Live. Laugh. Love.

We are caught between a fast-fading childhood and a rapidly approaching adulthood. We are handed more responsibility but expected to fail. We are surviving by trial and error. We are pulling it off, but barely. We are the 23s.

We are too old to be “college-aged” but too young to be friends with our parents’ friends. We are chasing love and finding it in all the wrong places. We are pining for a time when we are older and wiser. We are making the same mistakes we watch those around us make; the very ones we are trying to avoid.

We are looked down upon by those who are older and looked up to by those who are younger. We are sought after for advice but never seem to have adequate answers. We are in a constantly changing environment of friends, interests, and career choices. We are making choices day-to-day instead of looking at the big picture. 

We are happy one day and heartbroken the next. We are confident and self-conscious all in the same five minutes. We are permanent and a flight-risk. We battle with our common sense. We live fully with our hearts first and heads second.

We are in love with the idea of love, and scared to death that we both will and will not find it. We are coming of age, and making this world our own.

My biggest fear as an athlete is injury. As a gymnast growing up, and now as a crossfitter, I knew should something happen to my body, I wouldn’t be able to compete at the same level as my healthy self. Recently, I suffered two injuries around the same time. The first to my shoulder due to over exhaustion, the second a torn elbow ligament from snatches. These two injuries eliminated me from both bodyweight movements and Olympic lifts for six weeks.

Now coming back, I’m stronger than I was before. I have set new personal records for myself every day in the gym. I attribute a lot of this to my coaches, and them pushing me through the recovery period as if I wasn’t injured. They allowed me the rest and recuperation my body needed while still creating workouts that made my healthy muscles and joints fire at a high capacity. Visiting a physical therapist twice a week gave me the stretching and exercises I needed for the rest of the equation.

I have been cleared and back in the gym a total of two weeks and have never felt as ready to train as I do now. I learned while I was out that there is such a thing as overtraining. The perfect evidence of this is the fact that I haven’t lifted in six weeks and I’m now setting higher weight personal records than I had before I found myself injured.

1.  CHOOSE JOY:  You have been purchased with grace, for His grace, replaced by grace freely given. Never forget the only sacrifice to breed salvation. For if your heart is closed to learning, how can you grow and change?

2. BE A MENTOR:  Mentors stem from listening and offering advice. This advice is not toxic to either you or your mentor, and is appropriate given the circumstances. Offer listening ears to others, and you just may find a way to mentor them.

Credible

Honorable

Animated

Loving

Limitless

Enigmatic

Necessary

Genuine

A box is typically a rigid container. It may or may not have a lid, and can be empty or full. It has four sides and varies in shape, but the structure and purpose of a box is always the same:  to be used for storage. So, when comparing a box to my box, there are some vast differences that need to be covered.

The first item of sustenance that needs to be covered is the ability to think outside the box. My box can be walked into. It holds blood, sweat, and tears, and longs for use by various people. Its framework is, by design, three-tiered. From the three-lettered acronymic name, and the three platform levels, this three-tiered design is in full effect. Strength In Conditioning takes on new meaning with various options from LIFE, FITNESS, and SPORT. Its design incorporates all levels of fitness through these platforms, and the challenges endured there allow for daily self-improvement.

In a typical gym, a person expects to walk in armed with the knowledge that there will be equipment waiting to be used. When I look around my box, I see relatively little equipment. The floors are rubber, the pull-up bars are on both sides of the gym, there are rowers along the back wall, and barbells for weightlifting. And all of these things fit perfectly together to complete the box’s vision of the three basic platforms:  Strength In Conditioning in LIFE, FITNESS, and SPORT. Structurally, these components add to the box’s purpose and vision to meet and exceed participants’ goals.

Following this mission statement, I feel wholly content in my box, a place that has transformed into my second home. The coaches are knowledgeable, properly educated and trained, and truly present to assist athletes in becoming better performers. The first time I walked into Sicfit Scottsdale, I had no idea it would become such a large part of my life. While it is technically a place to workout, the challenges I have endured there go much deeper—inside and outside the box.

Everyday I get up, I know I want to train. I have bad days and good days, but the good days far outweigh anything else. My box tests you to push yourself by its very nature of the sport, and those who surround you. There is nothing rigid about my box. It is by far one of the most welcoming gyms I have ever belonged to. Among the things that add to this are the size, the coaching staff, the members, and the environment as a whole. Sicfit Scottsdale is welcoming from day one. Even from the moment I first walked in with a Texas-sized bow in my hair, and not an idea at all what crossfit, or functional fitness, truly was, Sicfit Scottsdale has allowed me to exceed my goals.

As I gain a better insight and definition to what a box is, I simultaneously grasp who I am, and who I am becoming. Instead of material items, my box holds answers and challenges that acknowledge my daily growth as an individual. This growth I experience in turn lets me contribute back to the box. Those contributions, no matter how small, lead to validation, a communication tool that cannot be bought or replaced.