As athletes and fitness generalists, we all need to expand our minds and not focus too much on how we do against each other, but more how we perform against ourselves.  We all need to look within and celebrate those small victories that we accomplish.  Take pride in those tasks you achieve no matter how big or small they may seem at the time.  You are your own training, not someone elses.  So give credit where credit is due and use other's performance to motivate you, but in a healthy way!  If you continuously compare your goals and victories to others, you will be setting yourself up for a possible let down.

    Gathering up small victories takes time, patience, and focus. In addition, it's important to recognize it does not always happen overnight.  Every single person is at different stages in their training.  If you try to achieve a skill or strength that someone else has already accomplished and you try it without proper preparation, you risk getting injured.  For instance, let's look at kipping pullups.  Kipping, in general, requires a lot of shoulder stability and strength.  It is a requirement at CFG that you achieve 5 deadhang pullups before learning to kip.  Why?  Because that shows strength and stability in the shoulder and lats and kipping can be done with less stress on the shoulder.  You want to learn to kip?  Better start throwing in some extra time with deadhang pullups 2x per week.  There are requirements for all movement progressions in the CrossFit world, so be sure to have the requirements nailed down before progressing.  There will be more info distributed on said requirements this week so stay tuned.

     In closing, always remember to train hard, train smart, and celebrate your accomplishments, no matter how small you perceive them.  Know that every athlete is different and many will have various skills and strengths mastered at various stages.  Guess what?  That is perfectly fine.  They started out just like you did and trained for those skills for quite some time.  They achieved small victories that led to larger ones.  Trust me, if I could sprinkle magic coaching dust over the community and have every athlete be awesome from the get-go, I would be pretty famous and pretty stinking rich.  However, I do not possess magic dust because greatness takes time, hard work and small victories along the way.

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