by Jenna Torres
Who are you? Who is looking back at you in the mirror? What about when life get’s hard? Or when nobody is looking? Most importantly who do you want to be? I can’t answer these questions for you, I’m not sure if I could answer them all for myself. However, this is something I think about on a daily basis. Not only do I think about these questions, but I think about how my performance in a workout is a direct reflection of either who I am, or who I am trying to be.
Who I am isn’t the number or the time I write on the board. It’s not defined by what skills I can or cannot do, nor is it defined by what place I finish in a competition. Who I am is the difference between how I work when a coach is watching and when a coach isn’t. It is the difference between how I push myself in class versus when I workout alone. Who I am, is how I react to all of life’s twists and turns, any situation good or bad.
Who I want to be is a woman of integrity. Who I want to be is that person who helps you find your greatness, a loyal friend, a daughter to my mother, a sister to my siblings, and a wife to my husband. What I do not want to be is average, not an average coach, not an average competitor, and not an average woman. I want to make a difference, I want to be a top athlete, and I want to be a great coach.
What’s the point? Who we are can change from moment to moment, situation to situation, day to day. But, who we want to be, the type of person we want to be never changes. There are days I am exhausted, and days I feel like a million dollars. Weeks I have been on point with my nutrition and weekends that have started me back at square one, or so I feel. Times I have had to squeeze a full workout in, in 30minutes. Moments I have felt on top of the world and ones that have made me question why I strive for anything in life.
Our bodies and our minds want to automatically react to the way we are feeling that day. And usually when we are feeling off we generalize it by saying “I’m just not feeling it today”, as if we have to mentally give ourselves permission to not perform how we want to. And although our performance, attitude, and the way we feel mentally and physically may vary day to day, the fight to be the person we want to be should not change.
I use to think Craig drilled range of motion because CrossFit wanted to be stuck up and technical. However, I realized it’s not because Craig is trying to be an ass hole about what is considered a squat or not a squat. It’s because these workouts were not only creating the person I am, they were changing the person I had been my whole life.
If I can’t have integrity in a workout how in the world am I supposed to have it in life? If I cheat a workout because all of a sudden shit just got hard, what do you think I will do when shit hits the fan in the real world? If I am more concerned about what you think of me then of what I think of me, then how could you ever expect me to be honest? If I only work hard because you are watching me, how could I ever expect to be able to work for what I want in life.
Every day is a decision, and sometimes that decision is a battle. There will be days you want to quit. Days you want to change the choice you made to try level three instead of level two, and many days you will want to count that pull-up because your chin ALMOST got over the bar. On those days remember two things. One, If you can’t win the battle in your mind when you are in a CrossFit workout, how will you overcome your own obstacles in life? Second, how you “score” in these workouts does not define your greatness, but how you handle the uncomfortability in the workouts does, and is a direct reflection of who you are as a person.
So, the next time you are questioning who you are, analyze your character in the middle of a workout.