The workouts in the CrossFit Open are intense and brutal. Open 24.1 was no exception.
A seemingly simple combination of movements — dumbbell snatches and burpees over a dumbbell — for a endless repetitions.
- 21 snatches with one arm
- 21 burpees over the dumbbell
- 21 snatches with the other arm
- 21 burpees over the dumbbell
Repeat the same thing again at 15 reps and again at 9. In under 15 minutes.
Going into my first attempt, I didn’t believe I could get out of the rounds of 21 in 15 minutes. To my surprise, I came only 2 burpees short.
I finished in 15:15.
That I even got so close at all was in large part because of the community that rallied around me toward the end. They cheered me on. They did not let me quit on myself.
They believed in me.
And when it was over, I believed in myself.
I knew that, having come so close, I could likely finish under the time cap.
Once I watched back my video of the workout, I saw some places where I had lost time.
I started to believe that I could finish in under 14 minutes, not just under 15 minutes.
Most people take a “once and one” approach to CrossFit Open workouts. Burpees are my weakness, and not a movement I relish under any circumstances.
I didn’t necessarily want to do this workout again, but I knew I needed to it, for one simple reason:
To cement this new belief about my identity.
You might know that our beliefs dictate our thoughts, which influence our actions, which impact our results.
When it comes to beliefs, our beliefs about who we are and what we are capable of are foundational to everything else.
To paraphrase Tony Robbins, the strongest force motivating human behavior is the need to stay consistent with our identity.
We act in accordance to who we believe we are.
Changing any belief isn’t just a cognitive exercise. It’s one thing to formulate a new belief in your mind. But absent tangible experience that feeds that belief, it won’t take root.
This is especially true for beliefs about our identity.
Repeating Open 24.1 wasn’t about increasing my standing in the rankings. In terms of the CrossFit Open, the stakes were pretty low.
Instead, this was a chance for me to face one of my most challenging movements, in a long slog of a workout that played to none of my strengths.
It was an opportunity for me to do a hard thing, knowing from the start how hard it would be, and that I’d have to keep myself in it for the long slog.
It was a chance to cement a new belief about myself to myself.
In some ways, these are the highest stakes of all.
This is what the CrossFit Open is really about.
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