"I cheated during the WOD"
Yesterday, I had an interesting conversation with my best friend, Maid of Honor, Physical Therapist, and owner of Mobility Physical Therapy and Wellness, Nicole Woodard. We had a really open conversation about people cheating in WODs, diets, and life.
Nicole explained to me how 7 out of 10 WODs, it is a major mental battle for her to not skip a few reps or cut the workout short. In the beginning of her CrossFit journey, she felt great during Jumpstart classes, crushing the WODs compared to fellow newbies. Once Nicole started doing the regular classes, she was constantly finishing last, and logging her score on Wodify only to see herself at the bottom of the leader-board. She admits the struggle of feeling insignificant and shaving off reps in order to not be the last one standing during the workout.
Forward to over a year later, Nicole still finds herself in a mental battle to finish the entire workout without cutting reps short. But why?? She finds the physical pain of pushing through a workout the worst part. She could easily do 9 thrusters instead of 12 in order to avoid the pain in her legs or skip the last few reps of her burpees because her lungs are on fire. When presented in these situations now, Nicole reminds herself of who she is and the person she wants to be... this person is the woman who does what she says she'll do and withhold her integrity to herself and everyone around her.
In order to become this person, Nicole no longer logs her workouts on the leader-board and she does her best to focus on HER goals and HER progress through her CrossFit journey.
As a coach, I see it almost every day, people cheating themselves in order to hide from physical pain or emotional pain of "losing". This can be seen in a workout or even in the food they logged (or didn't log) each day. I want these people to remember that nobody judges you harder than yourself. We are born to be selfish human-beings and we will always be hardest on ourselves.
What kind of person are you? The person who does all their rounds and reps and also return the extra change the server gave them? Or the person who scored an extra $10 because the server didn't count out the change right... We all make mistakes, but doing the right thing, especially when nobody is looking, develops integrity! Now go out there and do your thing!!
