Rule #1: No Egos Allowed

If you’ve ever looked at our gym rules, you’ve probably noticed our #1 Rule “No Egos Allowed.”  Taken by itself, Rule #1 encompasses a  nebulous concept.  Ego has several working definitions, but we’re referring to ego as “an exaggerated sense of self-importance.”  When athletes of all levels step into CrossFit Charlottesville, they enter a psychological battleground. Uniquely, in CrossFit, battles aren’t won; they are fought everyday.  We come to the gym to challenge ourselves.  We should be chasing constantly moving targets.

We design workouts (WODs) to challenge the most advanced athletes.  In fact, CrossFit workouts were created to challenge elite athletes, regardless of weights used or the time limit provided.  Given the variety associated with workouts, you can bet that some days the WODs will play to your strengths, but most days the WODs will tax your weaknesses. No one is the best at CrossFit. There will always be someone better than you.

Oftentimes, because we all tend to have egos, we prioritize our performance on the clock.  We’re competitive beings; we want to do better than our peers because our score will be recorded next to other gym members. We want to prove to ourselves that we did “well” on our workout because we measure our performance as a distinct value.  Oftentimes this forces CrossFitters to look over the more important things.

Our egos misguide us to do a lot of negative actions in the gym, including:

• comparing our score to other athletes in unhealthy ways,
• sacrificing full range of motion, and
• scaling the WODs to levels that will put us near the top of the pack.

As trainers, it’s our goal to make you much better people inside and outside the gym. We don’t have the opportunity to watch every rep, every squat, or every workout.  We know your mind is constantly telling your body to cheat that squat depth or rest more than necessary.  It happens to us too.

The problem is that when you only think about that clock and and you’re cheating the squat depth, pushup height, locked out overhead,  telling yourself you can’t do something or not pushing yourself to the limits, you’ve only done a fraction of that workout and your score on the board is meaningless.

No egos means achieving personal excellence, making sure every rep counts and pushing ourselves further, even if that doesn’t translate into the best score.  As we move forward, try to not think about the clock so much, think about the things mentioned above and have the best, hardest workout of your life.

[pic from one from RM]