Looking Towards my Vision of Success

"We can focus on success and spend our life looking around to see how our competition is doing, or we can look straight ahead towards the vision of greatness we have for ourselves….We can look at competition as the standard or as an indicator of our progress towards our own standards. We can chase success or we can embark on a quest for excellence and focus 100% of our energy to become our best....and let success find us." - Jon Gordon

I have been thinking about this quote a lot lately. Since I participated in my first Crossfit competition, the MAT Games, I have been on a mission to learn more skills, lift more, improve my overall performance, and truly push myself. The other competitors at the MAT Games were an inspiration and motivation to take it to the next level.

 

My performance was okay during the games. I finished the WODs and made it through my first competition, but just okay. I think I could do better if I started to push myself more during the workouts — get that one more rep, one more round, or a tad more weight.

MAT Games

 I will have another chance to redeem myself at a competition in December. My thoughtful husband accepted an invitation for me (before I had a chance to look at what skills I needed) to participate in a team competition with some friends. These skills that I don’t have mastered yet, have led to my November goals.

This month I have been focusing on improving (or learning) the following:

1. Double Unders
2. Kipping Pull-ups (Using only purple band or no Band during workouts)
3. More weight during WODs (KBS, OHS, Snatch)

I have a long way to go and a lot of reps ahead of me to get where I want to be for my next competition. Sometimes it’s hard to have the patience, the slowest WODs, or skip a rest day to put in more time, but I know that is what I need to improve.

Crossfit (and the MAT Games) has definitely brought back the competitor in me. While I try to make improvements and learn new skills, I need to remind myself that it’s not always about “winning” or finishing first. And on the other end, I also need to remind myself (before every WOD) that just because I am adding more weight, using less bands or exhausted from the previous day, doesn’t mean that I don’t need to push myself.

Just like everything in life, it’s all about finding the right balance.