CrossFit Athletic Group

Click here for pt. 1, but please don't click here or here and certainly not here.

As many of you already know, me and school never agreed, and after my last college basketball game as a senior I stopped going to classes for good - a plan that originated all the way back to Mrs. Krebs 7th grade classroom at St. Dennis. To say I "dropped out" wouldn't be accurate because I was never really in it in the first place. That being said, I had two really good English teachers in college that gave me the foundation to write the way I do now. One of them, Mr. Martin, would always encourage me to "show, don't tell." I try to keep that consistent in my writing style, and I followed that principle in the Dream Team/AOTS post; instead of saying, "Man you guys, this was the most difficult and confusing decision I've ever made in the gym," I wrote it in a way that was difficult and confusing so you could feel how I felt.

"I read this twice and still don't know who won."

Dawg, me either Mel! You read it exactly how you were supposed to.

But right now I need to tell, and the reason being is because the things that happened this Summer on both a micro and a macro scale and the lessons learned from them are so important going forward that I don't want them up for interpretation. So here goes my non-creative writing for a little bit.

...........

Mariah Fielder is the Athlete of the Summer 2022.

This here is Mariah Fielder swinging Ol' Red

She is known by most people as Bubs. She was also known as Ducky (the little lizard from Land Before Time) and Grunch (she called me a "grinch" somewhere on the website but misspelled it), but for the rest of this post she will be referred to as Bubs. And before we get any further there are some conflicts of interest in the Athlete of the Summer decision I'd like to disclose:

• As of this time, I would consider Bubs to be my best friend outside of the gym because of her insight, understanding, and support.
• I am at a point in my CrossFit lifecycle where dramatic pr's are probably not going to happen. Now it's smaller, more infrequent pr's. 
• I appreciate the struggle for big jumps; I appreciate the struggle for small jumps even more.
• After Biff's performance in Summer 2015, I decided that if the AOTS ever came to a tie between a new person and a repeat, the repeat would get it.
• I have no problem with "double standards" or going against previous standards of my own.
• Aaron Sexton is my favorite person I've ever coached at the gym - partially because I knew him when he was a chubby lad with cankles at St. Dennis and partially because it's Aaron Sexton. Subjectively I'd have picked him over Bubs this Summer.
• I made a decision that Aaron would win the Athlete of the Summer after his performance on the 90's Theme Workout, and any time I'd see Bubs make a case I'd talk myself out of considering her based on conflict of interest #1.
• I published a version of the Dream Team/AOTS post announcing Aaron as the winner at 9:25 am that morning, then took it down, then published a version with Bubs as the winner a few hours later, then took it down again, then finally settled on the version you read to be published at 6 pm.
• I ate a yellow Starburst to make me feel better after the post was done.

Now time to tell.

Big jumps vs. small jumps. My experience leads me to beleive that everyone gets one "big" jump, and that jump has always come from a nutrition intervention. Take Aaron for example: starting in June he went from Bang energy drinks for breakfast to actual food - meat, fruit, and nuts. That change comes from a simple choice: am I going to eat like a human being or am I going to eat like a slob? And that choice is a difficult one because starting something from nothing always is.

But what happens when Aaron starts to level out? (Sidebar: parents and kids, please stop using the word "plateau" - none of you except maybe Crystal and the Careys have been here long enough). Is he going to get frustrated? Is he going to revert back to Bangs? Or is he going to keep plugging away at different variables until something good happens? And do that again. And again. And again. And again.

There is going to come a point in time for everyone where they are just simply not going to make improvements in whatever it is they're doing - CrossFit or whatever. Jacob always refers to it as the Law of Diminishing Returns; the longer you do something, the more difficult it is to get better at it. Nobody is free from this frame, not even the parents; ask Mrs.Van how much harder it was to go from 65 to 70 lbs. on a snatch than it was to go from 35 to 65 lbs. Whenever you find yourself struggling for the smallest gains, think of Bubs; commit to small adjustments and give them time to work.

Double Standards. In Summer 2011 I made a rule that whoever got the best attendance would win Athlete of the Summer. I invented this rule as a way to encourage people to show up more. That is a bad reason to make a rule. Making the product and service better would have been the best way to make people show up more. As it turned out, Bubs, Bromm, and Jason would have won it anyway.

