Developing Self Confidence: How to Define a True CrossFitter

May be a little stretch, but when I read this today, I couldn’t help but connect the lines to a TRUE CROSSFITTER.  We are confident in our training and why it’s so engaging and useful in life, but we are willing to admit our inadequacies in certain areas i.e. pull ups, muscle-ups, double unders, etc.  We also are open enough to listen to other’s belief in sport-specific training, but are fully grounded with confidence that CF is still the best answer.

I hope potential new CrossFitters are willing to read this article and realize no one at FirePower was confident taking that first step into the gym.  It will grow and flourish until you finally realize there is a different person inside YOU!

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“Self-confidence: The first requisite to great undertakings.”

By: Samuel Johnson

Many people yearn to be more self-confident. Yet they have no idea how to achieve that objective. They look at others who have the gift and say, “Hey that’s what I want. I hate feeling unsure of myself. I wish I could stop obsessing about what others think of me and quit worrying about disappointing other people. I want to stop anguishing over my decisions and torturing myself about my mistakes.  I think it would be so great to feel self-assured, hold my head up high and stand tall. I’ve never been self-confident. I wish there were a way I could be.”

There is a way. You don’t have to be born with self-confidence. Self-confidence can grow and flourish and ripen and blossom until you actually come to feel as though there is a different person inside of you.  Here are some insights that might facilitate the quest.

• Learn what a self-confident person is really like. They are not cocky, know-it-all   people who don’t care what anybody else thinks. They have their doubts. And make mistakes. And are far from perfect.  However, they are willing to acknowledge their inadequacies without dwelling on them. They do this by maintaining a sense of humor, putting problems in perspective, and focusing mainly on what they’ve done right, not wrong.

• Though self-confident people do believe in themselves, they don’t try to suffocate others with their ideas or beliefs. They are confident in what they know not only because they read, learn and think but also because they respect their instinct, intuition and the unique body of knowledge that they’ve developed by living life. They realize that one doesn’t have to be labeled an “expert” to believe in one’s own truths.

• Self-confident people don’t undermine their own worth by comparing themselves with others, only to conclude that they aren’t “good enough”.  They appreciate their strengths and accomplishments and can acknowledge, without embarrassment, their weaknesses. They don’t live in the “victim” position. Even if something really bad has occurred, they turn it into a challenge, remembering to be grateful for the little things in life.

• Self-confident people let the world know who they are.  If they want something badly enough, they know they have every right to “go for it.”  Yet, they also know that the path will rarely be easy. Mistakes, blunders and failures are part of the learning process. They seek to learn from their mistakes and do not waste time torturing themselves over what “could have been”.

• Self-confident people are not obstinate people. If they have an idea about something and it differs from the way another person is thinking about it, they will usually try to look at it from that person’s point of view, see why it makes sense to them. Yet, a confident person’s sense of self is grounded. It does not blow in the wind. Their ideas do not fluctuate based on what others deem are important.

I hope these insights are helpful to you. If so, perhaps one day you will be able to  say what the actress Phyllis Rashad once said, simply but eloquently, ” I am just myself and who I am is a lot.”

Families Who Play Together, Stay Together

The FirePower Family is Strong!!

Family values are at the core of our business…from the Savard family, to the Arnold family, to our FirePower family.  It infiltrates every decision we make about business including class times, who teaches when, and who we attract as members.

You may not realize but the idea of “FirePower” came from George’s and my desire to simply A) have a place to workout together; and B) have an environment our twins (6 months old at the time) could grow up knowing family time, health, and hard work.  FirePower Boxing was born from a hobby we loved and wanted to share with our community using a small 10ft wide room inside a high school, and then grew into the FirePower Training facility and culture you know today.

Families Who Play Together, Stay Together

This has been our business motto from Day 1.  We strongly encourage other families to join us!  Very few sports allow families to sweat it out side by side in a class together, encouraging each other, making fun of each other, getting fit together. Husbands/wives, sisters/brothers, mothers/daughters, fathers/sons, etc.  New to us this year is our Super Kids program, taught by CrossFit parents, and finally allowing young children to play too.  This fall, we’ll be continuing with our after school program again.

Here’s a list of SOME of our FirePower Families who play with us:

• Chris & Tracy Hummel
• Scott & Jordan Kerr
• Jeff, Dan, Michelle, Andrea, Alyssa, Alisha Ramlogan
• Carmen, George, Vicky, Alex, Adam Schembri
• Grant & Chris Fowler
• Kim/Randy Smith + 3
• Mellyssa DaSilva, Jason Enriquez, Maria DaSilva
• Doug & Joel Herder
• Brad & Andrea Maguire
• Zena & Steve Reynolds
• Trish, Chris, Connor Lamont
• Jason & Tammy Vallaire
• and more!

Family time is the sole reason FirePower doesn’t currently have Sunday classes. We’ve been protective of our need for recharging our family after a busy week.  Thankfully as our FirePower family grows with volunteers, this will soon change and we can offer Sunday workout times.

Starting in August, look for bi-monthly FirePower Family Days on Sunday afternoons.  Just like Family Day in February, we will have family-friendly WODs, kids CrossFit area while parents workout, BBQ, music, and laughter.  The way a Sunday should be!

Thanks FirePower Family for letting us be part of your family.

Andrea

The 10 General Physical Skills of CrossFit Training

CrossFit’s main goal is to improve an athlete’s General Physical Preparedness (GPP).  How is this measured?

One standard that CrossFit uses is the 10 General Physical Skills:

-Cardiovascular/respiratory endurance:  The ability of body systems to gather, process, and deliver oxygen.

-Stamina: The ability of body systems to process, deliver, store, and utilize energy.

-Strength: The ability of a muscular unit, or combination of muscular units, to apply force.

-Flexibility: the ability to maximize the range of motion at a given joint

-Power: The ability of a muscular unit, or combination of muscular units, to apply maximum force in minimum time.

-Speed: The ability to minimize the time cycle of a repeated movement.

-Coordination: The ability to combine several distinct movement patterns into a singular distinct movement.

-Agility: The ability to minimize transition time from one movement pattern to another.

-Balance: The ability to control the placement of the bodies center of gravity in relation to its support base.

-Accuracy: The ability to control movement in a given direction or at a given intensity.

At FirePower Training we try to hit all of these physical skills. By finding our weaknesses, it allows us to shift our focus towards our weaknesses and in turn make greater gains in a shorter amount of time.

Source: Thanks to Jim Crawley and Bruce Evans of Dynamax,