Who is an athlete?

In your mind, when you think of an athlete, who comes to mind? Is it a decorated Olympian like Michael Phelps or Simone Biles? Or a standout professional in their sport, maybe Michael Jordan or Serena Williams comes to mind. People who reach elite levels of performance in their chosen sport. The face on the Wheaties box. The ones with the fastest times, the most astonishing feats, the biggest wins. These are who we celebrate in our society as athletes. The rest of us poor schlubs? Merely spectators to their greatness.

But me? I think about Barbara from Crossfit Central in Austin. Back in the day when I started my functional fitness journey, Crossfit Central had assigned class spaces. I was in the Tuesday/Thursday 6:15AM class, and for a fitness program that lists community as one of its greatest strengths, I have to admit I didn’t feel it at first among my other early morning compadres. The people in that class were mostly working professionals with families who made five times what I did and had partners in the same earning profiles. They drove expensive cars and lived in neighborhoods I could only dream about. There were big personalities like Nate, aka “that guy who thinks he knows EVERYTHING about crossfit and takes it upon himself to help coach the class and annoy the piss out of the actual coaches.” There was triathlete lady who rode her bike to the gym and was nice but not friendly. There was Joe, an attorney who showed up a few times a month and who Coach Zachary always called out for his inconsistency. There was Jennifer, who practically snarled at anyone daring to speak to her before 7AM. And “coffee cup guy” was usually hanging back after sandbagging his way through the 5:30 class to ramble away, sharing pointless stories while he sipped his open coffee mug he insisted on bringing to the gym. I would later find that golden sense of community Crossfit touts with the LIFT ladies, but until then, there was Barbara.

Barbara worked in the schools, and aside from the “you look new, let me mansplain everything Crossfit to you” lectures from Nate in the warm up area, she was really the one who first made me feel welcome. And like me, Barbara is short, so naturally as the two most vertically challenged members of 6:15AM, we were squat partners.

I’d guess at the time Barbara was around 50 or so. One of her goals back then was to be able to do push ups with her knees off the ground. She hit that goal before I moved to California two years later. She ran, she squatted, she showed up and she got better over time. In fact she’s still over at Crossfit Central Burnet Road putting in the work. Barbara is remarkable in how remarkably average she is, and really, Barbara is each of us in a way.

Crossfit Central referred to ALL of its members as “athletes.” I remember being taken aback by that as I always thought you had to achieve a certain level of fitness before you could call yourself an athlete, but really, it was such an amazing way to normalize what we were all doing, and really, it was critical for allowing me to feel like a full participant. I had grown up with the understanding that some poeple were simply more talented in certain areas than others and that you either “were” or “were not” cut out for that skill. Let’s take music for example:

I am a professional musician, and one of the things I hear CONSTANTLY from people who don’t play is how they could never do that, how “I” am somehow set apart and was imbued with some divine gift. (It’s a persistent and very outdated myth, but somehow people perpetuate the “talent is inherited” notion. I had early exposure to the performing arts by parents who were rabid classical music and opera fans, and I made it my activity. Truly, my journey was so average other than being introduced to concerts and being committed and persistent over time. I wanted to be a lawyer for most of high school.) Maybe some of the “I could nevers” played piano or did band for a few years and lost interest, or other activities got in the way, or maybe they were never given the chance. I’ve never been a prodigious “talent” and I don’t believe most professional musicians are in possession of some God-given ability to play an instrument over “Geraldine from Marketing,” we just applied ourselves consistently over enough years growing up that we had a bank of skills others didn’t. Yes, there is more to it than that if you want to become a professional, namely a willingness and grit to pursue a career that promises (for the most part) low pay and far fewer job openings than there are candidates. Like other careers, there is an element of networking and a “right place-right time” bit of fairy dust that can make you that player who almost made it vs the one who got through the gauntlet. But the perception that some people are “born” to be a certain thing or not is archaic and frankly, harmful. That mentallity is what keeps people on the sidelines thinking it’s not in their cards, when we could all gain something from learning and studying a new skill. (And circling back in terms of our personal physical fitness, assuming someone “is” or “is not” athletic can have long term health consequences if they stay out of the game.)

Up where my folks live in Western MD, there used to be a group of doctors who had a bluegrass band called “The Remedy.” The Ear Doctor who fitted me for custom earplugs was in it as was my dentist. (They weren’t great, but by the way they all talked about it you knew it was a huge source of joy and pride for them.) By engaging in performing and rehearsing, as much as they were experts in the field of medicine, they were musicians. There are people like my Uncle Iain who took up the piano in retirement. He wasn’t looking to get to Carnegie Hall, but he found great personal enjoyment in playing. Teaching lessons in Central Texas, I was keenly aware that most of the students I taught were not headed for a life in music. While I sent dozens of young percussionists off to music conservatory, and while many of those people are working as performers, educators, and have careers behind the scenes in the performing arts, so many more put their sticks and mallets aside to do other things after in most cases seven years worth of year round private lessons. That’s not a small investment, time, financial, etc. Why put forth the hours, energy, and monetary commitment if you end up as an accountant or a teacher or a construction worker? What’s the point?

I still think of those students as musicians, and I’d like to think that they do as well.

Our culture does us an enormous disservice by placing high praise, a sense of “them not us” on those that reach extreme heights, and by pushing the notion that unless we are working to be the number one in a pursuit it’s not worthy of our time or attention. I remember sitting silently on the phone while the Momzilla of the day berated me for not getting their kid into the top spot on the drum line or into the honor band. Was that kid any less of a person for earning third bass drum or getting cut in the first round of auditions? How many of us are discouraged from continuing something because we don’t have apptitude or “potential” in an area? And in the pursuit of our physical health, how much damage is that doing by keeping people from being active because they “weren’t made for it” or some other such mentality? What happens when we stop putting people in boxes based on their strengths and sidelining their weaknesses? How many people are discouraged from simply trying based on these judgements? What happens when we just allow everyone to acknowledge a starting point and make progress relative to that place? I think what happens is we see a lot more Barbaras.

Crossfit Central’s assertion that everyone who walks in the door is an athlete flies in the face of these conventions. It’s revolutionary, really. I certainly did not see myself as athletic, much less an athlete before I started training there. And even though I had been running the local turkey trots and 10Ks and Half marathons, I would never have called myself a runner either. I just “liked to run.” Allowing me to view myself as a full participant alongside the elite athletes was pivotal to my own mindset. It’s an invitation to a table we all deserve whatever the modality.

Most of us are never going to have the biggest lifts, the fastest times, and I’m pretty convinced I’ll never end up on a Wheaties box, but I’m damn sure that I’m an athlete, and if you show up to train in any space, I want you to dare to consider yourself one as well. See if it makes you stand just a little bit taller, feel like you belong in the weight room with the gym bros a smidge more, and move with more pep in your step. When you look back on the last six months or year or more of work and see your progress laid out before you, celebrate it like you just won gold at the freaking Olympics. Value your own worth as much as the top performers and make that your starting point. Be Barbara.