There is honor in the process

There’s just something…it’s hard to explain or define…that comes along with pouring yourself into a particularly grueling training session.

You learn something about yourself in there.

I am reminded of living in the US Embassy compound in Baghdad when I first discovered CrossFit.  None of us had a clue, in hindsight, what we were doing.  We were just a bunch of dudes who got together either after we were done with our shift or during our off days who decided throughout the course of the day what we were going to do to smash ourselves.  

We would find some terrible workout, laugh about how awful it was going to be, and occasionally even modify it to make it even shittier.  Then we would laugh some more about it until the moment came to actually do it…and we would just grind it out no matter how long or shitty or terrible of an idea it was.

It was beautiful.  I sincerely miss those days.  They were simpler—before I really knew anything about strength and conditioning.  I’m sure half the time we did more harm than good and we could have been the stars of a CrossFit Fail video a hundred times, but it was the suffering amongst friends and brothers that made it awesome.

Why and how you train, in my opinion, speaks volumes about who you are as a person.

Don’t do it for the attention.

It’s not about posting your workout on social media.  Nobody cares but you—I can promise you that!

Slowly and probably accidentally, we got better.  Not at the rate that we could have or should have if we had proper training and a coach who knew a fraction of what I know now, but we did get better.  I never really started to figure out how to train people right until after I returned to the US, but I digress…

Don’t shy away from the chance to just put yourself through a hell of a workout.  Pour yourself into your training every day.  There’s something beautiful about the process….something honorable about CHOOSING to expose yourself to something difficult so that you can be better and harder to kill tomorrow.  It’s delayed gratification at its finest…the exposure to pain for tomorrow’s gain.  

It’s about YOU.

It’s about your training.

It can be about the person to your left and right.

It can be about your family, your kids, the people you love.

Have a purpose to why you train, and remember that purpose EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

There are few greater feelings than in this world than having a purpose, in my humble opinion.

Train with purpose.

RLTW <1>

—Coach Phil