Why Do We Compete?

2019 will be the most active year in CrossFit as far as competitions go. With the introduction of over twenty CrossFit Sanctionals, two Online Open qualifiers, and many other grassroots-level fitness competitions (some with their own online qualifiers) you can find yourself participating in one almost monthly! (That’s not recommended by the way but CrossFitters are known to be gluttons for punishment)

So why do we do it?

Well there’s only room for three individuals/pairs/teams on a podium and they’re typically the same names you’d see at the top of the leaderboard so it can’t be that everyone is competing to win. In fact, the majority of registrations belong to athletes outside of RX divisions, the beginner to intermediate athletes. So why is it that there are so many competitions looking to satisfy the growing demands of functional fitness aficionados for a weekend of adrenaline dumps, bloody palms, and scraped shins?

If you’ve never signed up for a local competition or participated in the Open with your local affiliate, you’d probably think people were crazy to want to subject themselves to this torture. That’s probably partly true. But it’s in that torture that your average gym-goer can appreciate what they and others are capable of and have worked hard for. This past weekend’s Be Like Bruce Fitness Festival was a great demonstration of that.

The second annual Be Like Bruce Fitness Festival was a three-day competition starting with a combination of max lifts for a heavy total, followed by a relay-styled triathlon, concluded by a day of “classic CrossFit” combinations of workouts. It’s in the aforementioned torture that you realize you have been working out for several days a week over the span of several years, that you’ve put everything you had into completing each workout to the best of your ability, only to finish somewhere in the middle of the pack…left in the dust by the top finishers in your division. The highs and lows of a weekend of competition include the previously mentioned adrenaline dumps but also in seeing how you compare against others in the CrossFit community outside of your own gym. If you were expecting to win, you may be sorely disappointed. But if you came into the weekend hoping to do your best, to get a good idea of what your fitness is like, and to see what you need to work on, then you’ve come out on top and you’re likely ready to look for that next competition.

So the question remains, why are we so eager to see how we fare against others and to test our physical and mental limits in a grueling series of workouts?

The simple answer is that it’s not all about the workouts or what place we get. Some of it is about how we perform, sometimes exceeding expectations and achieving new personal records, but it’s mostly about spending time with the people we choose to spend our “me” time with. It’s the people you see every day at 6am or 12pm or 5pm. It’s the thrill in working together to beat a time cap, coming up with a strategy that includes ridiculous ideas to shave off seconds in transition times. It’s letting yourself put your foot down on that petal and relying on your teammates to bring it home. It’s in the moments you create that become the memories you talk about for years to come that make you chase that next competition.

Sure, you can sign up for a competition because you want a goal to train for or you are looking to go as an individual to really test what you’re capable of. But even then, you can’t deny the camaraderie that comes with cheering on your fellow gym-mates or the last person to finish in a heat.

This is by no means a marketing scheme to convince you to run out and sign up for your next local competition (*ahem* StrongFit Rumble). While I love competing and have participated in my fair share of competitions over the years, I know it’s not for everyone and many prefer being involved in other ways or simply enjoy exercising without competing. I’m merely helping people understand why we pursue fitness and test ourselves over and over again. That’s just what we subject ourselves to in order to spend time with people that we love spending time with.

I want to take this moment to say that I am also incredibly proud of everyone that showed up this weekend. When I say showed up, I mean they came and gave it their all, didn’t complain about how hard it was or how things could have been different. But rather you all came and enjoyed all that the Be Like Bruce Fitness Festival had to offer and embraced what it stands for. You appreciated what you are capable of and challenged yourselves to do things you wouldn’t normally do. You may even have started to enjoy doing those horrific things, like running long distances or whipping yourselves with a wire repeatedly in your attempts at double-unders.

Finally, I just want to talk about the fruits of our labours. We play hard, but we also worked hard. StrongFit came out on top in three divisions, with a first and second in Men’s Scaled, tied for first but ultimately finishing second in Women’s RX (tiebreak rules), and first and second in Men’s RX. Placing isn’t everything, fun and community are. Even if we didn’t end up on the podium, I know we all would have enjoyed the weekend just the same.

Congratulations to everyone, thank you to the event organizers, volunteers, and sponsors. We will be back next year and I have a feeling we’ll have the largest showing of any gyms in Sask.