Why Are We Here?

At surface level, the world of strength, conditioning, and health are much simpler than we make them out to be. Contrary to the never-ending questions that continue your athlete’s pursuit of some magical industry secrets, most of them are well aware that prioritizing sleep, real food, and their time in the gym is in their best interest. If that is indeed the case, why are they always coming back for more advice and tips and tricks day after day? Because they need your support. They need your encouragement. They need to feel like you’re on their team through thick and thin.

The glue that has held this style of gym together for nearly two decades of incomprehensible growth was born out of a need that is rarely met in our society today but is a robust code written deep into our DNA: community. Thrusters and triplets and real food are just random pieces of a puzzle that have been around forever and could have easily floated away as they have before if there wasn’t a genuinely authentic personality that brought people together. Touting infinite scalability created a wrinkle in this community that separated it from similar groups in the past. Anyone could join as long as they were willing to overcome the adversity of taking that first step into the gym. All of us have at some point in our lives wanted to be a part of a group that felt out of reach due to actual exclusivity or more commonly our own insecurities. We squash those fears daily inside the four walls of our gym.

With this information in mind, we must understand the full extent of what we are doing for our athletes. If you’ve taught them well on the technical and theoretical side of things in the gym, why are they still coming back? Wouldn’t it be cheaper and easier to tackle this stuff in their basement? Of course not. When they enter the front door, a weight is lifted off their shoulders because they know you and their classmates are going to encourage them to do the things they aren’t willing to do on their own. If you fail to understand this as a coach, you set yourself up to have a very black and white view of what you’re trying to accomplish with them. Sometimes the absolute last thing a member needs is the drilling of, and your subsequent frustration that they cannot execute, a hip hinge in the kettlebell swing. They need their community to guide them through waters that they wouldn’t dare to step into alone.

Fitness is our vehicle to address the health and wellbeing of ourselves and our athletes. It was never the end goal.

Written by Drew Crandall