CrossFit Athletic Group

Dr. Romanov (the Pose guy, who is also a legitimate genius) had a quote that has really stuck with me for a long time.

"Unnecessary things create incredible obstacles."

It's really difficult to explain how true this is until you actually experience the value of completely subtracting something that you didn't need. It's like when Hercules cut off Hydra's head and it grew 3 more in its place, only if the heads were, like, Denard Robinsons or Mr. Careys instead of more bad things. Maybe that's not the best analogy. Either way, when looking to fix a problem, it tends to work best if, instead of layering positive stuff on top of something negative, you just simply work like hell to get rid of the negative thing.

I thought Mrs. Tara was just about as fit as a mom could possible be during the fall. But she was also hiding two secrets that she knew were hindering her performance: 1) she had very negative feelings about work and 2) she had more carbohydrate in her diet than she needed. During a transition week for her we hung around after a session to talk about some of that stuff and it became clear she had no intention to put band aids over those issues, she wanted to simply subtract them.

Three months later Mrs. Tara might not only be the fittest mom in the Champions Club, but I think she's the fittest female athlete. Period.

This is also another one of those repeats I was looking to avoid. Anthony Banet has really been doing his thing, Mr. Kuiper has even further solidified himself as our fittest dad*, Lily Cavataio has found our she has an incredibly strong and functional use of her body, and, to be honest, I was really close to giving this award to either Michael Banet or Mallory Colussi, who have both been standouts in the AA session and seen a dramatic change to their view of fitness. In the end I can't front on the mom who managed to step her game up even more. She had one single bad workout all spring (Elizabeth) and the rest was absolute nails! To me, her highlights came early on with 22 rounds of Cindy, then midway through with a great effort on Manion (though we almost lost her), and the emphatic mic drop came on Memorial Day when she out-ran Dillon on the last 400 of Lumberjack.

Unless Madison, Dillon, Jessica, and Lulu have the most unexpected fall-off in the history of the Champions Club, Mrs. Tara should not be the fittest female in the gym in September. But she's already proved me wrong on more than one occasion, so I guess I'll just have to wait and see what the Summer has in store.

*The Mr. Bennis Non-Dad-Category Committee asked me to put this asterisk here

...........

Other than the people who invented Zoom and facemasks, I can't think of too many more people who would be a little (privately) sad to see things returning to normal. I was spoiled in the sense that everything else in your lives were subtracted from you - some of it unnecessary and some of it not - and the only thing that stood in the way of you and a 12-hour bingewatching marathon was a trip to the Champions Club, or wherever the Champions Club was meeting on that particular day. Our Summer attendance was at a level we'll probably never see again, and both fall and winter numbers were way higher than usual.

Spring brought us back to reality a bit in terms of attendance and consistency, but the tradeoff is one I'll take any day. We had sports. And my goodness I can't put into words how much I enjoy going to see you guys play. So instead of a recap of the things inside the gym, I think we need to recognize the kids who represented the Champions Club outside the gym.

Thank you guys for making it through a difficult season and giving us something to cheer for. We will never forget you like we will never forget the crack of Todd the Plumber.

On to Summer 2021!