Winning

Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all the time thing. You don’t win once in a while; you don’t do things right once in a while; you do them right all of the time. Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.

It feels great to win, or have a victory.

When we start, every single day is a win. You’ve never exercised before, BOOM! You deadlift heavier than you’ve ever done before, WAHOO! Just took 4 minutes off your baseline? YIPPEE!

These are your wins, your victories. They’re personal, and very objective.

DEM PR FEELS!

Slowly we go from not having a clue about CrossFit to feeling like we’ve a handle on this. We won’t say mastery just yet. So the fun thing to do is to test your skills and compete.

If all we do is judge success by increased numbers on lifts or bodyweight exercises, or by how we placed on the leaderboard of the day, we’re limiting ourselves in a big way. To a very large extent, these things are out of our control. We can’t control if we “win” or “lose” a workout. And if we make our happiness dependent on that we’re in for a bad time.

Others can be fitter, or just be having a better day than you. This is completely outside your control. The same is true, really, about whether we’ll get a new PR of unbroken muscle ups or double unders today. So many factors outside our control as to whether today will be your day.

The harder thing to do, and the better thing to do, is to focus on what you can control, and enjoying the process. You can control your effort. You can control where you put your focus on (your movement quality, your perceived exertion, your mental approach to training) After all, we’re training. Scores are there to motivate us, not to define us.

Victory, success, winning, all these can and should be personal to you. That’s how you build a habit of winning. Knowing that you gave your all every day (whatever that might look like) ensures you leave the gym feeling a sense of accomplishment that motivates you to keep coming back.

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