Before I made the leap into coaching full time, I spent years in “Corporate America.” During the first week of my first job out of college, one of my coworkers said something that I’ll never forget. In the middle of a staff meeting, some ridiculous fact was shared about an employee who was under-performing, and that colleague started laughing. Someone asked why, and her response was, “You laugh so you don’t cry.”
As a coach and personal trainer, I’ve also had the opportunity to see a lot of things. The good, the bad, AND the ugly! Athletes who walk in the gym for the first time in their life and are able to accomplish things they never thought possible… that’s the good! A few injuries here and there (thankfully not many)… those are the ugly. Now, when we talk about the bad, the word bad is usually open to interpretation. One coach might be annoyed and frustrated at things that don’t bother another. But as is the case with so many things in life, bringing laughter to a situation can almost always help to lighten the mood! Today, I’m sharing two things that have really made me smile recently!
The first is an article from the CrossFit Dash website, called: “10 Ways to Annoy Your CrossFit Coach“. Posts like this that talk about things that most coaches consider bad, but instead of making me upset it made me snort out loud, it makes things a little bit easier to accept!
I’m not going to give away the entire list, but I will share one of the reasons:
4. “Wait, what are we doing?”
Coach has been blabbing about something for the last 5 minutes, somewhere between the warm-up and the main workout for the day. You heard something about how to approach the workout and then your brain drifted to what kind of tacos you’ll be ordering after class. Coach bores you by repeating the same words several times, like she’s trying to get the point across or something. The 10 second countdown starts for the workout and you realize you have no clue what’s happening. What better to do than yell at Coach, “Wait, what are we doing?!”
Since I feel like I’ve been in that situation hundreds of times, that is really funny!! Check out the rest of the list on their page. It’s worth a few minutes of your time.
The other funny thing I want to share is the first parody video I ever saw made about CrossFit. It was during the time when everyone was making the: “S#!t *insert stereotypes here* say” videos. Up until then, I never really remember CrossFit being featured in more mainstream avenues, but when this video came out I knew we made it!
In the grand scheme of things, most of the things we stress about in our day-to-day lives don’t really matter at all! So when things start to worry you, just sit back and think if it’s really worth getting that down about them. I’m here to tell you, it’s usually not worth it. If you have a hard time with that sometimes (like me), surround yourself with people who can make you laugh all the time. You’re going to be better off for it, and much happier in general!
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