Your Health Is Not “For Time”

It’s easy to fall into the mentality of “show up = instant results”.

Whether you are showing up to CrossFit or getting on your yoga mat, there is no fixed timeline that your fat will melt away, your goal of #250 snatch will be met, or crow pose into a headstand will become easy.

We hear a lot at ELC, “I’ve been coming for a year, I should be able to do this by now.” False homie. You also have been coming to ELC for a year and can’t run a 6-minute mile yet I don’t see you risking your safety to make that happen. What’s the real rush about?

Olympic lifts, gymnastics movements, figure-eight and flying pigeon pose are all sexy. They are fun, challenging movements we all want to accomplish and they are associated with “fit” and “in-shape”. However, you will be further from mastering these movements the more you force yourself to be good at them. The movements don’t hurt you, you hurt you. We overtrain, our diet doesn’t match our fitness desires, sleep is questionable and then we load up a barbell or push too deep into that pose because our ego can’t take a chill pill. Now the aches and pains cause further set back and the fun of it all can get lost.

Your health, wellness, quality of life is not a rat race. You have your entire life to get good at these movements and you have your entire life to reach new goals. If you are not enjoying this journey, I ask that you take a step back and ask yourself why. Why are you showing up? Because my hope for you is that you are showing up to improve your health, improve wellness and increase the quality of your life. This means listening to your body and celebrating your progress with no comparison or time crunch.

As your coach, I hope you know I could care less about whether or not you can do a pull-up. Is it super fun when someone achieves it? Absolutely! Is it fun to coach the pull-up and all it’s variations? You better believe it. Wanna know what is the most fun though? Knowing that someday that pull-up could save your life, or knowing that being able to do ring rows means you are strong enough to play with your kids and/or grandkids.

I hope you chose to take care of your health because it means your quality of life is better. I hope you choose to workout everyday not because you need to be a certain size by a certain day or because you need to hit that lift because “you should be able to do it by now”. But instead, I hope you choose to workout every day because you love yourself enough to take care of you and you know that when you are making healthy choices, you can live your best life.

Enjoy the process #elcfam, you amaze me every day just by showing up!

Your coach,

Cate

Photo Credit: https://www.facebook.com/haileyannephotography/