CrossFit is unique and wonderful in many ways, and often times the personal experience that each one of us has with the sport is a distinctive story that is exclusive to the athlete. We all have our own relationship with CrossFit, but the way Gregg Glassman designed the programming of CrossFit allowed for all of us to be connected through the workouts.
And I do mean ALL of us.
Take more traditional sports, ones with rich history, huge sums of money and millions of fans who watch and perhaps play the sport in their free time (or when they were growing up). There are few fans that would be able to relate to hitting a game-winning homerun, or dunking a basketball in their playing career. Fans will watch the stars of the NFL, NBA, MLB and so on, and marvel at their abilities, but always be distant from the athlete themselves. It’s hard to relate to them.
But in CrossFit, every athlete who makes it to the Games, they are one of us. Every athlete there has a story of how they made it to the Games, how they came from their home box, training with their friends and fellow CrossFitters, getting stronger and fitter and sharing in the workouts. The beauty of CrossFit is that the workouts are measurable, so you can see where you rank, you can see how far you are from Regional athletes, from Games athletes. And this is why you will see the community of CrossFit cheer on athletes many have never even heard of, because we all understand just what they had to do to make it to that level.
We can relate to it, even if we cannot match it. Yet.
As we watched the live announcement of 14.2 at I Am CrossFit, we marveled as the crowd waited in anticipation for the workout. They cheered for both Talayna and Camille while at the same time planning their own strategy for when they took on the workout. This is the beauty of CrossFit—our score goes on the same leaderboard as Talyana’s and Camille’s. The pain the audience at I AM CrossFit cheered them through, and thousands of other fans online cheered for, is the same pain the fans will go through. This is what connects us all.
As the 2014 CrossFit Open continues, be sure to take a second and look at your scores on the leaderboard, look at your friends, and look at the big names near the top. If you want to make it to Regionals, you’ll know you’ll need to be that much quicker in the future. If you want to beat your friend, you’ll know what you’ll have to do in order to achieve that. You won’t be alone—people all over the world will be connected through CrossFit as we share in the workouts together.
Photo courtesy of CrossFit Inc
