CrossFit Athletic Group

Early on when a new website called crossfit.com went live on the internet, it consisted of a sole workout and nothing else. The routine of 3-on-1-off had not been set, the term "fitness" had not been defined, the idea of an affiliate was a foreign concept, and a workout post was as likely to be two full paragraphs as two lines. As 2003 and 2004 rolled around the workouts began to take shape into the elegant couplets and triplets we see today:

For time:
Run 800 meters
7 rounds of the couplet:
135 pound Hang squat clean, 7 reps, and
15 Ring dips
Run 800 meters

One perscription for all athletes. However, a few people began to take exception to the fact that there was no alternates listed; what if you can't hang clean 135 lbs? What is the seniors' distance? Dips are a short-man's exercise, what about us tall people? And it's 2004: where the hell am I supposed to get a set of rings?

Now imagine, for a second, that you are the one in charge of posting the workouts. It's you, one person, and an infinite amount of different circumstances and abilities to account for. Do you make your workout post 5 pages long with flow charts, conversion metrics, and graphs? Or do you just say eff it and give people a north star?

This was especially prominent for workouts with bars, dumbbells, or kettlebells; why isn't there a separate girls weight? Yet the workouts kept ignoring the sex line and as the years went on something interesting happened: girls started lifting more than guys.

"Fuck yo girls weight Charlie Murphy!"

That is a classic video of Nicole Carroll from a Level-1 Seminar, but there are tons of other examples from the likes of Eva T, Annie Sakamoto, and Kelly Moore - all of whom have workouts named after them as a result. Fast forward 20 years and now we have Katie Shakes.

Along the way, however, it was realized that these workouts were being treated more like sport and, after all, basketball, tennis, and track have separate guys and girls leagues. So where was the solution? How could the benefits of a sports environment be preserved while also keeping the focus on what the core of CrossFit was really about? The answer came almost exactly twenty years ago to this date: A Compare-to link.

Compare to what, exactly?

Compare to you.

Compare your efforts today to the last time you did this workout. What were your weights? Where did you do it? How did you sub handstand push-ups? As the first Diane suggested, these workouts were "our" workouts; it's a moving target that can only be kept track of by plotting data points. The occasions Coach advertised someone else's time to the masses were done more to show what was possible than to rank athletes, knowing that the best individual performances happen within the context of a group competing. The fact that the CrossFit Games and other competitions have branched off need not distract us from where the roots are planted.

And there, in less than 600 words, is the single factor that makes CrossFit the most enduring fitness program seen in our lifetime: it's takes the best things from team sports and the best things from individual sports and applies it to something that you'll need until the day you die.

...........

/deep exhale

That was my reaction - along with a few of my favorite swear words - when I clicked the little box that says Published by the  Dream Team + AOTS post. I had done it to myself again: For the second year in a row, the Athlete of the Summer would be the most difficult to defend.

Part of my wishes I didn't feel the need to defend Mrs. Van, Bubs, Dillon, or Jennifer getting a banner, while the other part of me knows it comes from a love of the rest of you guys I would not trade for anything. Again, of the 27ish people on the Dream Team radar this Summer, probably 15 of them had a legit case for having a banner; I love Chase, I love Mrs. Carey, I love Cecilia, I love Mr. Kuiper, and oh how much easier it would be if I could say that they missed the banner because the first place person had 117% attendance, 30 rounds of Cindy in 10 minutes, and deflated all the soccer balls in the gym with their bare hands. But that is not the case, and especially not this Summer.

So all of this begs the question: how does one actually win Athlete of the Summer?

As the sole individual who presents that award, I am telling you I honestly do not have the answer. It is the truest thing to a moving target as there is in the gym. But that's the point: don't chase the target, let the target land on you, and understand that a limited criteria would lead to limited athlete pool - which would be the furthest thing from what is actually going on in our gym right now. I have never experienced a Champions Club Summer where the lines between groups have been this blurred. There was no high school group, parents group, or Farm System, it was just the group. The CrossFit Athletic Group. On the occasions I put my "grunch" aside, it was one of the most enjoyable things I've ever experienced at this gym.

The blurring of these lines was (and is) a work of nature; an environment was provided and evolution happened. 

When artificial things - AOTS award, attendance, monthly payments, etc. - are included in a natural environment, it creates a lot of conflict in my head. Do we need awards? Is logging attendance a good use of time? What constitutes a rep and what constitutes a "no rep." How do we keep track of money? Those are all questions I've asked myself at least once a week since 2010, and I still don't know that I have the best answers. What I do know, however, is of all the Champions Club peeps who could call Summer 2023 their best (and there are a lot of you) so far, there is one who deserves a special recognition.

Who me?

When the second Monday in June rolled around this year, Mrs. Van was coming off an inconsistent spring filled with baseball games and graduation stuff, and it took her a minute to get rolling again. A small tweak in her diet (bumped up protein a bit) mixed with consistent attendance found her right back to her normal speed after a week or two. Soon she was Athlete of the Week.

This is the point in the Summer when I realized I was going to have some major conflicts in late August: every single person in our core group of attendees was doing so damn good. And if you can believe this from anyone, you know I spend waaaayyyyy too much time trying to find chinks in the armor. Individually, without exception, there always are, but as a group there was nothing: Attendance was rock steady, benchmarks set gym records, lifts set personal records, and the community feel was better than ever. Yet among the crowded top of the totem was Mrs. Van, who continued to perform at a consistency and intensity we had not seen up to that point. By the time the Monopoly workout rolled around and she made the most ridiculous H-O-R-S-E shot of all time, it was clear that all the stars had aligned for this to be her best Summer of her 4-year CrossFit career; the question was, would it be enough? I don't know how the answer "yes" came to me, but as someone who places a lot of significance on vibe, feel, and intangibles, all signs kept pointing towards her.

Mrs. Van is not the first person to get a banner who did not win most workouts. She is not the first person to win a banner with 100% attendance. In a technical sense, she might not even be the first parent to win a banner (Lord only knows how many little GingerSaps are crawling around Washtenaw county.) In reality, Mrs. Van did not do "better" than any of you during Summer 2023; that also was not her main focus. She wanted to have the best Summer she possibly could, and keeping her mind on that in the heat of all the competition is a grossly underated skill. She earned every square inch of the banner that's going up there.

...........

When I go back and read the previous AOTS features, I notice how most of it isn't about that particular person, but rather the gym as a whole. That's because I think it's important to understand that every highlight, headline, Beast Mode, and award happens within the context of everyone else. Mrs. Van knows as well as I do that without the group of moms, dads, and kids around her at every session, she would not have had the Summer she did, and that goes for everyone else as well. It is this dependancy on each other that elevates the entire group. So how, then, do I justify giving out awards when it indirectly advertises a dependance on me?

Because it's a competition, and competition is healthy! 10 years ago Katie Bromm got Athlete of the Summer based primarily on attendance; I wish today's standards were present back then so she would've had the chance to compete with Bubs, AJ, Murley, and Ricky... and I still think she would have got it.

If Mrs. Van proved anything this year, it's that every single person in the Champions Club is on one playing field that is as fair as it's possible for such a diverse thing to be. Parker can be partners with Mr. Carey for the 80's Workout and a computer nerd can be on the same Dream Team as a college All American. The Athlete of the Summer is not a kids award or an attendance award or a performance award, it's a Champions Club award. One award for all the Champions Club. Next year it could be you.