back to CrossFit

Earlier this week, I started back up at a local CrossFit gym.

For the last few years, I’ve been working out at home with the equipment we have, which is more than enough to get me in the shape I want to be in—there’s no reason I should need to go to a gym, except that I don’t work out as hard or consistently at home in my basement.

I hate that.

I want to be the person who has the motivation and drive to go downstairs, zone out, and work hard.

But that’s not me. And as much as I want to tell my Self that I can do it, my motivation and drive manifest in other areas of my life.

I need to be in a gym setting, with programming laid out for me, and other people working out alongside me to do my best work on my physical body. The same is true for yoga—I prefer to be in a class with an instructor and other people around me than going down and turning on yoga and doing a class on my own.

I accepted that I’m not the guy who works out on his own and quit telling my Self I would become him. (I know that through neuroplasticity, habits, and other tools for rewiring my brain, I COULD become him, but I honestly don’t want to dedicate the energy and time to that because I have a very viable option to reach my goals–I can go to a gym, so there’s no need to transform who I am. If there were no other options, I could rewire my brain to become the maniac who goes HAM in the basement, but that’s not necessary today.)

Sometimes, your Pursuit will require you to rewire your brain, evolve, and become a version of your Self that you didn’t used to be.

Sometimes, your Pursuit will require you to accept certain qualities about your Self and realize that they don’t need to be changed and that you need to adapt your life to them.

As usual, I’m not sure there’s an obvious checklist you can use to know when it’s time to rewire and when it’s time to accept, but I can share some of what led me to understand I needed to go back to the gym:

• I’ve never enjoyed working out alone.
• I don’t hate the gym.
• I haven’t found a program at home that I’ve enjoyed enough to stick with.
• I enjoy having other people to motivate and push me during workouts.
• I can modify any workouts that include movements I don’t want to do anymore, which there are a lot in CrossFit, so I can build my strength, lean out more, and not get hurt.
• The only positive aspect of the home gym was its convenience, but I think it is also a negative because it allowed me to move my workout times and not always stick with it. It’s also convenient to end a workout early because you hear the boys acting up, but if I’m at a gym, I’m not going to end early.
• The gym I’m going to is less than three miles straight down the street from my house—pretty darn convenient for a gym.
• Going back to CrossFit made sense because it’s the one program I stuck with the longest and had the best results—lifting weights is a must, and this has always been the best program for me.
• Finally, my gut told me I was fooling my Self by telling my Self I was going to change and work hard in the basement.

I’m sure you can walk your Self through a similar thought process when determining whether to rewire your brain or to accept that part of you and adapt your life around it. Once you’ve worked through these thoughts, listen to your heart/gut/intuition–it’ll tell you what needs to be done.

And then it’s up to you to follow what it says.

See you tomorrow and keep pursuing,

JC

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