CrossFit Athletic Group

Milton Waddams was the supreme chief worker at IniTech, and the most loyal employee of the entire company. Though he was outshone by Peter Gibbons, Michael Bolton, and Samir Naga… Naga… Noggaworkhereanyore, Milton waddled to his desk every morning on time, set his radio to a reasonable volume, and… well… just kind of existed for 8 hours.

When the consultant Bobs came in to do their consulting, their first order of action was to figure out what all the employees did; not what their title was or what their job description entailed, but what actions they actually performed over the course of the work day. To their surprise (and Lumbergh’s) most of the employees did absolutely nothing. For example, Peter would show up 15 minutes late then just zone out for a bit. Tom would take the paperwork from the customers and give it to the engineers. Kind of. That turned out to be complicated. Either way, analyzing cases like this would help Initech streamline – meaning fire people to save money. In the case of Milton Waddams, the process would be much simpler.

After doing some digging, it turned out that Milton was actually laid off by the company a few years prior, but nobody told him. However, a glitch in the payroll program meant that Milton kept getting his checks, thus the reason he kept showing up for work. The solution?

“We fixed the glitch.”

………..

Over the course of the last two Summers, Ashley Fry has been at the gym more days than I have. (I’m pissed about that actually; I am going for Athlete of the Summer next year.) There is a difference, though, between showing up and going to work. I think that is the difference we saw between 2018 Fry and the mutant we saw at the 6:30 session in Summer 2019.

The Summer 2018 Fry came off a 3-month hiatus if I remember correctly and it showed. She looked exactly the same as she had the past 3 Summers she’d been in the gym. Jennifer Banet: damn dude, I’ve been waiting for that! Erica Krueger: where the hell did that come from? Ashley Fry: upper middle of the pack as usual. Our gym has been known to have some incredible female athletes, so being in the upper middle class is nothing to be ashamed about at all. It’s just not… you know. We've never done the participation trophy thing.

The Summer 2019 Fry was not coming off a hiatus, but her normal 3-day-a-week(ish) attendance and she looked exactly the same as she always had. Shakes told me a few days before the Summer started that Fry was “going for Athlete of the Summer” again. First off, I wondered what the hell that meant. Secondly, I was like “yeah right!” Welp, I had an answer to both of those after the first week. Really, the first workout. It was only partially to do with the actual workout numbers/results though.

Jay – who finished second in AOTS – would routinely put up the top score of the day. He'd do muscle-ups and heavy cleans and we'd watch like “GAWD the dude is so fit!” Fry routinely put up the top girls time and sometimes even beat Jay in bodyweight stuff. Comparing them head-to-head strictly by the workout numbers is a little misleading for many reasons, the least of which being that I might coach them to emphasize something different on any given workout. But even more, the entire context of the gym would have to be taken into account. If David Saporito was a consistent part of the Summer, would that have made Jay's times look different? If Murley and Shannon were consistent parts of the Summer would Fry’s times have held up? You can play this game all day. How would Jennifer’s 2018 times have looked if Erika came into June in shape? How would Saporito’s 2017 numbers have looked if JZ hadn’t left months earlier? Much like attendance, performance is part of the Athlete of the Summer formula, but not everything. Factors outside of their control can make the end results shade to one side or the other. In the end, it simply has to be good enough to put you in the conversation.

Needless to say, this was the case with Fry. If the timer had been broken for the last three months, Fry's work output would have still been obvious to everyone. She was running with the runners, lifting with the lifters, and doing everything in between. In fact, I cannot remember a single off-day; she simply brought it from that respect. She could not control who was or was not at her session, or what mood I was in, or what the traffic on Stephenson was like. So instead she focused on what she could control. Every single day (except for that one day). And holy shoulder lats that turned out well! However, the deciding factor was her demeanor.

The Summer 2019 Fry looked, moved, felt, and carried herself different than I’d ever seen. We didn't have a random cry episode, there wasn't any excuse-making or mid-workout frustration. It was more than just showing up. Waaaaayyyy more than just showing up. Her performance put her in the conversation. Her attendance put her in the conversation (close call, though). The feel and vibe she gave off got her the banner, and though things out of her control might mean she drops in performance or attendance, I hope that swagger is here to stay.

...........

Ashley Fry’s Champions Club career always seemed to have a glitch. There would be a great workout, a great lift, then a random cry. There would be a great month, an almost Athlete of the Winter, then AWOL. Reasons are reasons, and really don’t matter very much at all. Either you are going to do the thing or you aren’t. Then once you finally decide to do the thing, are you going to do it or ARE YOU GOING TO DO IT LIKE A FOOTBALL COACH SENDING YOU A TEXT MESSAGE IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE THAT’S HOW ALL OF THEM TALK?

It’s pretty difficult to look at a good thing and be like, “I can do better than that.” It’s a different kind of difficult to actually do better and relentlessly keep doing better every opportunity you get. That is because pretty soon the reality sets in that it's probably not one quick fix that makes everything better. You can't just subtract Milton Waddams from the payroll, move his desk down to Storage B, and call the glitch fixed. We know how that eventually turns out. It has to be a constant drip, drip, drip every single day. It means asking honest questions about yourself. It means taking a risk and being okay if it doesn't work out this time. It means stepping outside of the comfort zone. And it's just figuring out that, untimately, it takes what it takes; there's not a set formula to get to where you want.

As a whole, that's what the Champions Club did this Summer. A microcosm of that was Ashley Fry. She fixed the glitch. And now she’s not Milton Waddams, but Vanellope Von Schweetz with her name and picture all over our place.