Dear No Excuses Family,
We wanted to keep everyone informed of a change that is coming to the gym! We are going to be rearranging the whiteboard to make it more streamlined and organized. The aim is that once the board is more organized, it will become a focal point for our athletes to celebrate and encourage each other as we take strides in becoming the best we are capable of becoming; that it will be a representation of the relentless effort each one of you puts in on a daily basis. You might not have the fastest time, or the best score, but you stepped foot in this building and busted it so we want your effort to be recognized. This is about moving forward in your fitness, regardless of where you start or where you currently are.
CrossFit is empirical based fitness, meaning that it is observable, measurable and repeatable. That is the reason why every workout is timed and scored, and why we record how we did on a day-to-day basis. Our goal for you is increased work capacity, to be able to do more in less time. For example, If you do Grace with 95 pounds in 5 minutes and then 6 months later you do it with the same weight in 3 minutes, we know that your work capacity has increased, that you are more fit! Maybe you have experienced the thrill of PR’ing a benchmark WOD or completing a workout RX’ed for the first time, or just completing a workout, period! Either way, no matter where you are in your fitness journey with us here at No Excuses, we want to celebrate you and aid you in measuring your progress by making the recording of your scores more of a priority at the gym. Recording times and scores is not intended to make anyone feel bad about him or herself, or to discourage anyone. If we hear of anyone making negative comments about someone else’s scores, that person will be asked to leave. We are a family, and we want to rally around each other. It is our hope that you will take the reorganization of the board as an opportunity to begin (or restart or continue) tracking your progress in earnest. We are moving forward here at No Excuses!
At the very least, you should be recording your workout times and scores on a daily basis. Some people like to add little details about the day: how you slept the night before, what you ate, how you felt mentally. All of these pieces of information aid you in getting better and help to paint a big picture of your overall wellness. Think of yourself as a research study, where the sample size is one. (n=1 for all you nerds out there like me). You need to collect data on yourself so that you can determine what did or did not influence your results. We want your effort in here to move you forward, and by tracking how you performed along with other data (sleep, mood, fuel) you can make sure that progress is occurring, and if it’s not — you have all the information recorded to look back on to figure out what is going on.
As a service to you, we have a gym account with Beyond the Whiteboard which is an online WOD log for CrossFitters. You can use this service free of charge! Beyond the Whiteboard helps you track EVERYTHING, even the shoes you wore if you want to go there with tracking your workouts. Please contact Coach Ben to get your invitation to join. We really hope that this service will aid you in your fitness goals and encourage you as you grow and develop as an athlete.
The new whiteboard will change how we do things just a little bit as the Coach will be writing everyone’s names, just for the sake of organization and readability. On the flip side, it helps us out tremendously if you sign-in to your class on the MindBody system before you come or when you arrive. If you are unsure of how to do it, ask a Coach to show you!
Thank you for everything you do to make this community great! We are blessed with an amazing group of athletes. Please let us know of anything that we can help you with!