Do you secretly cringe when your significant other asks you nicely if you can rub some Deep Cold, or A535 Heat cream, or Tiger Balm or Liniment, or whatever muscle relaxant product of the day, on his sore muscles? You can’t possibly say no because it’s such a seemingly small favour. Then again, it’s not! Your palms and fingers get all gooey and gunky, and worse yet you end up stinging and burning in weird places all night because no matter how much you wash your hands after the rubdown, the residue is powerful—so whatever you touch with your hands feels the burning effect for hours. Nobody enjoys this! There’s finally a solution: RIPT Skin Systems’ Sore Muscle Rub. Like the...

Everyone knows the long sock, athletic tape rope burn prevention trick by now. It works most of time. By that, I mean it works when you're logging 5 to 10 rope climbs in a session, but once you get into a 12-plus rope climb workout a la Tommy V, it's not always enough.

As a CrossFit athlete, I used to think we were butchering Olympic sports—one at a time. I often ran into athletes from other sports, like weightlifters and rowers, who would point to sights they saw during throwdowns and CrossFit competitions to prove their point. Sights like a gnarly-looking clean during a max clean event, where the athlete somehow finds a way to stand up despite the bar being down at his nipples, his back being rounded, and his heels lifted off the ground—the kind of laboured, ugly lift that would only ever get applauded by CrossFit athletes. Meanwhile, rowers I knew would point to CrossFit athletes’ short, choppy, rushed rowing strokes—generally accompanied by flailing heads and curved spines—giving them a license...

Stuffing stockings is a stressful endeavour. It’s usually left until the last minute—after you’ve already spent too much money on other presents—and you end up buying whatever useless stocking trinkets that Walmart happens to be selling at the till.

From ugly leg warmers, to that plastic moose that poos brown jelly beans, to the wrong kind of shampoo for your hair—the list goes on. Let’s be honest now, nobody needs another post-it-note pad, and that annual stick of deodorant has become predictable and unexciting. 

It doesn’t have to be this way. Stuffing stockings with practical gifts that will be appreciated by the recipient just takes a little planning. 

I love sweating with others as much as the next CrossFit athlete. After six years of CrossFit, I still hit workouts with a group once or twice a week. But I also believe a system with more individualized coaching would help all parties involved and leads to a community where:  

1. The masses are more fit 

2. Those who google “personal training” join CrossFit instead!

3. Client retention is better

4. Coaches have better relationships with their clients

5. Coach and affiliate revenue is higher 

6. The world doesn’t see CrossFit as too expensive

When I was in Grade 10, my school decided to put us in gender-segregated fitness classes. 

Twice a week, we took a school bus to the local gym “Fitness Avenue” and spent our time in the “Women’s Only” room.

Disengaged girls with nobody to flirt with stood around looking bored, applying lip gloss between sets of whatever lame movements we were doing that day.

...

I’ve never understood the concept of “Women’s Only” gyms or classes. Never understood how it benefits women. While I’m sympathetic that some women might be intimidated and scared of aggressive men dominating the squat rack, I just can’t wrap my head around the idea that shying away from it is somehow a solution.

When people say, “I’m not competitive,” or “I don’t like to compete,” they are essentially announcing to the world they lack courage.

 Why?

Because competing tells the world, “I care!” Or at the very least, competing tells the world you care enough to put yourself out there. 

And competing at something you’re not good at takes the most courage of all.

For me, long distance running has always required courage. I have been petrified of running more than 200 meters since I was 8 years old.

Your legs are on fire. Your heart is racing. You seem to have lost vision in one eye, and your lungs burn like a bitch. If you’re a CrossFit athlete, you know that feeling—all too well.

Now imagine that feeling if you had Cystic Fibrosis (CF), a genetic disease without a cure that affects the digestive system and lungs, characterized by constant lung infections and the eventually the loss of lung function.

This is the reality for Michelle Miguez, a masseuse and energy healer from Vancouver who suffers from CF. 

After Rachel Siemens helped Team Taranis to a bronze medal at the 2011 CrossFit Games, she abandoned the sport. 

Not because she didn’t love CrossFit. But because there was one part of CrossFit she loved more than anything else: Weightlifting.

Somehow as a community, we’ve adopted the belief that if you rip your hands, you’re a wimp if you don’t work through the carnage and finish the workout—even if you’ve lost multiple layers of skin and are bleeding through your tape. A belief that people will somehow be impressed by a picture of ruined hands uploaded to Instagram. #100-pull-ups=destroyed-hands. 

Despite a deeply-entrenched fear of looking soft, many of the top CrossFit athletes in the world don’t live by these standards. They don't think letting your hands rip recklessly makes them tough. They don't think training is the time to rip at all. And if they do rip, working through the pain and creating deeper rips on rips is just silly.