9/24/2017 0 Comments I'm an Athlete. So Are You.A few months ago, I dropped in at another CrossFit gym in my hometown. I received two pieces of feedback from the coaches that stuck with me: “You lift like a weightlifter” and “You move really well.” I was proud to hear these compliments, and thought I’d share their outside perspective with the head coach of my regular gym. He responded, “Those are right. You should do a weightlifting competition.” “Me? You know this is Crystal, right?” “Yes, you.” You may be thinking that I questioned his judgement in jest. I didn’t. Although I followed the question with an “lol,” I was truly taken by surprise when he suggested that I was ready to compete. In my head, I ran through about 100 ways that I could challenge what he said and falsify it, not for his sake, but for my own: my brain could not translate these statements as truth. I’ve experienced moments like this on a variety of occasions, but try as I might, it is terribly difficult for me to think of myself as an athlete with any kind of merit. I can look at the people around me and see all kinds of great things about their physical capabilities. My friend Kathryn is the cardio queen: she kicks my ass in any workout that requires a consistently high heart rate. Amanda is a machine: she knocks every single workout out of the park, and is on the fast track to the CrossFit Games. Jamie and Holly have the best push ups in the eastern time zone. Dwight and Mike will kill any workout that involves running. Cali has gotten exponentially stronger than the first day I met her. I can see all these things in the people I know and see perform each day, but if you ask me what my strengths are as an athlete, the best you’ll get from me is, “I’m a pretty okay rower.” This mentality unfortunately trickles into other aspects of my life, as well. Although I’ve received a variety of positive remarks from both colleagues and students regarding my teaching abilities, I still constantly work to improve my assignments and lessons. I will accept that I am a decent teacher, but I am not yet an excellent teacher. Just the same, I will accept that I am a decent athlete, but no where near the best. When I catch myself thinking this way, I semi-jokingly refer to it as my “fat girl mentality.” I realize that this is not a blanket assessment: there are plenty of women who are overweight who hold a beautiful and enviable amount of confidence and pride. That, however, was not the case for me. As an overweight child, young lady, and woman, I never felt good enough. It didn’t matter if there was any truth in that; all I could see were the comparisons that I made between myself and others. Sure, I graduated fourth in my class, but the girl who graduated third was both smart AND beautiful. Yes, I was the editor to whom all of my friends in college turned when a paper was due, but I was no great writer myself. Indeed, I lost 150 pounds over the course of a year and a half, but others have lost more. There are deep-seated daddy issues, anxiety, and minor depression attached to some of this way of thinking, but I can’t accept that those factors are acceptable reasons to feel this way. For others maybe, but not for me...yet again, a display of feeling inadequate. At times this has been crippling for me. I have spent weeks, sometimes months in funks for a variety of reasons throughout my life. At times this presented itself in terms of my academic performance, other times in terms of work performance, and most recently in terms of athletic performance. That is where I was a few months ago when I dropped in at that box in my hometown. When the coaches there gave me positive feedback, and it was confirmed by a coach who has seen my progress over the course of almost 4 years, I had a revelation. Initially, I assumed that their perceptions were skewed, but I was wrong. During the 4 hour drive home from that visit, I thought about what it means to truly be an athlete. According to the dictionary on GoogleDocs, an athlete is “a person who is proficient in sports and other forms of exercise.” Proficient. As a teacher, it’s a word I hear often. Proficiency doesn’t mean being the best. Proficiency indicates meeting the most basic standards of performance. A student who is “proficient” in reading can tackle a text at reading level and interpret it accurately. A student who is “proficient” at algebra can utilize basic formulas to solve problems. Therefore, a person who is “proficient” in exercise, is any person who completes a workout without quitting or injuring oneself. An athlete is any person who TRIES to to be athletic, who TRIES to participate in sports, or who TRIES to exercise. This was a revelation for me that pulled me completely out of my funk. I was putting so much stock in a definition of an athlete that was false, an expectation for myself derived entirely from comparisons that I made between myself and others. It wasn’t fair to me and it wasn’t fair to those with whom I was comparing myself. Being an athlete has nothing to do with how fast you can run, how much you can lift, what place you ranked during a workout, or if you can climb a rope. The second string quarterback on a middle school football team is an athlete just the same as the starting quarterback on a pro team. There is no golden formula for defining what an athlete can do. As long as you are making an attempt, you are an athlete. So each day, I make an attempt. Some workouts are better than others, and some still end with me crying, but as long as I know that I did the best that I could do in that moment, I feel satisfied that I, along with all of the people who worked out next to me, am an athlete. If you got to the gym today, you are an athlete. If you are trying your best at your workout, you are an athlete. If you are working toward progress, you are an athlete.
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