I started brushing my teeth wrong because of Bryce Harper.
For anyone who doesn’t follow baseball, Bryce Harper is one of the best players in the game. He posted something on Instagram showing how he brushes his teeth — toothpaste in the mouth first, then the toothbrush. I saw it, thought it was interesting, and tried it.
Now, every single morning, I stand in my bathroom and have to stop and think about where the toothpaste goes. My daughter’s song says you squirt it on the brush first. My wife probably thinks I’ve lost my mind. And I’m standing there at 6am genuinely confused about something I’ve done correctly my entire life — because I saw a professional baseball player do it differently on Instagram.
This is what social media does to us. And it has a lot to say about how to get better at CrossFit — most of it wrong.
What We See vs. What We Need
I say that with some humor, but I also mean it seriously — because I see this play out in the gym every single week.
A member comes in having watched a video about a new drill for pull-ups. Someone saw a cue on Instagram that contradicts everything their coach has been telling them. Someone else watched a tutorial involving two bands, a foam roller, and some kind of contraption designed to help them get their first bar muscle-up — a movement they haven’t built the base strength for yet.
And look — I get it. The content is everywhere. It’s in your face constantly. And some of it is genuinely good. There is real value in what’s out there.
But here’s something worth considering: a lot of what you see on social media wasn’t created with you in mind. It’s a highlight reel — someone’s best moment, posted without context, without showing how long they worked to get there, how many times they failed, or what foundation was already in place before that drill or cue even made sense to try.
The bands-around-a-foam-roller bar muscle-up setup isn’t for someone working on their first pull-up. The advanced cue isn’t for someone still learning the basic mechanics of the movement. And no amount of Instagram research is going to shortcut the work that actually needs to happen first.
If you’re serious about how to get better at CrossFit, the answer is rarely on your phone.
How to Get Better at CrossFit: Mechanics, Consistency, Intensity
At Outsiders we believe in three things in this order: mechanics, consistency, intensity.
That’s not our invention — that’s the CrossFit methodology. But we believe in it because we’ve seen what happens when you skip the first two and go straight to the third. You hit a wall. You get hurt. You get frustrated. You wonder why you’re not progressing when in reality you just skipped a few steps that the algorithm never showed you.
Being coachable is the most underrated thing an athlete can do when figuring out how to get better at CrossFit.
It means listening when your coach tells you to scale back — not as a defeat, but as a redirect. It means making adjustments when you’re asked to, even when your ego would rather not (and don’t be afraid to ask why — good coaching is a conversation, not a command). It means trusting that the person watching you move has more information about what you need than the person on your screen who has never seen you lift.
One of the most underrated things you can do as a member is check into your classes ahead of time. When we know you’re coming, we can prepare for you specifically. We know your movement history, your strengths, the things you’re working on. We can build a plan around that before you walk in the door. That’s a level of coaching that no social media algorithm can replicate — and it’s available to you every single time you show up.
Good Coaching Isn’t One-Size-Fits-All
I coach our Varsity program and our adult classes very differently. Not because the movements are different — but because the way people learn is different. What clicks for a seasoned adult athlete might be two steps ahead of where a young athlete needs to be right now. What works for one person might completely confuse another. Good coaching isn’t one-size-fits-all. And neither is the answer to how to get better at CrossFit.
Social media is one-size-fits-all by nature.
Which means there’s a good chance what you’re watching wasn’t designed for where you are right now — and that’s okay. It just means the path forward looks different than what’s on your screen.
What Is Actually Sized for You
Here’s what is sized for you: showing up consistently. Scaling appropriately. Putting in a few extra minutes before or after class to work on your weaknesses. Applying what your coaches are actually giving you. Nailing the basics so well that adding intensity becomes the natural next step — not a shortcut to it.
The biggest results we see in this gym — the members who transform, who break through plateaus, who accomplish things they genuinely didn’t think were possible — are never the ones who found the right hack. They’re the ones who showed up, listened, and stayed the course long enough for the work to compound.
That takes longer than we want it to. I know that. Everything in life takes longer than we want it to. And social media makes it worse because all you ever see is the end of someone else’s story — never the middle, never the grind, never the months of unsexy repetition that made the highlight possible.
Look Back Before You Look Forward
Take a second and look back at where you started.
Not at where you want to go. Where you came from. What you couldn’t do when you walked in for the first time. How far that is from where you are today.
What we do here is not normal. It is not what most people choose to do with their time. It takes a genuinely special kind of person to keep showing up to hard things, day after day, especially when the results aren’t visible yet.
You are that person. And you don’t need a better drill from Instagram to figure out how to get better at CrossFit.
If you’re just getting started and want to find out what consistent coaching actually looks like, book a free No-Sweat Intro — no workout, no pressure, just a conversation.
Ignore the noise. Trust your coaches. Show up.
And maybe put the toothpaste on the brush first.
— Coach Joe
Outsiders CrossFit | Sparks, MD
Fitness for Life