But then 2015 came around and Holy Bouncing Banets I had a decision to make: Shakes with best attendance or Elizabeth or Jennifer or Erika with almost the best attendance. To justify giving it to Biff I said AOTS has to be 90% or better.

Then in Summer 2017 nobody got 90% attendance. Uh.... top 10, I say! Here ya go Saportio... wait, did I spell that right?

This Summer Bubs did not finish in the top-10 for attendance. That is completely fine because she deserves the Athlete of the Summer. Whenever you find yourself struggling with standards - either yours or someone else's - think of Bubs; do a good enough job to justify changing the standards.

Repeat banner. A difficult part of my job is that most decisions are not made in a vaccum, but rather with the bigger picture in mind. What kind of message would I be sending to Shakes or Dillon or Cec if a tiebreaker went to the person who never got a banner? (Shit, how would that make Aaron feel?) Why would I penalize Bubs for having the best spring of her fitness career? Should she have just waited to do all the good stuff until the second Monday in June? I already got got on that once, and that's on me; what you allow is what you encourage.

Competition is so freaking cool if you have the nuts to put yourself in a challenging enough situation where losing is possible. And repeated excellence needs to not only be rewarded, but also promoted. Whenever you find yourself feeling guilty or hesitant about being competitive, think of Bubs, or Bubs, or Bubs, or Bubs; continue pursuing excellence and the people around you will eventually meet you there.

My God writing like this is straight torture, Method Man-style. So here's what I want you to do now: go back and read this section again from a lens that excludes your opinion. I'm off to write about things that vaguely relate to the subject of this post, and if you can see how they connect with where the Champions Club is headed then great. If not, the attendance post should be coming soon.

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Business is boring. It's sooooooooooo boring. There is no nuance. There are just rules and guidelines and policy and chain of command and paperwork and recording books. Busines is inanimate; it exists only through paper and screens and buildings of various shapes and sizes. Business has to be this way because even playing fields do not exist in nature, and business wants to level things out so anyone can have a chance to grow the same boring-ass stuff. Business is what I imagine the state of Iowa to be.

Corn here or corn there or corn waaaaaaay over there

This gym is human. It's sooooooooooo human.

The human writing this has changed his mind, questioned his motives, false started, and backspaced just as much as he's been decisive, shown integrity, anticipated the snap count, and hit send. The tire incident and the Lockdown workouts both came from the same human and can't exist without the other.

The humans reading this have been simultaneously proud and jealous of the person working out next to them; they have felt awkward about how, or how often, they look at someone in their session; they eagerly anticipate walking through the garage doors, but also dread what is going to come once they do; they run towards Mr. Malak with loving embrace seconds before they flee in a flatulant fear. The humans reading this, deep down, know these truths about each other because those truths also exist in themselves.

"What you reveal, you heal"

- Jay-Z

Our human side is hidden through text messages and emails and other things that come prepared. This is because we don't trust the humans on the receiving end; there's a reason business is spelled with "sin". But stepping inside the Champions Club washes all that soft shit away and, over time, reveals everything because we allow it to. And on those days when you think it's a good time to hide the human side, even just for a little bit, something about this place convinces you otherwise:

Sap's first 7 steps in the gym after the tire incident - 2 years later

Bubs is a human. She missed a pr on deadlifts and bonked (for her) on Elizabeth; she went sentimental and picked Saporito as the flier instead of Carvin; she went to State; she slouches more than she needs to. She will go "Iaahh!" that makes us both pumped up for the workout and concerned about her mental stability. But she's so Bubs about her human side that we are Bubs about her human side too. And ours.

Watching Elizabeth Banet in Summer 2015 was like watching a sewing machine, and it's why the title of her AOTS Feature is a line from I Am Not a Human Being. Watching Bubs in Summer 2022 was like watching my little cousin Mary try to sew something by hand for the first time. "No Aunt Margaret, I like the thread going this way better, it makes a nice gash right across the pattern, see?"

There are definitely times when it's right to grab the sewing maching (or, ask my mom to grab the sewing machine). But there is something - on both an individual and collective level - to letting the thread go where our mind tells it to, shout "Iaahh!", and then just roll with it.