I used to do great things inside the gym. I used to be a competitive athlete and have a competitive spirit on the training floor. And then one day I didn’t. FirePower used to be a competitive CrossFit gym. We used to have a large number of competitive athletes, even holding tryouts just to be considered a member of our FirePower competitive team. And then one day we didn’t.
After over a decade of CrossFit, we’ve seen many members transition through various stages of capability and competitive interest. Over the years, as our bodies and our minds aged like a fine wine, we found ourselves less and less committed to traditional competitive CrossFit. Even our once-dominant athletes began to find comfort in recreation CrossFit and hung up their “show-gear” and competition lifters.
Some have found a love of running, obstacle-races, cycling, team sports, and more, all the while still usingCrossFit classes to fuel the fitness required for these events. Fitness is who we are and a large population of us prefers group training with friends these days over the scoreboard.
But that isn’t all of us.
This past weekend’s CanEast event was proof that competition lives on at FirePower. There are athletes among us that are still fuelled by traditional competitive CrossFit; who live, breathe and sleep for PR’s and shaving seconds off their WOD times. While this isn’t many of us anymore, you can’t deny the awesomeness of what our competitive FirePower athletes are accomplishing; the hours spent training; the dialled in nutrition plans; and the mental focus they have.
They wear the FirePower brand with pride to represent all of us. They sacrifice their bodies, minds, and social engagements to represent all of us. And they work harder than 20 of us recreational members all put together. While these days my social media is filled with pictures of my dogs, theirs remains flooded with their pride in their training efforts and successes inside the gym and it’s purely awesome!
** missing from the picture is Elizabeth MacDonald, varsity athlete.