My faWe’ll Never Make It — And That’s the Best Part
When it comes to CrossFit and leadership, my favorite thing about one is the exact same as my favorite thing about the other.
You never arrive.
There’s no lift that ends the pursuit. No workout where you finally get it all right. No title, no year of experience, no conversation that means you’ve officially figured out how to lead people. You will never make it. And somehow that’s the thing that keeps me coming back to both.
Most people hear that and take it as bad news. I’ve always heard it the other way around.
CrossFit and leadership: more alike than they look
I’ve never really had a lightbulb moment about this. It’s just how I’m built. Training and leading have always felt like the same pursuit to me, and being in both means the lessons carry over constantly. They’re a bigger part of who I am than either one alone.
What they share is this: both of them teach you who you are by making you fail. Over and over.
I’ve failed my way to every win I’ve got — in the gym and in leading people. You make the mistake, you sit with it, you learn what you can, and you try to do better the next time. Then you fail at something else. That’s not a detour off the path. That is the path.
What the mirror is for
Here’s how it shows up on the gym floor.
I have a bad day. A lift doesn’t go the way I wanted. I don’t finish the workout in the time I thought I would. My first instinct used to be frustration — at the bar, at the clock, at the day.
Now I look in the mirror and start asking questions. How much sleep did I actually get last night? Did I eat enough? Did I drink enough water? Did I take care of myself well enough to expect what I was expecting out of my body?
If all those boxes are checked — okay. Then I’ve earned the right to be upset about it. But most of the time, the answer to at least one of those questions tells me exactly what went wrong, and it wasn’t the barbell.
That’s ownership. And once you learn it under a loaded bar, you can’t unlearn it anywhere else.
The same mirror, in leadership
In leadership I take that even further. I blame myself for it. Not in a way that eats at me — in a way that gives me somewhere to go.
If something didn’t land right with a member, if a conversation with a coach went sideways, if a decision I made didn’t work out the way I hoped, the first place I look is at myself. What did I miss? What could I have said better? What do I need to get better at so this goes differently next time?
I’ve had a lot of conversations with our members and our coaches over the years. What I hope every single one of them would tell you is that I’m the first to own it when I’ve been wrong. And that I’m not just going to admit it and move on — I’m going to work to get better at it. If you know how I can be better, tell me. I want to hear it. That’s not me being humble. That’s me trying to win.
Give yourself permission to fail
Whether the day was good or bad, the job is the same: keep striving for better and keep raising your standards.
That means giving yourself permission to fail, again and again and again. Not because failing is fun, but because it’s the toll you pay to keep going. The people who can’t stand to fail eventually stop trying things — and the moment you stop trying things, you stop getting better.
But permission to fail isn’t permission to quit. Those are two completely different things.
When I’m deep in a workout and it’s going badly and everything in me wants to put the bar down, there’s a voice that shows up: I’m not going out like this. I fight back.
That’s what a hard workout feels like to me. That’s also exactly what ownership feels like to me. Same voice, different room.
Still in the fight
So no — we’ll never make it. Not in the gym, not as leaders, not as people.
There’s always going to be another standard to raise, another weakness to expose, another version of yourself that’s a little bit better than the one showing up today. The list never empties out.
If you wanted a finish line, that’s devastating news. But if what you actually want is to spend your life getting better at things that matter, it’s the best news there is. The work never runs out.
We can always get a little bit better at both. We’ll never make it.
I wouldn’t have it any other way.