5 Things I Learnt About Business Success From Crossfit

Crossfit is totally the perfect sport for me.

I’ve been doing it for about 5 years (on and off), and it was first introduced to me in 2012 by a bearded Norwegian traveller in a bar in Thailand who described it as “you pick up heavy shit and run around with it”

(he also described the Paleo Diet – which went hand-in-hand with crossfit back then – as “if you can pick or kill it, you can eat it.” Both philosophies I have adopted as my own now)

Why is it perfect for me?

I love variety, and in Crossfit, every day is something different.

Also…

I don’t need to decide on my workout – I just rock up and do what it says on the board
There’s a right way and a wrong way to do each movement (I love being right)
I get to push myself
People cheer me on
I feel strong

It’s definitely a match for my personality and my driving core value of SHINE, which I guess is why I’ve stuck with this so long.

(way longer than my 3 salsa lessons, my 6-weeks of powerplate vibrations, or my single solitary Zumba class)

And being an entrepreneur, I’ve taken a lot of business lessons from Crossfit too.

Here’s 5 that I want to share with you.

1. Competition is a good thing

One day we had a really quiet class, it was just me and the coach. For the first part of the class we had a weights sessions, and the second part was the WOD [Workout Of the Day].

During the weights, he coached me, and then in the WOD, he joined in and we did it together.

What I noticed in myself, was that during the weights sessions, I was pacing myself. I was taking it easy. I’d load the bar to a comfortable weight, and stop before I got too sore.

But in the WOD, suddenly things changed.

Once I had someone to work alongside, I upped my game.

The only thing is, I didn’t realise this until the final part of the WOD, which was a 10-calorie sprint on the treadmill.

He’d gotten to the treadmill ahead of me, and something inside me decided “I’m going to beat him!”

So as I started running, I set the machine to a speed of 13 – which I NEVER do. Usually I’ll jog at 9, run at 11 and sometimes sprint at 12 for a few seconds.

But I set it to 13 and my legs were pounding so fast I could barely keep up with the path underneath me.

My sole aim was to catch him and beat him, even though he started ahead of me.

And I did it!

I made it to 10 calories about 20 seconds before him, and I was out of breath but proud of myself.

What I’d realised is that when I’ve got someone to compete against, it pushes me work harder.

I stretch myself, I go further, I try things I hadn’t tried before.

And that’s the same in business. If you’re the only one doing it, it can be pretty lonely. And it’s HARD WORK to be the first one, educating the market.

When you’ve got competitors in business (even friendly rivalry), it ups the playing field for everyone. It makes YOU be better, and then your clients win too.

2. A little tweak in technique can make all the difference

Double Unders are one of those movements that you either love or hate. I love them now, because I can do them.

(“double under” means skipping and having the rope spin twice under your feet for every one jump)

I see a lot of people struggling in classes, and I’m always the first to share the single piece of advice that made all the difference for me.

It’s not about spinning the rope really fast – it’s about jumping really high.

That one little tweak in my technique meant I stopped trying to spin my hands at a speed they wouldn’t go, I was able to slow down because jumping high also means jumping slow, and most importantly, I stopped coming home with whiplash on my arms and butt cheeks (and Phil wondering what the hell we get up to in these “WODs”)

The same applies to business and particularly marketing. You could be metaphorically thrashing yourself and causing more pain just because you haven’t learnt how to do it properly.

Business really is easy. It’s not rocket science. We overcomplicate things because we believe it has to be hard.

The only hard thing about business is mastering your mindset. And a little tweak like slowing down is the best way to do that.

For skipping double unders, and for business success.

3. Failure is not the end

In my first year, I suffered a back injury, which is pretty common in crossfit, but not for the reasons most people think.

It wasn’t that I was pushing myself too hard or being pressured to lift too heavy, too early.

I just didn’t have the right technique.

For me, it was deadlift. At about 70kg, it was the heaviest I had done, but I was overconfident. I lifted the bar really well, but as I finished the lift and went to lower the bar, I did not know about holding my core on the way DOWN as well (and, I hadn’t yet realised I could drop the bar) – and I felt my back pull.

Straight away I knew something wasn’t right, so I did the smart thing and stopped my lift, lay down, and called the coach over.

Long story short – thankfully it wasn’t anything that required major surgery, but I did need to get it seen by specialists and enter into a regime of better self-care.

I had conflicting advice from various professionals as well as concerned friends.

“stop lifting”

“see I told you crossfit was dangerous”

“get back on the horse”

That last one was my favourite.

I didn’t want to stop, and I knew deep down that to stop working out completely would do more harm to my back in the long run.

So I saw a physio attached to the crossfit gym, and a chiro who encouraged me to continue exercising.

I modified my movements, and took way better care with my technique, but I continued to workout, and slowly built back my strength.

From that one “failure”, I learnt

Proper technique is everything
Be mindful of holding my core
Adjust my plan but don’t stop

And the same goes for business “failures”

Failure is just learning one way that doesn’t work. No matter the injury or mistake, you can always get back on the horse (well, you might start with a pony), but there is always an option.

4. Start tracking everything early

You’ve probably heard of PBs (personal bests) and it’s something that any weightlifter tracks.

Crossfit has such a variety of movements, that often some movements don’t come up again for quite a while, especially if you’re a sporadic crossfitter like I was at the beginning.

At the beginning, I wasn’t tracking. I was just turning up and having fun, and I felt like I was so new, and doing such baby weights, that there’s no point tracking yet.

The thing is, whenever that movement came up again, I couldn’t remember what I did last time, so I would err on the side of caution, and limit my weights. Especially after my injury.

I would take it easy, set my goals too low, and not achieve what I was actually capable of.

Once I started making note of each movement and what my highest weights were (or how many unbroken movements such as pull-ups or hand-stand-push-ups that I could do in a row), I was able to not only look back and see how far I’d come, but I made more improvements each time.

Even if it was only a slight increase, I still made progress, which I would not have done if I hadn’t known my previous stats.

This is now a habit in business. Every month I track my social media stats. Every time I launch a program I track my list size, webinar sign-ups, webinar show-ups, sales, refunds…

“Anything that be measured can be improved” – Michael Dell

No matter the size of your results now, even if you think it’s too small to count, this is exactly where you start.

Start tracking now, so you can see how far you’ve come, so you can improve each time, and so you can share your amazing transformation story with your followers in the future.