Regularly Practice and Learn New Sports

One of the tenants of CrossFit is to regularly learn and practice new sports. What sports have you tried recently? Have you noticed a difference in learning new things since starting CrossFit? We’ve been told stories about newly found skill in new and old sports from a lot of you. Share them here. Tell us of a recent activity that went better than you expected.

The photo for today is my daughter Caitlyn (yes, proud papa using the blog to brag about his daughter… deal with it) learning to ski. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to be there, but this brings up a great topic. We want to approach new things like young children approach them. They approach new things enthusiastically and generally without thinking about what they look like, or if they are good at it or not. Unfortunately this goes away quickly, even Caitlyn at 4 is starting to worry about whether or not she is good at things. When you do something new, odds are you are going to be terrible at it at first. Kids tend to deal with this better than adults. As adults we have had practice in a lot of things, so we expect new things to be like the stuff we are good at. This isn’t the way it works. If you are fit in the CrossFit definition of fit (10 physical traits) then you will do better on average than others, but you’ll still suck more than someone well practiced in the activity. Accept being bad at things, do them anyway, and get better.