CrossFit Accountability
The Glue Binding Commitment To Results
Regardless of whether your sporting endeavour is a team-based or solo journey, crossfit accountability is what will drive you to be your best. Conversely, effort without accountability produces a lot of smoke…..but no fire…..and ultimately no achievement. In this article we will focus on what accountability is, what behaviours drive and diminish accountability, and how you can use accountability to achieve your goals.
What is accountability?
Put simply, accountability requires three essential values:
Responsibility – owning the change you need to improve,
Integrity – doing what you say you’re going to do, and,
Dedication – implementing action to the best of your ability.
You won’t have to sit with that insight very long before you realise that accountability is much easier to define than it is to practice. To put accountability into practice requires effort, and effort requires sustained behaviours from the athlete and coach.
WE……are accountable
From a CrossFit perspective, be you athlete or coach, the values of responsibility, integrity and dedication that drive accountability will need to be identical in intensity and commitment. The only differences that exist are in how these values are applied.
For CrossFit coaches, providing a training environment that heaves with engagement is crucial to building accountability in athletes and creating an atmosphere for achievement that drives personal and group responsibility.
For our athletes, focusing on the below steps in progressive order is key to developing true individual accountability:
Acceptance – developing an understanding of the difference between where you are and where you would like to be.
Ownership – when someone willingly accepts what has to happen and their part in it.
Solutions-focused – when someone actively seeks solutions to the change they desire
Proactive – when someone takes all appropriate measures to achieve their goal.
Think about these four bullet points for a moment and you may begin to see the developmental thread that runs through them. Each is a progression from the foundation set previously. This means that rather than setting an unrealistic expectation that everyone must have 100% accountability from the get-go…….
Accountability is something that can grow
A culture of accountability can grow by embedding the following three steps into your thinking and planning, helping you raise the need for responsibility across the entire group and box (a CrossFit gym).
Set Yourself Realistic Expectations – Set expectations that have clearly defined and targeted roles, responsibilities, objectives and goals. The more measurable your goals can be the better.
Own Your Mistakes – Own your slip ups. Crossfit offers versatile training across strength, bodyweight movements, cardio and gymnastics. To expect you will be flawless across all areas without trial and error would be a heavy and possibly unrealistic expectation to put on yourself. Embarrass the mistakes, accept them as an opportunity, ask for advice and don’t give up if it takes a few goes!
Share Your Journey – If nothing worthwhile is ever easy, then it is equally true that nothing worthwhile is ever achieved alone. Shared achievements build a healthy sense of pride, value and focus on always aspiring for better.
Accountability won’t happen overnight…..but it will happen.
With the right values, behaviours and drivers in place, accountability will be the secret ingredient driving your success. Accountability requires you to stand up, be counted, share your successes and own the consequences of your failures. It requires you to turn up, again and again, understanding and accepting failure as an essential teacher on the path to eventual success. It will build camaraderie, trust and motivation in not only owning a problem, but in overcoming it. Most importantly it will remove the word quitting from your vocabulary. For these reasons, accountability, especially within a crossfit training program context, is indispensable.
So if getting your mind, will and body into shape sounds like something you need, then come along to CrossFit Raven Geelong. We have the classes and coaches for you.