Good Medicine

Hi everyone, I have been thinking quite a lot about the role of a CrossFit trainer and the underlying motivation behind what we do and how we do it.  I think I’ll make a series of posts about this if it doesn’t bore you all to tears.  We are coming up on a new month here and over the course of March you all did quite a lot of jump roping and a lot of the Burgener Warm Up.  Now, you must know that you all are under intense scrutiny when you are in our gym.  We talk about you incessantly.  Are you getting stronger, faster, leaner, more confident?  Are you having fun?  How is your tweaked shoulder? Hip flexor?  Are you totally frustrated by trying to get to a decent squat or still in the persevering mode?  I, of course, know that some of you were crazily fed up with the jump roping and others were like, “Enough with the Burgener Warm Up, already.”  Did I mention I have ESP?  Here is the thing: good CrossFit programming is like Good Medicine.  Or like AP Calculus for me in high school.  My Dad made me take it for a year.  Tears, shouting, temper tantrums you name it, my father endured it.  The man has nerves of steel.  And, yes, I am grateful he made me do it.  When I got to grad school and got into geochemistry guess who got to skip the Calc requirement?  I wish now that I had chosen a better attitude about it.  You all have a choice about the attitude you bring to the workouts too.  Of course there are ones we hate.  I expect you to cry and get mad.  You can even yell at me during the warm up “I hate f***ing jumproping!” and I will yell back “Me too!  1 min left.”  Or you can be like Ernie, who cannot jump rope to save his life, but cheerfully holds the rope in one hand and swings it almost in time to his hopping, smiling ruefully all the time and already visibly improved.  Don’t forget-we promised to improve your coordination.  As for the Burgener Warm Up, be glad you don’t train with the guru himself-or you might spend 12 wks with only a piece of PVC in your sweaty little hands.  On Monday I saw a bunch of you snatching for the first, second or third time-brilliantly!  I was stunned. And yes, I attribute it to having you do the B. Warm Up every day for the last month.  Although perhaps it was due to your naturally-gifted Olympic Lifting…It can’t all be like Saturday night at the disco you know, although Carl does like the BeeGees.  Hang in there.  I really was impressed with the Snatching I saw yesterday.