Have you had a chance to read Chasing Excellence by Ben Bergeron yet? If not, I do highly recommend it. It’s an easy read, very entertaining, and hugely insightful.

We often get to the see the highlight reels of peoples’ lives. It’s nice to get a glimpse of all the failures, hard work, and pain that goes into achieving goals. My favorite videos to watch are of the dozens and dozens of missed lifts from an athlete. It makes seeing them finally hit that new personal record that much more amazing.

Success is a process. It isn’t something that happens magically. It’s a lot of pieces put together day after day. We look at these Games athletes when the come to town and often feel a twinge of jealousy. They make it look so easy and effortless. They make it seem like the road to get to where they are has been an easy one. But that is never the case.

It’s nice to know that these amazing athletes have struggles just like every other CrossFitter. It’s also very refreshing to know, that even if our goal isn’t to be an elite competitor, we can all chase and find excellence in our own daily workouts.

In the book, there is a lot of time spent on mindset. Approaching each workout just as you could approach a competition. Train for how you will perform. When these athletes get to these super elite levels, there are rarely chances for them to actually compete in a gym with people at their level. So they have to learn to compete with themselves. To make themselves better, they have to change their mindset and do what they need to do to be better than yesterday. They have to learn to draw from within themselves to push to give their best every single workout.

We could all learn a lot from this mindset. Train your hardest every day. Train as you would perform. Find a way to push yourself that only involves yourself, no one else around you. If you can’t do that in a workout, you will certainly find yourself pacing and performing against someone else’s best instead of your own. And that rarely leads to a successful workout.

Chase Excellence every day. Be the best you can be in that moment. Give what you have to give on that day. Compare yourself only to the person you were yesterday, not anyone else. You will find the most success this way. Be excellent my friends!

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