I’m old.
I’m old, and I’m white.
I’m old, I’m white, and I’ve never been good at jumping.
Something happened earlier this year. At the end of January I decided I wasn’t going to be fat and out of shape any longer. I had been looking for something that would give me the right mix of community, competition and variety so that I could actually stick with fitness seeing that I’d given it a 2-3 day go once or twice over the 12 years of general sedentary living and had always ended up going back to the cheese dip and couch surfing rather quickly.
Enter CrossFit
I heard about it at a relatively random business dinner with the creator of FitBook, the affiliate at CrossFit Vibe and the owners of FitnessTown. The dinner was amazing and I noticed that although everybody enjoyed great food they also didn’t eat the bread or mashed potatoes. Just great steak and veggies. I was eating a similar way thanks to Tim Ferriss’ slow carb diet but these guys called it Paleo and they ate this way due to some weird cult called CrossFit. To say that dinner changed my life would not be an exaggeration. It was a couple months later but it was due to that evening that I started CrossFit at the amazingly run and incredibly supportive CrossFit Chino Hills.
I was hooked on CrossFit pretty much right away and a few weeks later got my wife to leave that ‘globo-gym’ and come try it out. She kicked my butt right away and so my first goal was to stop getting beat in workouts by my wife.
I lost 35 lbs in the first few months and my pecs started looking less and less like boobs. This was working and I was actually getting in shape… and enjoying it.
Over the past 3 months I competed in 4 different CrossFit events. Three of them linked in a series called The NLI. My first competition I placed 45th out of 90. Not bad for a recovering couch and cheese dip a holic. 6 weeks later I got 30th and last weekend I somehow pulled off a 9th place finish barely hitting my goal of a top 10 placing. I just pulled up the site while I was typing this and found that I ended up placing 7th out of 158 for the entire series. (full disclaimer, some people didn’t compete in all 3 weekends)
The Point
Go out and do something. You’re not too old, too out of shape, too poor, too weak, too anything. Start now, on whatever it is you’ve been putting off for the past 12 years like I did. Go.
“You’ll be on your way up!
You’ll be seeing great sights!
You’ll join the high fliers
who soar to high heights.”
-Dr. Seuss
Am I the best jumper in the world now? Nope.
Am I the best jumper in a competition of 90 people. Nope.
But, I was better than 60 of them and a heck of a lot better than I was before.
A special shout out to Angela, Dai and Jeffrey. Thank you.