34
There never seems to be enough time in the day, huh? I know that's how it feels to me. I work, I workout, I have extracurricular activities that are important to me. Sure enough, by the time I get around to finishing everything...it's already time for tomorrow to start. When I talk to people about Crossfit and the commitment I've made to this lifestyle, one of the most common things I hear is: "I just don't have the time of day to be able to work out." To be as blunt as I can be, this is an excuse. This is the most widely accepted excuse I can think of to not take care of your body. "I don't have time." Now, don't get me wrong, I used to use this excuse all the time. I was probably most famous for saying things like, "geeze, I'd love to get into p90x, but I don't have 90 minutes to spend working out" or "man, I really want to go to the gym, but it takes so much time to get all the way there, workout, then get all the way back." Then I started Crossfit. After my intro class coached by Coach Lauren, she sat us down and informed us about what it would take to become a member of Red Stick Crossfit. Very bluntly, she said, "look, if you're only gonna come once a week, you're gonna look like you only come once a week. Don't waste your own time."
Coach Lauren. Wanna look like this and do this? MAKE TIME!
I was floored. I really liked this workout (so far) but was this REALLY the way to get people to workout here? I mean, I'm busy! These people don't know my life! Right? RIGHT?! Turns out, they do know my life. And Coach Lauren was absolutely right. If you only exercise once a week, you'll look like it. The most important part about working out is making time to do it. There is no awesome pill or packaged diet plan that's gonna make you look like Julie Foucher. Ain't gonna happen. I needed to be in the gym at least 3 times a week. So I started to make the time. The more I went, the more changes I saw, the more time I wanted to make. All of a sudden, my fitness became important to me. In a very short amount of time, being fit became more important than sleep, more important than food that's bad for me, more important than facebook, or tv, or going out drinking (even though, who are we kidding? Going out drinkin' is fun shiz. I digress). We make time for what's important to us and being in shape and taking care of myself is important to me. It's worth losing an hour of sleep to make sure that I get a WOD in. Or spend an hour of my evening, beasting it out. My 5 am/6 am family at Red Stick has a saying: "everybody gotta go to work!" and it's true. We all have responsibilities, obligations, and commitments. But going to work in the box is one of them. For all the things our boxes give us--encouragement, support, hope, faith, a sense of accomplishment--we owe our box some time everyday to give it our all. So next time you say to yourself, "I'd love to work out, but I don't have the time." Think about it. Most gyms open at 5 am. How many papers are you grading/deals are you closing/work are you actually doing at 5 am? None? Guess you've got time to WOD! See ya in the box!
