Almost Doesn't Cut It

Today was a fun day at the gym. It was week three of the CrossFit Open.  I have to admit, I want to have this type of challenge 52 weeks a year, and am thankful for the upbeat and encouraging environment at CrossFit DC.

Today's workout was an 18-minute workout, for as many rounds as you can of 15 box jumps, 12 push press, and 9 toes to bar.

Toes to bar is just like it sounds, you basically hang from a pullup bar, and touch your toes to that bar. Going into it, I knew that toes to bar would be the biggest challenge for me, as I have never really properly done them, nor practiced them much. To be honest, in the past, I have kind of let myself slide a bit with it, convincing myself that I don't need to get good at them.  Why? Because the are really really hard for me. This is a silly reason, one I'll put my hand up and admit, move on, and then go conquer them.

So you're probably thinking that I'm now going to tell you, I started the workout, had an amazing performance, and hit all my toes to bars. Nope. 

I watched a lot of other people rock the workout, speeding through 5, 6, 7 rounds. I did the box jumps and the push press, and then a fun16-minutes and 50-seconds of attempted toes to bar. Not a round! It was hard work too. Somehow I created 2 blisters (small ones), and opened up a callus (for the first time during a workout) on both my hands. I attempted who knows how many of those toes to bars. A LOT of them were close, like less than an inch from completion, and I  was going all out.

The workout wasn't frustrating, because the way my perspective is, I got 16-minutes and 50-seconds of straight coaching on how to get better at this exercise! Admittedly, the box and barbell looked a little lonely, and it would have been so much more fun to jump and push press, but this was needed.

It was also good that Chris didn't let me slide through with "almost toes to bar." I got 5 full ones. A few that were literally 1/4 inch away from the bar, he didn't count. For real, I am thankful for that. In 2011's CrossFit Open, either toes to bar or knees to elbows (a little easier) appeared in one of the workouts. I can't remember which, because I didn't even do knees to elbows; it was like "feet off ground; good." Skating by doesn't teach you anything, nor does it help you get better. It teaches you that you can skate by.

"Almost" doesn't cut it (even in the little things).

"I almost got that job" or "I almost paid my cell phone bill" or "honey, I almost want to marry you." Can you imagine?!

It's easy to forget that accomplishing something is a process. That instant success (at anything!) is kind of silly and not really long term. You can have instant success at something, get excited, and then forget about it, because it didn't  really change you. If you could already do it, or it wasn't hard, it's forgettable and eventually it doesn't mean much. In a great book called The Slight Edge, by Jeff Olson, he says that doing things that will make you successful are easy to do AND easy not to do. Let's all agree to just do the hard stuff and get it over with. 

Today was not a failure in the bad sense of the word failure. It is a chance to learn, improve, and get inspired to do better. Just this week, I was reading about Sara Blakely, the creator of SPANX and now America's youngest female billionaire at 41. She says that growing up, every night at the dinner table, her dad would ask her what she failed at that day. Doing this, he took away the fear of the failure, and encouraged her to seek out failure, in order to be successful. She did pretty good with that advice!