[ 💠] Reevaluating Your Motivation for CrossFit
When trying to win every workout isn't helping anymore
Most Mondays, we revisit one of the listener questions we’ve answered in a previous episode. It’s been edited for clarity & brevity here, but if you want to get the full version, links to the full episode are below the text.
Patrick: Here’s a question in our Think category, this one from Padraig:
For 6 years, I've pursued CrossFit alongside my mental health journey.
I've realized that my early training motivation, which included seeking acceptance in an "elite" group and outperforming others, was a way to cope with past traumas and low self-esteem from not being included in athletic circles during my youth.
This approach, while initially boosting my ego and self-worth, led to a cycle of injuries and emotional distress when I failed to meet my own expectations.
What do you do when you notice a shift in your training motivation?
Ben: This is awesome. And Padraig, if the question is where to go from here, you’re doing it; this is it.
Patrick: He has the awareness.
Ben: Exactly.
Ego is just the thing inside of us that says I'm important.
Everyone has it, and it's good that we do. It’s the reason we want to accomplish things.
But when it no longer serves us on the path of ultimate health, wellness, fitness, satisfaction—all those things we talk about all the time—then we have to recognize that it's hurting us or at least holding us back. And Padraig is there.
So, if there is something to add to this, it's remembering to pull back as often as possible to the greater perspective of the ultimate chase.
Chasing Excellence 1.0 was all about showing up to the gym six days a week and working your ass off. That gets you in the door so we can have this conversation, and sometimes it takes six years and sometimes it takes six weeks, but most people, myself included, aren't ready for that higher level conversation on day one.
And the conversation is with yourself.
I'm doing this for what purpose? If I'm going to the gym to bust my ass every day, why?
If you’re getting hurt and beating yourself up for not finishing at the top of the leaderboard, you’ve got to ask yourself what’s going on.
Right alongside determination, tenacity, fortitude, resilience, and discipline, we need to add curiosity and perspective.
For people like us, determination, tenacity, and everything else can lead in the wrong direction. That wrong direction looks a lot like beating ourselves up if we don’t win the workout, make Quarters, PR, or whatever.
That’s not what we’re chasing here.
We’re chasing achievement, sure, but not achievement at all costs. Not if chasing that achievement pulls us off-center, if it pulls us away from our values and our higher selves.
Patrick: Without saying it, you just walked through our awareness, intention, and action framework. Especially the first two components of that, the awareness and intention.
It’s really easy and attractive to jump straight to actions - do this, not that. Train this way, not that way.
But what you just laid out makes more sense - and it’s where Padraig is.
Focus on the awareness, then use that awareness to set the intention. Then, and only then, think about the actions.
Awareness dictates intention. Intention determines action.
Ben: It's so easy for me to get caught in this, too, by the way.
When I come to the gym, I'm a human being who's been doing CrossFit for 15 years. I obviously love it, and there's an aspect of me that wants to be better than other people.
But I also know that pursuit is so much smaller than the bigger aspect, which is I want to kick ass into my nineties and be a benefit, not a burden, to my family.
I don't want to get injured.
If I get injured and can't do this for the next 20 days, I know what that does to my mental state and everything else. I know it affects how I show up to work, for my family, and for myself.
So, while that desire to perform well or PR or whatever is still there - it’s two, three, ten notches lower than it used to be.
It’s getting my attention, but only as much as it deserves.
Original Episode: