THE NON-NEGOTIABILITY OF PERFECTION

CrossFit is the pursuit of athletic perfection—performing difficult workouts with technical mastery under conditions of duress.  We’re looking for flawless form with a jackhammering heart, bursting lungs, and battery acid-filled veins.

When this is accomplished with unyielding intensity, the result is nothing short of beautiful.  When we fall short of the mark, the result is horrifying at best.

Athletes often set up a false dichotomy between perfect form and intensity, assuming that as one increases the other must necessarily fall.  This idea is a thinly disguised excuse for athletic complacency.  Rather than revisit proper technique through low-intensity, low-excitement skill work, the athlete chooses to pursue personal records with diminished form.  The unstated reason for this choice: it’s easy on the ego to put up “good” WOD times. Taking a hit to your “Fran” time in order to perform perfect thrusters is not going to move you up the records board—at least not right away—and the blow to the ego is too much to bear.

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