There Is No Avoiding the Hard Work

The workouts are always hard. Soreness is inevitable if we're getting results. It's hard not to hit snooze from our cozy bed on a cold morning. It's hard to show up to a hot gym after a full day of work. It's hard to work at half capacity while injured. It's hard to get back on our schedule when vacations, job shifts, parenting curve balls and life happen. And there's always a never-ending supply of work, projects and chores lined up, ready to snatch away our workout time and hand us a perfectly good excuse not to go. Learning new skills? Hard. Getting stronger? Hard. Putting boundaries around our fitness time so it doesn't get eaten by everything else? Hard.

This is the long haul. Not a six-week shred, a juice fast or a get-skinny-quick plan. This is General Physical Preparedness, GPP for short. We're working toward being durable humans with very few limitations, and the CrossFit methodology is designed to prepare us for life. That looks different for everyone. For some it's signing up for a triathlon or hybrid event without needing months of special training. For others it's saying yes to a long hike without hesitation, keeping up with kids or grandkids, staying independent as we age, or being competitive in a hobby we love. The list can be endless, and that's what makes the hard worth it.

No plan, methodology or special programming can bypass the hard work, though. When we accept the process and see muscle soreness as a sign the work is being done, when we push through the lack of motivation and get ourselves to class anyway, that's when we get to enjoy the win. Not just the workout itself, but the fact that we didn't cave to the easy route. (And here's the paradox: even though we know we'll always feel better for having done the workout, we still have to talk ourselves into it almost every single time!)

There's No Staying the Same

Our bodies don't hold still while we wait around, and that's what makes skipping the hard work an even worse trade. Standing still isn't actually an option. After about age 30, we naturally start losing muscle mass and bone density, and that loss speeds up the longer we stay on the sidelines. [Read more on strength training's impact on age-related muscle and bone loss here.]

If we get complacent in our program and stop pushing ourselves, we risk slipping backward even while we're still showing up. Skipping the barbell, skipping plyo work, skipping explosive movements, skipping mobility, skipping conditioning, skipping the balance and body awareness work (proprioception, if you want the fancy word), all of that has its own set of complications down the road. They're just quieter and slower to show up, which makes them easy to ignore until they aren't.

Carving out and protecting an hour to work on our fitness starts to look like the much more preferable kind of hard.

The Bright Lights Along the Way

All that said, none of this is meant to feel grim. Every skill conquered, every event finished, every PR on the board is a bright light along the way, proof of the work we've put in and a reason to actually be proud of ourselves. Those wins deserve to be celebrated, not brushed past on the way to the next goal.

When we surround ourselves with a group that's also showing up to do hard things, people who are just as unwilling to drift back or stagnate, it becomes extra motivation on the days when our own tank runs low. We lean on that energy when we need it, and we get to return the favor for someone else when their turn comes. That's a big part of what makes the hard work sustainable for the long haul instead of something we white-knuckle through alone.

There's no version of progress where the hard work disappears. It's either the hard of showing up or the hard of slipping backward, and only one of those buys us freedom: saying yes to the hike, the trip, the sport, the grandkids, without a second thought. That kind of freedom is a lot easier to earn with people in our corner, cheering us on every step of the way.

‍