Nathan asked me in if I had seen a recent post about an affiliate leaving CrossFit. I read it and it got me thinking about our expansion: Where we were when we started, where we are now and where we are going, and most importantly, what I am trying to do with this business. In a nutshell, other affiliate owners should do what they need to do. I am doing what I am doing based on the way I have been treated and how I want to be treated.
Let me get some scale to the issue. I am a intermediate level coach, working towards becoming an advanced level coach (although I am not entirely sure what that means at this point, but that is a different post all together), in the same way that the majority of our athletes are intermediate athletes working towards becoming advanced athletes. My mentor, whom I talked with today, has been coaching skiing for 40 years, has been the VP of Education for the Rocky Mountain Division (including Vail, Apsen, Crested Butte, etc.) and coached the Professional Ski Instructors Demonstration National Team. At the age of 65+, even though he’s had both knees replaced he can still make a pretty good turn, certainly better than I will ever make. When he first saw me ski, I am sure he thought I was a moving hazard. He talked with me today (coached me really, for free) for almost an hour about teaching and coaching. In addition, I was lucky enough to have Coach Burgener teach Olympic lifting at my level 1 cert. and have been lucky enough to have a few conversations with him over the years. I have both face-to-face and email conversations with Greg Everett, Robb Wolf and Michael Rutherford. All of these coaches are what I would call expert level coaches. The point I am trying to make here is that we are all learning, and I suspect, we all have coaches. I believe that when we learn something, someone has helped us, really, has performed a service for us, sometimes in ways we don’t always see. In addition, since coaching can be difficult, as we can see from the Greyskull post, we should honor that service by serving others as we have been served. That we should treat others as we would like to be treated.
In summary, I can see why the coach from Greyskull made his choice and I have to say I have considered making the same choice; however, in the end, I am committed to staying with the CrossFit community, in spite of its many faults, because I have received so many gifts from the community. As I think about where we started and where we are going, if there was only one thing I could keep, it would be to continue to honor the people who taught us by helping others, no matter how challenging the situation, as we were helped.