Caleb Beavers, Coach and Owner
In this first blog post I just want to share some of my thoughts about consistency and how it applies to a CrossFit Box.
Showing Up: The Real Secret to Fitness Success
I think we all have heard that consistency in fitness is the best way to see results, and it’s true. Being fit is not something we can do for a season and expect to have lifelong results. Being fit is choosing to adopt the lifestyle of being fit. That lifestyle is not signing up for a gym and working out 7 days a week for a month then falling off.
Maybe you will see some short term results, but it will not make you a fit person. Fitness requires consistency… forever! Fitness requires the mentality of “I am going to start working out, and I am never going to stop.” I can say this is true from personal experience.
My Personal Journey Toward Consistency
A bit of a personal testimony: The first time I ever “worked out” outside of PE class or sports practice was Senior year of high school. I took a strength training class so every other day at 7:15am in the morning, I would get to school and immediately go workout in the new weight lifting facility.
We learned how to do Olympic weight lifting and that was an awesome foundation for my fitness, but it didn’t last. Fast forward to freshman year of college, I didn’t do anything until the second half of the spring semester. My roommate and I decided we would get shredded before summer (naive, I know), so we started going to the rec center a couple times a week. It was unguided training – we would run a mile on the treadmill, hit a few cable machines, and call it a night. Needless to say, we were not shredded by summer.
After that semester, I would very occasionally do a similar workout routine at my apartment’s fitness center, then I got really into slacklining. Now this finally gave me the consistency I needed to get somewhat in shape. I loved slacklining so much (still do) that I would go every single day that I could and would do it for at least an hour. Then I got into highlining, which conditioned me to be a very good hiker, and I was getting fit but the fitness was limited.
Finally, COVID times I actually joined a gym. Monique (girlfriend at the time), and I joined Crunch, and we started going regularly. I didn’t really know it at the time, but this was the start of my fitness journey. I tried a few other gyms, trying to stay consistent, and then I finally landed at Boulder CrossFit. CrossFit brought me a number of things that transformed my fitness: accountability, support, programming, and intensity.
Having coaches who cared, a community that was supportive and held me accountable, and pre-planned workouts that were intense; all of this radically transformed me into the human I am today. The past two years of CrossFit for me have been the most consistent, I can confidently say I have come in 4-5 times a week in some capacity. I can absolutely tell the difference, and I am just getting started.
All this to say, I did not truly start to see results in my fitness “journey” until I accepted the new lifestyle that was required. Fitness was not just “lets go to the rec center for a few times a week until summer so that we can be shredded”. It was embracing the concept that this was my new way of life. There is no “end” to my fitness journey. There is only “show up”. There is only “continue to do the work, week after week.” I have no end goal for fitness, so in all actuality I can’t really call it a “journey”, because in my mind a journey implies there is an end.
Consistency Is the Foundation of Fitness
If we truly want to be fit, we have to show up, and never stop showing up. That’s where I think CrossFit is amazing. For one, working out in a group setting is just inherently better. Being around others encourages you to go hard, and getting that dopamine hit of the fist bump and “good job!” does so much more than just popping in your airpods and hitting the machines by yourself at a globo style gym. Add to that trained coaches every time, and a workout that is pre-made for you so all you have to do is show up and do the work… no wonder we keep coming back, and that consistency is what makes CrossFitters fitter than the average human.
Scaling and Modifying Workouts for Any Level
This brings me to my next point, and it’s a point I want to drive home to my members and future prospective members. As we all know, CrossFit is defined as constantly varied, functional movements, done at a high intensity. That means on any given day, you are likely to find a wide variety of workouts programmed for the day. Some days we just hit a double strength, some days we have a long cardio conditioning workout, some days we have a little bit of both.
The great thing about CrossFit is that our workouts are planned for us, but this can be a double edge sword if the workouts are posted so that you can see them before showing up to the gym. Some of us may see the long running workout and decide not to come into the gym that day because we hate running (which probably means we should work on it). Some of us may see hand stand walking in the programming and decide to not come in that day because we don’t have that skill yet. Maybe we see dumbbell squat cleans and decide to not come because our legs are sore from another day. There are any number of reasons why we might decide not to show up to the gym because of what is programmed ahead of time. There’s something I want everyone to know:
What we put up on the whiteboard and what we post as the WOD is not a requirement to show up.
We would much rather you show up regardless of what is written on the board, and scale or modify the movement. If there’s multiple 400m runs in the WOD and you really don’t feel like running, that’s fine. You can bring out a rower, you can hop on the bike, you can do jumping jacks, hell you can stand in the corner and do bicep curls… we really don’t care, we just want you in the gym and moving. We may ask you why you don’t want to run or we might explain the benefit of running, but we are not going to force you to run. We WANT you to be in the gym, moving, in any way possible.
The Power of Just Showing Up
It all comes back to consistency. Consistently showing up and providing your body with the much needed exercise is so much more important than doing exactly what is written on the whiteboard. Of course, we love it when we have a full class all participating in the same workout, but we equally love when our athletes show up and workout with us despite all of the reasons not to.
There are so many ways we can modify a workout to meet us where we are for that particular day. I will keep using running as an example because it is a common element that people seem to avoid. Like I mentioned earlier, if we really hate a workout movement it probably means there is room to improve on that movement. Instead of fully substituting the 400m run, a coach might tell you to just run a 200m, or even a 100m. For sure if there is an injury or medical reason, we want to substitute that movement fully and not make anything worse. However if the only reason is that we just don’t want to, lets work on the movement but not at the expense of avoiding the gym altogether.
At the end of the day, and I can’t stress this enough, we want to support every single one of you in becoming a fitter person, and the foundation of that is showing up consistently. We want to provide a space for everyone to adopt this lifestyle change of fitness in a fun, supportive manner. We will always support you exactly as you are when you walk through our doors. After all, that’s what you pay for. You are paying for top notch coaching in a top notch facility, fully supported by our wonderful community. One thing I can promise: you will never be judged by anyone if you are stepping through our doors to move your body. We support all, we love all, and we hope you continue on this fitness lifestyle with us for life.
Thanks for reading, we hope you continue on this fitness lifestyle with us for life.
-Caleb
