Becoming Part of the Family

AUTHOR: JESSE TEIXEIRA

Life throws curves at you each day.

Your alarm clock doesn’t go off on time, your car sputters its last breath at the most inconvenient spot possible, your boss changes the deadline date for your assignment to a week earlier, and the kids refuse to eat the new “healthy alternative” meal you’ve cooked up. Some days make you want to pull your hair out, scream as loud as you can, and just give up.

Wait, wait, wait! Every day brings a new challenge, but we don’t want you to be hairless with a sore throat and a broken spirit!

There’s a much better alternative.

At our gym, you’ll find a place to go to get away from the madness, a place where you can fit right in, a place where you are part of a family.

It might seem a tad cliché; a family with your fellow gym members? But that’s what we become here. That hour a day in the gym grows to days each week, and those weeks form months and seasons. You do spend a good amount of time with your fellow CrossFitters, and think about all of the things we accomplish here together!

For example, who else but your CrossFit family will be able to sympathize with you the next two days after completing 42 squats at a heavy weight? Who else can say, “Yeah, I know pull-ups are tough to get. It honestly took me four months to get my first one, but man, what a great feeling that was! Keep working on it!” And who else is almost knee to knee with you on the wall, chucking that ball up as high as you can, letting you know that you only have 10 more to go? When people struggle together, there’s a special bond that’s formed during those tough circumstances. Nearly every workout offers a challenge in a unique way to different people, and when we rise to the occasion and pull others up along with us, we feel a significant connection to those people.

This seems crazy.

Now, don’t get too nervous with all this talk of difficult times and tough workouts! Our family is based on way more than that. Consider the idea of what brought you to us in the first place. We may have different end goals, sure; some of us are here because we want to lose weight, some of us like the challenge of something new, and others might be working toward an athletic competition, like the CrossFit Games. But no matter what motivates us to get to the gym, that’s just it: we’re motivated, like-minded people! On some level, WE are just like YOU; we want to be better, healthier people. And when you put all of these like-minded people together in a box, we tend to reveal more of ourselves and take interest in the lives of the others who share our same thoughts and ideas. It’s just human nature that we begin to bond as a family.

Of course, you’ll start to find that our CrossFit family isn’t only close-knit when we’re in the gym, but we tend to gravitate toward each other outside of our non-CrossFit class time. Sooner or later, you’ll be grabbing breakfast with a fellow member after a strenuous Saturday morning workout, or maybe you’ll sign up for your first 10K run with a couple of others who are seasoned veterans. The friendships that you’ll build span age, gender, and ability level, so you might find yourself trying something you’ve never done before!

It’s incredibly easy for us to see how CrossFit is changing our lives physically because our workouts are measurable and observable, but it’s much more difficult to put into words or pinpoint how CrossFit has changed us into a family. Sometimes it’s the small things we start to notice, like getting to the gym a few minutes early to chat about our workdays, or staying later to make plans for the following weekend. Or maybe we see a group picture after a Hero WOD, where every sweaty body is squeezed happily into the frame, which clearly shows the love we have for one another. Regardless of when you start to see it, just know that we are excited to welcome you into our family!