We’re quick to associate PED’s (performance-enhancing drugs) with professional athletes. Unfortunately many are looking for that magic pill. Whether it’s muscle gain, weight loss, hair growth even sexual performance. Sorry to say there are no magic pills and those that claim to be, well you can deal with the side effects. Our approach is to Eat Clean, Train Hard, Live Life Passionately and Sleep Well. This might not cure all that ails you, but you should wake up every day feeling better. And if you do it with a group of fantastic people like we do, well then you have an amazing support team to help you through any rough spots.

Enough with the PED’s, it’s time to address another issue that most CrossFit boxes encounter as well as most gyms, ICM’s: I’m Cheating Myself.

There are 3 types of ICM’s:

• Cheating Reps
• Cheating Range of Motion (technique)
• Too Many Excuses

This is a tough subject to address; in the gym or in a blog. There are many posts from both coaches and CrossFitters about cheating. We love seeing our members being competitive with each other, even with scaled workouts, but if this leads to shaving reps or not getting full range of motion just to stay with the leaders; it’s just not worth that.
CrossFitting is hard. There will be WOD’s that crush you, you can count on that, but you chose CrossFit over treadmills and ellipticals for a reason, to push yourself past that comfort zone; to be a CrossFitter. There will be workouts when you will lose count, it happens. If so just start over because the only one you are really competing against is yourself.

The more common problem is range of motion. As you get tired, you can let your form suffer. Your squats aren’t going full depth or you’re not locking out on the top of your box jumps, or maybe your chin isn’t going over the pull-up bar every rep, or you’re snaking those push-ups. The trend of thought is that ‘at least I’m finishing’. That is the wrong attitude. You will see so much more gains by using the correct technique throughout the entire workout. Don’t be afraid to NO REP yourself and if needed, scale down.

We threw in excuses as an added motivation. Life is tough; everyone has busy schedules. We are all a little sore. The saying goes, ‘to save money you have to pay yourself first’,  along the same lines, to be healthy ‘you have to take care of yourself first’. Our next shirt will be: “The Hardest Lift of All is Your Ass Off the Couch”. It doesn’t count as much about how you do on your good days, CrossFit is about how you do on your bad days.

It is called a workout because it requires EFFORT, without the work it’s simply an Easy Out. The bottom line is that we want to see you IMPROVE. We want to see you get your money’s worth at every workout from 3, 2, 1 GO until you either call Time or we do. During our WOD’s, the coaches won’t be counting reps, or no-rep’ing anyone. They are there to make sure you’re doing each movement safely & correctly and to help motivate you to get a few extra reps or finish a little faster. After reading this post, we want to make it clear, we’re not looking for 15 judges in every class. We want you to give 100 percent of yourself at each WOD, and then cheer the others on.

Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.  ~Henry Ford