MEMBER STORY - #1 - Verity

Verity's CrossFit Journey

Verity's journey is an important one because there are so many women and men out there for whom food has a hold over them to such an extent they feel trapped in a downward spiral.

Verity demonstrates that by focusing on what your body can do - the amazing things it's capable of - rather than what you believe it to look like, you can free yourself from a cyclical life of punishing diets and guilt.

"The weight on the bar is more important than the number on the scales."

Verity:

"I finally decided to take control of my life at the age of 34.

From the age of around 8 or 9 I started to believe I was fat. No matter what I was told, I believed I was huge.

I used to feel embarrassed with every food shop, eating in public, believing people were looking at me wondering why I was eating because I obviously had some serious weight to shift.

I began to abuse laxatives around 10 or 11 years-old and learnt the fine art of making myself sick after meals. I tried every diet going. The high point being the celery diet! I literally only allowed myself to eat celery and drink tea, nothing else.

My weight in adulthood stayed between 7 and 8 stones. I was constantly exhausted and miserable.

So after finally admitting what my life was like, I took control.

I do CrossFit as it allows me to eat and not feel guilty.

The weight on the bar is more important than the number on the scales.

I've learnt to throw clothes away that no longer fit. I know I'm never going to starve myself to fit into them again. I no longer shop in children's clothes sections.

Do I ever relapse? Yes. Do I sometimes obsess about the fact I no longer have a thigh gap? Yes. The difference since CrossFit? I go and train. Sometimes I can't face talking, I have to just lift and get through a shit workout to realise what my body and fucked up head can push through.


It's not always plain sailing but I'm pretty confident I control food rather than the food controlling me."



Thank you for sharing your story with us, Verity - I'm sure many people will relate to it. If you would like to share your story, please don't hesitate to get in touch.

Why I treat my CrossFitters a bit like 5 year-olds...

When Bob or Hilda start at CrossFit Uckfield, I tell them that the whiteboard in a CrossFit gym is golden.  It is where the magic happens.



The planning is done for you, by an experienced and qualified coach, who puts a lot of thought into ensuring your training is balanced, varied and interesting as well as effective.  It means you don't have to think, you just turn up and get the work done.

The whiteboard gets posted every day on our members' page on Facebook.  This allows people to compare themselves to others, compete with others and wish they'd come in on the days they missed.


I have found, over time that the whiteboard is a brilliant tool for encouraging and motivating people, keeping them accountable and involved.

However, there are some times when those numbers on the board become counter-productive.
If you didn't do as well as you felt you should have or you were beaten by someone who always (or never) beats you.  Or you were bottom of the board or top of the board or middle of the board - all these things have the power to demotivate you if you let them.

So, as a coach, what can I do about this?
I find it useful, a lot of the time, to treat my clients as if they were primary school children.  I don't mean this in a derogatory way but how a primary classroom works is, in a lot of ways, similar to how a CrossFit classroom works.

As a primary school teacher, I found it vital to ensure my class of 30 children, with wildly varying abilities, backgrounds, experiences and attitudes, knew why we were learning what we were learning in the way we were learning it.  This knowledge gave the kids autonomy over their learning.  It demonstrated to them that what we were doing had a valid purpose that impacted in a very real way on their lives.

So I am implementing learning objectives and success criteria.



I want my guys to realise that their training isn't always a test (see the previous post) and that their training has a purpose.  It isn't random, it is designed for a specific purpose but that purpose does need to be shared with the group.

If you know why you are doing something, how it is designed to benefit you and how it will make you better as an athlete, then it will resonate much more.

I hope that by sharing with my members the purpose of their training, they will take greater ownership of their movement, that they will become more responsible for their own improvements.  But most of all, I hope it will stop them comparing themselves to others and start helping them compare themselves with them yesterday, or last week or last year.

You can not compare yourself to anyone else because they are not you.  You don't have the same age, experience, abilities, height, weight, dinner, conversations, children, jobs, worries, anxieties, strengths, goals, loves, hates, fears, successes, failures, clothes, shoes, cars, houses, holidays, parents, grandparents, blood types, DNA, injuries, ailments, friends, support etc. etc. etc. as anyone else!
If you aren't comparing apples with apples, it is never a fair comparison!



So be fair to yourself, work out what you are genuinely trying to achieve in each workout and think less about the numbers on the board and more about how you are going to improve as an athlete.  Then you are in a position to test yourself better when one of those workouts comes up.  

If you test yourself every single session, when do you get to revise?  When do you get to practice and learn?

Look at the learning objectives and achievement targets and work out what they mean to you...not Bob or Hilda.