The post below is circa 2009! May 15, 2009 to be exact. Ed and I started our love for CrossFit in a gym called “The Dammit Gym”, also known as CrossFit St. Pete. While under different ownership, it’s still there. Amazing. Lately, I’ve been hyper-focused on progress. With the demographic we train, we can’t afford to have athletes who aren’t as interested in their progress as we are. WE don’t have enough time. Sure, when Ed and I trained with Wendy (below), we were in our 40s/30’s respectively. We had LOTS OF TIME. But for us now, and definitely our community, time is ticking. Health is more important now because our youth is covering up for our lifestyle sins. Bloodwork is showing it. Slower movement is showing it. Weight gain is showing it. If you’re not getting stronger/fitter…IT’S SHOWING. And trust us, we see you every day – we see it. It’s not OK for you to just get by, to just be with us to be with us – we want work out of you. And sometimes, at our ages, it’s easy to fall into that “poor me” or “I don’t want to get hurt” or “be nice to me, I’m old” mentality. Unfortunately, it won’t work here. Lots of other gyms will take your money and let you just show up, but we need progress. Otherwise we aren’t doing our jobs!

I came across this post and it fit the mood Ed and I have been in. It also fit some of the narratives I’ve been working through with my family, particularly a younger member of my family who fears failure. What a sad place to be in to fear failure. A kid who’s up at bat in little league – if he’s worried about missing versus focused on hitting the crap out of that ball…he’s more likely to miss. The person who really wants that promotion but they’re too afraid to apply for fear they won’t get it…if they never apply they have zero chance of getting it. And here, in our gym, increasing the height of your step up will never happen if you don’t try. Improving your grip strength will never happen if you don’t increase the load on your farmer carry. And your push up will never improve if you don’t lower the level of the bar…all correct assumptions right? Failure is a part of life. It’s especially fun in the gym. Lately our cardio class has been playing around with trying to throw heavy objects (Dballs, sand bags, etc) over the pull up bars. The days they fail over and over again, but then are met with that one successful throw – THOSE are the successful days. Even if it’s 12 misses to 1 win…the 1 win gets them more, even if they miss 12 times. If they hadn’t tried…you get the picture.
Enjoy the read below – good stuff spans the test of time!
This is Wendy!
OK, I’m loving this catch-phrase: “Fail Strong”! Today, I found that it applies to SO MANY different settings! But first, I’ve got to give credit to a local celebrity (in my mind, she’s a celebrity, anyway) who I first heard this from. Ms. Wendy Arnold (aka “Garanimal” – pictured above), a Crossfit Certified & NSCA Certified Personal Trainer at my local St. Pete Crossfit / Dammit Gym (and also a Professional Firefighter, former Figure Competitor, all around incredible and intelligent woman… – quality single guys out there: she’s a catch!)
…anyway, sorry to digress. Wendy was “motivating me” through a workout last Friday (OK – she was yelling, but I loved it!) and I knew (and she knew) I was not going to get the last few squat reps in before the timer went off. She yelled out “Come on! Fail strong!”. And since then, I can’t get that phrase out of my head. What a great way to think when you just can’t muster “I can do it”. It is perfect for the way my brain works with some training sessions, and I’ve found it’s absolutely perfect in other settings – as I learned last night helping with dinner in a friend’s kitchen. We didn’t have everything we thought we needed to make a few of the things we were conjuring up, and all of a sudden “Fail Strong!” popped into my head! It made me more resourceful. Instead of “we don’t have butter”, I thought “what can we use instead of butter”. Instead of “I’m still hungry and we don’t have dessert”, I thought “What can we make for dessert from what I have”, which was a bunch of dairy based, creamy things like cottage cheese, yogurt and ricotta…and with a little innovation – a dollop on honey, some chocolate and vanilla extract, a bit of almond butter…and whipped cream – not bad! …satisfied the sweet tooth and didn’t break the scale this morning. It all might have failed, but if it did, I was surely going to fail trying my best – with my best effort!
And then just a bit ago, my refrigerator is virtually empty! I fed my poor husband a smoothie for breakfast made with the last of the milk, the last of the chocolate protein powder, 1/2 of the last serving of pre-made oatmeal I had from the week, and a banana I stole from a continuing education seminar yesterday! Now, we’re empty. But I have a lot on my plate today and want to be able to make a nice dinner without haphazardly going to the grocery and spending money on things just for tonight that I’ll have left over and that may not fit into the rest of the weekend’s or week’s “plan” – once it’s conjured up. So, what to do, what to do???…
Well, let’s Fail Strong again. Surely there’s not “nothing” (double negative, I know, but effective!) in the fridge/freezer. After searching, I found 1/2 bag of frozen scallops, about one and a half servings of “salad” in my spinner and a little fresh asparagus and cauliflower. My pantry is almost always stocked well – meaning vinegars, lemon/lime juice, olives, capers, etc. And I do have wine…I always have wine…what can I do here? Fail strong! Get resourceful, figure it out and if it sucks, I’ve tried really hard and the pizza place across the street is programmed in my phone! So, we’re going to try for scallops-piccata tonight with a small salad and skillet stir-fried asparagus and cauliflower with a sweet ginger sauce. Not bad for an empty fridge. I think that Fail Strong phrase resonating in my head motivated me to search beyond what I knew was an empty fridge!

So, emboss Wendy’s phrase in your head: FAIL STRONG! If you’re unsure and can’t muster the will to know you’re going to conquer the task at hand, know that you’re going down trying your hardest!!!