“The greatest adaptation to CrossFit takes place between the ears” – Greg Glassman
In project two, I decided to explore a new inquiry that I am passionate about which is navigating between our inner voices. How may we strengthen our minds to succeed in CrossFit? CrossFit is a huge part of my life, and l have been always curious about how to stay focused and overcome the negative thoughts I face especially during intense workouts or a big lift. So, I decided in this project to test my mind in different ways and see how my performance going. I tried to react to it and another day to ignore it, but that failed. I felt my body was working against me. Therefore, I decided to observe those feeling without taking any action and replace it with positive thoughts such as a strong statement or reminding myself of my goals or being engaged with the music while separating myself from my thoughts while observing them. This way helps me to manage negative thoughts and feel motivated to successfully complete my workout with a great performance. I believe that everyone has a way to cope with fear, and that’s why it’s important that we explore ourselves to find a way that works best for us.
Training in CrossFit for four years and being with different CrossFit communities, I realized that there are people who might compare themselves to others instead of tracking their own journey. This way we are not going to improve because mentally we are obsessed and stressed out which going to only hold us back. In order to move forward, we need to shift our focus to ourselves, believe in ourselves, be patient, and be committed to being the best version of ourselves. Some people at CrossFit gyms might say negative comments either about your performance or techniques and that going to affect our minds and distract us during the workout. Creating a mental answer machine auto-response to let go of the comments, would help us to not let these comments consume us. Finally, we are all human, we go through a lot and have some bad days where we mentally don’t feel like pushing hard during our training and that is normal. However, it’s better to control our emotions and not to let them take over and ruin our day and workout.
Outcome
I created a motivational video reflecting my own journey aiming to motivate and encourage the CrossFit community at any fitness level to train their mind. CrossFit is a mind sport as much as physical and when you strengthen your mind, you will be surprised by how much more capability you have.
“The human body is an incredible machine, but most people only get out of that machine what their mind allows them” – Rich Froning
Inspirations