Thursday, August 28, 2014

Weight-Lifting Takes Guts

Success is terrifying. 

It’s a weird thing to say or write, but it’s true. Success is exposing. It’s standing on stage naked and facing the crowd. It’s allowing the world to feel the weight of who you are. It’s accepting that failure could come at any moment.

I’ve spent most of life afraid of success for this reason. I was afraid that my true identity might be revealed, and that I might not be much of a man. So sometime around my freshman year of high school I discovered self deprecation. Rather than face the risk of being laughed at, I could beat them to the punch and laugh at myself first. I’m not sure that I even realized it happened, but I became the funny guy.

This works well at parties. It does not work well in the gym.

I finally realized this on my fifth day of the LSU Shreveport lifting program. We’d just finished our first week of ten rep sets, and I was fired up to lift heavy snatch and clean and jerk singles. I was feeling swol. Real swol.

Except that didn’t happen.

My lifts actually went backward. I could barely lift 30 pounds less than where I was the week before. I felt so defeated. I did the walk of shame, trading my heavy plates for lighter ones. I went for a big boy challenge and got crushed, like a little kid not picked for the team. 

So I went back to my old habits. I made lame jokes about Kryptonite and that I was on “reverse Shreveport”. I was my 15 year old self trying to not get picked on in Algebra class. When I walked to my wife (whose doing the program with me) to get a laugh out of her, she instead called me out. 

“You need to take yourself more seriously.”

She was spot on. Lifting takes courage. Not because it’s hard to put your body weight over your head (which it is), but because lifting forces you to accept yourself as is. I can’t pretend to be someone I’m not when pulling the bar off the ground. In that moment, I was a man who could snatch 115 pounds and I felt like a failure. My jokes were a place to hide. 

Success in the gym isn’t measured in lifting more than everyone else, and it’s not measured in lifting more than you did last week. It’s in the daily practice of doing something hard. In accepting where you are today and then challenging those limits.

Not in PR’s. Not in competing. Not in winning.

I don't make jokes about my lifts anymore. Not because they're not funny (although sometimes they are) and not because I stopped being myself, but because I don't want to hide. I have to accept where I am today and challenge that limit. Tomorrow that may be different, but that's how I will determine success today.

Today, I will do something hard.

Sunday, August 10, 2014

What I've Learned Through CrossFit

My clean and jerk max is 175 lbs.
My snatch max is 150.
My dead lift max is 350.
My back squat max is 315.
My best Fran time is 7:15.

None of these figures actually matter. They’re not all that impressive compared to Olympic lifters and CrossFitters. I’m not getting paid to improve my lifts. (It’s actually the opposite). But those numbers represent the greater story of my life over the last year and a half. 

My story is one of learning to hide. As a chubby, awkward teenager that grew into an awkward, slender adult, I became a master at hiding my true self. I just wanted to make everyone happy, so I became whatever the particular crowd I was with wanted me to be. So rather than pursue my own dreams I lived thorough my friends accomplishments, and I avoided conflict like the plague. I saw myself as helpless and weak.

I understood the Gospel in that Jesus loved me, but I didn’t understand how that made me into a powerful man of a God. In my eyes, Jesus loved me but I had to convince everyone else. My Young Life leader in high school told me I was a chameleon, changing my stripes to fit whichever crowd I was, but I saw it as self preservation. If they saw who I really was, there was no way they’d like me or accept me.

This way of life worked for a while. I was popular in high school. I made close friends and had amazing experiences in college. I fell in love and married an amazing woman.

After a few years, however, the charade had worn thin. Working to make everyone happy no longer worked, and my wife grew tired of living with a shell. I was a 29 year old man with no spine, no conviction, and no heart. I was the accumulation of years of becoming what everyone wanted. My Young Life leader’s words finally made sense. I was a chameleon who was no longer fooling anyone.

It was at this low point that my wife encouraged me to start going to CrossFit. (And by encouraged I mean she yelled at me to go out and do something.) I was terrified to walk into a room of strangers so exposed. I’d been scared of weights for a long time. Most of my life actually. On the surface, I’d tell you it was because I didn’t know anything about how to use them and that I didn’t care about being some muscle bound dude. But in reality, weights intimidated me. They only know truth. I could either lift them or I couldn’t, regardless of what I wanted people to think of me. I was going to be exposed. 

To my surprise, however, no one kicked me out. The weights exposed me and I was brought into the open, but to my surprise no one abandoned me. Instead, I realized how much I was holding back.

Progressively, my daily reconstructive process worked its way into other parts of my life. I stopped believing the lie that I was weak and started knowing that I was strong. I stopped believing the lie that I was inadequate and started knowing that I was capable. I started living my life knowing that God had made me into a man that had what it takes. 

Challenging WOD’s still makes me nervous, in the same way talking to people I admire turns me into a ball of nerves. But the difference I’ve learned through CrossFit is that I can accept who I am because at my core I’m capable enough to meet a challenge. The numbers I wrote in the beginning are more than records to impress other people. They tell the story of God building me into a man.

I’ve grown over the last year and half from an awkward, slender adult into an awkward, muscular man. 

And I wouldn’t have it any other way...

Saturday, August 9, 2014

David Wilson and the Defining Moment of My Childhood

I was pushed back to the worst day of my childhood Thursday.

I say worst because that’s the sort of thing a teenager feels in the moment their small world comes crashing in. I had to quit football when I was 14 for the same reason David Wilson announced on Thursday. Like Wilson, burners (or stingers as my doctor called them) indicated a neck injury that made it too dangerous to play football. Like Wilson, both our playing careers ended before they really had a chance to begin.

As a middle schooler obsessed with football, all I wanted to play for my high school team. My older sister was a cheerleader, so my parents took me to every game. To a pre-teen from a small town, the how-ever-many-thousand seat stadium at Sevier County High School was awe-inspiring. I lived for the moments where I could stand close enough to the sideline to hear the players cuss and see the sweat under their face masks. They were god-like to me.

But like Wilson, just weeks before my dream of playing high school football began, it all ended. After having seven stingers the season before, I got my eighth during preseason camp with the freshman team. We were doing a typical, “show how tough you are drill”, and I was out to impress my coaches and teammates. I lined up against a bigger teammate, hit him with my right shoulder, and it was done. I knew my fate as soon as it happened. My doctor (who was a former team doctor with the Steelers) told me I had to quit or risk permanent damage. My mom cried. I just stared at the floor.

So when I heard Wilson’s story and watched his retirement announcement, I relived sitting in the doctor’s office 16 years ago. It was so devastating at the time, but as a 30 year old husband and father I see that moment so differently. That was the moment God pulled away what defined me and began creating a path to bring me to Himself. It was transformed from being the worst day of my childhood into the day I began becoming who I am today.


I hope Thursday becomes the same day for David Wilson that my day was when I was 14. His gleaming optimism makes me think it will.