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.

“Isn’t that why you do CrossFit?” asked the other. “So you don’t need men to carry heavy shit for you?”

It’s true: I like being strong. I enjoy being able to carry 8 bags of groceries up 10 flights of stairs. And I enjoy being a useful human being on moving day. 

Children have been breaking their arms on trampolines for decades. When did we start believing it was ok to take advantage of the emergency system and call for an ambulance?

Why did we become so soft, so abusive to our public services? So assuming that taxpayers should foot the bill for an ambulance call for a small bone break?

Whether you’re in individual CrossFit Games competitor, part of a team, or a 60-year-old man, there’s something unforgettable about competing in the tennis stadium at the StubHub.

60-year-old Terry Peters had the chance to experience the magic of the tennis stadium for the first time in the final 60+ Masters Men’s event of the 2015 CrossFit Games—“Amanda.”

“It was really exciting to walk into the stadium and have the crowd cheering as my name was announced,” Peters said. “It was amazing to be standing in the spot where I’ve watched so many incredible individual athletes compete.”

West Regional champion, Emily Abbott, who currently sits 11th overall after two events at the 2015 CrossFit Games, will rely on RIPT's 3 phase hand care kit to get her through Murph on Friday morning in Carson.

“(QUICK FIX) heals up those tears quick. The DAILY DOSE was great for me in St. Louis (where Abbott trained leading up to the Games), where humidity is high and your hands seem to get raw quick,” Abbott said. 

To get ready for 100 pull-ups in Murph—and to mitigate any damage on her hands in order to get through the rest of the weekend—Abbott is listening to RIPT Skin Systems' advice.

When you were a child, playing was fun. Somewhere along the way, though, most of us turned into adults and forgot how to play.

Often times, though, it's not that we don't want to play; many times, adults just lose their youthful fitness to the point that playing is no longer fun. 

When a new prospect shows up at my door to start CrossFit, after I ask him (or her) what his goals are, I always explain to him what my goal is for all my clients: To get your youthful fitness back!