Do you remember the kid who proudly pulled on their jersey? Who laced up their shoes before the big game? Who couldn't fall asleep because they were envisioning the upcoming competition? Who lived and breathed sport because it was the purest way to express their identity?Fast forward fifteen years and we find ourselves in a different stage of life: cinching up a tie before opening up a spreadsheet, glancing at the clock praying for 5:00pm to come sooner, meeting up with friends to reminisce about the glory days.Someone still lives deep inside of us who hungers for competition. Who wants to be pushed outside of their comfort zone. Who misses the purity of physical exertion that cannot be replicated by the white-washed rows of machines in L.A. Fitness.Feeding these natural impulses of competition and physicality allows us to build confidence and feel a sense of completeness. Humans are physical, mental, and spiritual beings and we cannot feel complete unless we have an outlet for all three. Too often, we find ourselves out of balance: we attribute behavioral or emotional outburst to an imbalance in this triangular relationship between body, mind, and spirit.At work, we find ourselves challenged intellectually. From the mundane tasks to the more theoretical undertakings, we often seek income from a job that challenges our intellect.At home, we find ourselves challenge spiritually. This could be a religious tradition that we choose to practice or it could be the more existential questions we find discussing with our significant others. I often find myself sitting there, pondering the more subjective questions in life, while my son falls asleep at night.However, it seems that society increasingly demands less and less from us as physical beings. Jobs are being automated, we can hit the drive-thru for lunch, groceries can be delivered, and sidewalks are destroyed to make way for larger roads. Obesity rates, diabetes, and most other chronic/acute illnesses are on the rise. Our ability to treat symptoms with a pill has never been higher, yet the prevalence of declining physical capacity has never been higher.CrossFit has interjected new life into this system. Rather than making exercise easier: adding complicated and expensive machines that make a movement “dummy-proof”, installing TV’s around so you can catch up on the news while you job, and keeping a coke machine sitting in the hallway – CrossFit has started a revolution by returning human physicality to its roots. We are born to jump, throw, lift, hang, swing, and celebrate the incredible physicality our bodies are capable of.What we have found, anecdotally, is that people who allow themselves to engage in this unbridled expression of human movement show markedly higher performance in other areas of their life. They get promoted at work, they inspire their families, they feel happier, and they find more peace with the existential questions that plague so many of us.None of the three: mind, body, or spirit can exist perfectly in a vacuum. At Southpaw we encourage you to work hard, to spend time with your family, and to engage with your local community. And we also encourage you to find an outlet where you can express your physicality – to satiate that inner voice inside of you who hungers for the purity of physical exertion.
.png)
