Take what you think you know about fitness and trash those thoughts. Let’s have an open-mind for a few minutes. If you’re looking for or needing an immediate life-change, I have an answer for you. It starts with putting yourself first and taking care of your body. Let’s dig into how CrossFit can change your life.
10 Ways CrossFit Can Change Your Life
1. You’re Sore But Want More…Every Single Day – Imagine waking up and being completely stiff from yesterday’s workout all the while telling yourself there is no way I am working out today. You pull yourself out of bed, turn off the alarm clock and go to the bathroom. While you’re in there you turn on your phone and check today’s workout only to now tell yourself 5 minutes later, “I’ve got to go to the gym today!”
This is what CrossFit does to you. With the ever-changing workout, it’s a surprise and a highlight of a lot of our days to find out what the workout is going to be. Imagine getting excited about your workout. CrossFit can do this for you!
2. It Makes You Want to Work Out – Just like reason #1, you will feel it’s a must to get to the gym. You want to challenge yourself with the workout of the day. You imagine yourself working out and feeling great afterwards. Think about it.
How many times have you ever walked into a gym full of mirrors and thought that?
[perfectpullquote align=”full” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]CrossFit brings you inside the box to complete workouts that are outside the box.[/perfectpullquote]
(I just made that quote up…I like that!)
3. Muscles Form That You’ve Never Seen Before
Quads, traps, biceps, triceps, oh my! What? You don’t think muscle is sexy! Then obviously you’ve never had muscle. Look at it this way. Your body is made up of either muscle or fat. Which one would you rather carry?
4. It Will Improve Your Posture and Provide Physical Activity
As a coach, I’ve seen this first-hand on many occasions. Lifting weights and moving your body in a functional way will lead to better posture and to better breathing. If you are one who is sedentary in your job for the majority of the day it is imperative to get your body moving.
What better way to do it than with some functional fitness? Here’s the deal… A lack of physical activity is a leading cause of many preventable deaths. A sedentary lifestyle leads to anxiety, cardiovascular disease, migraines, diabetes, depression, obesity, scoliosis, and the list goes on.
It’s time to get up off your butt!
5. You Increase Your Mental Toughness
It can be a struggle to push yourself when you’re in the gym alone doing your own thing. Nobody is looking and nobody is watching. Without pushing yourself, you will ultimately stall in progress. There are 2 reasons for this:
1) CrossFit teaches you that your body can do more than you think it is capable of. Your body will do what your mind tells it too. That’s a huge lesson in the WODs (Workout of the Day).
2) CrossFit will make you focus on your weaknesses. No one likes to work on their weakness. That’s why you see guys skipping leg days. In CrossFit, everyday is leg day. To be a good athlete or just a fit, healthy person, you must be well rounded. That means sometimes doing the movements you really suck at.
Get over it, buttercup!
6. Bye-Bye to Low Self-Esteem
Pick up a barbell. After you get over the “Oh my God, this is kind of heavy.” thought then think about what it is you’re actually doing. You’re about to get a whole lot stronger. What do you think strength can do for you?
I’ve never met a strong person with low self-esteem. When you’re strong your clothes fit better, you stand a bit taller, you feel more confident, your body feels good (even if you’re sore) and you smile a little more often. That’s what strength will do for you. That is CrossFit.
7. Getting to the Gym is No Longer a Chore
I’ve never been more excited to get to the gym than when I started CrossFit. The never-ending sorts of challenges the workouts throw at you make it exciting and what’s best about it is you’re not in it alone.
There’s a group of people just like you who are doing it alongside you and it couldn’t be more fun. This CrossFit community pushes you to become better and put in the work. There’s no better way to get your workout in.
8. You Want to Actually Work Harder in a Workout
At CrossFit Jacked, we use monthly benchmarks to track our fitness progress. What’s a benchmark? It’s our testing point. We take a specific strength movement and a conditioning workout, test it at the beginning of the month and retest it at the end.
What’s the result? The majority of the time it’s a new personal record on each. We’ve seen that this helps provide our athletes that extra motivation to get in the gym more each week and provides that extra source of motivation.
9. You Get Out of Your Comfort Zone
We get it. You’ve been out of the gym for a long time now. Maybe you’re embarrassed about the extra weight you’ve put on in the last few months. It’s hard to come in a small group setting and try something you don’t think is possible.
You’re not alone. We’ve all been there. We’ve all had our first day in CrossFit. But here’s the deal. Get over yourself. No one is looking at you (well, besides the coach who is their to support you).
It’s funny that our human nature tendency is to think everyone is paying attention to us. Get over yourself. People don’t show up to the gym to focus on you. They show up to focus on them.
Don’t ever think you’re not good enough to begin. There’s only one way to get better. It starts by showing up.
10. CrossFit Increases Your Level of Community
One word: networking. CrossFit athletes come from a broad range of working fields. If I’m ever in need of services, who do I look to first? You guessed it, my CF community. From auto repair to real estate to financial planning, the CrossFit community has it all.
When I first moved to Mobile 6 years ago, I knew no one. Now the majority of my friends and acquaintances are through CrossFit. Build a network of peers with the community you sweat out those calories with every single day.
Until next time…Stay Jacked, Stay Strong!