new gym. My response:

"Don't do it."

Everything ends eventually. Me, you, stars, galaxies, governments, everything. 

On its face, this could be an incredibly dispiriting concept, a resignation to fatalism and predestination. Yet I pass graveyards, and I smile, because I know that someday I'm going to die, and time is short.

This is the ultimate permission slip. Do what you will, be an agent for change, attempt to serve a cause higher than yourself. If you succeed, you'll go eventually. If you fail, you'll go too. No harm in trying.

The vast majority of your training time, regardless of your aim, should be spent at general physical preparation, embodied in simple couplets and triplets, strength training, and the occasional long-duration effort. Short, hard, intense. 

This intensity is much more important than volume. Remarkably more important. 

For the newer trainee, this means no two-a-days, no four-WOD Saturdays. No flash-in-the-pan volume accumulation.

Volume accumulation, the method by which athletes are able to endure ever-more reps within any given time period, is not the product of a week of training. It is the product of a lifetime of training, years of consistent focus. 

Competitors must treat intensity and volume accumulation like two different things, each with a different trajectory. Intensity is created in the moment, embodied through intelligent programming that allows for maximum output. Volume is accumulated over months and years, an extraordinarily gradual layering of intense workout upon intense workout.

Don't confuse the two.

As a business, I would like to have a broad, legally-defined and protected territory with no competition allowed therein. I would like a monopoly. Who wouldn't?

But funny thing, monopoly. The loser is the customer, who has but a single option at a price determined by fiat rather than market forces. This is unacceptable, and a perversion of the natural order, enrichment of a business through artificial means.

Therefore, we must have competition. Competition spurs excellence. Without people trying to beat us, without adversity, without someone kicking your ass (or at least trying) once in a while, you'll never be what you could be.