Cheating : Deliberately doing fewer reps than required, or reporting a better score than was earned. Picture the scene. It's a Tuesday night, you're at the box. The class is full of people you know, everyone is having a laugh. The WOD starts, you're keeping pace against the guy beside you. You're ahead of him the whole way. He's a round behind you at the halfway mark. You absolutely slog your guts out to the very end. Coach calls time, and asks for scores. He claims to be a whole round AHEAD of you. Again. Either your boxmate is suffering from a series of unfortunate, completely accidental, yet consecutive miscounts...or you are WODing next to one of CrossFit's most notorious and frustrating characters - The CrossFit Cheater. They start their box jumps after you, but are always finished first. They claim they "always lose count", but never ever do too many reps. They post amazing times during the regular season, but get smashed during the Open. As a Coach, the concept of cheating in CrossFit workouts is both fascinating and infuriating. It would be easier to understand if I was handing out cash prizes for top scores on a Tuesday night. If my members were battling for a spot on a team that was going to Carson. If this was the Hunger Games, and the bottom 3 have to fight to the death each day. Or something. But they're not. There is literally no gain or reward waiting for them at the end of their effort that is greater than the effort itself. If someone wants to be lazy and do half the work, why bother to do it in front of a group of people? You can do half the work at a Globo Gym, and no one would ever know. Unless that's the point. The only gains that are being made from a cheated score are to the cheater's ego. Being seen to be better than they are. "They're only cheating themselves!" We think. And we're mostly right. They are cheating themselves, by failing to check their ego. For us Coaches, this is incredibly frustrating, because we know it means that no matter what we do, they will most likely fail to progress to the next level of their fitness. Because they are unable to accept where they actually are, they will never achieve their goals and get to where they want to be. They will never push themselves, because they will be too afraid to fail. They are cheating themselves. But they are not only cheating themselves. The CrossFit model of of the "fitness community" only works if we can trust the people we are training with. We trust them never to laugh at us for trying our best, we trust that they will share in our happiness when we succeed. We tell all our new members not to worry, that they have joined a tribe of people who are going to play by the rules, support them, and honour their effort. The integrity of the community is incredibly important to our individual success. When you cheat, not only do you give your community a reason not to trust you, you are saying that you don't trust them. You don't trust them not to judge you for your performance. You don't trust that they will still respect you if you don't finish where you want to. You don't trust that they will respect your effort. If you cheat, you are not a CrossFitter. You're just dressed like one. But you could become a CrossFitter. Easily. Starting with your next WOD, and every WOD after that. Check your ego, trust your tribe, do the work, and earn your score. When bogus scores are posted in our box, we always give that person the benefit of the doubt, because we know that that the root cause of any fragile ego is fear, and the only way to beat fear is to instill confidence. So we try to make that member feel good about their legitimate achievements. We try to involve them more in the community. It's harder to lie to people you know and care about. We reinforce the idea that effort is its own reward. And remind our members that no one cares what their score is, so long as they earned it. - Coach Kristen |
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July 2018
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