The Hunger

Have you ever been hungry?

Not the type of hunger that can be satisfied by simply devouring some edible object. I’m talking about the type of hunger that eats at you because there is something missing in your life that you can’t fulfill.

As you read this post, I’m somewhere suffering from this form of hunger… but please, don’t try to satisfy it for me. I’m loving it. Does that make me sick?

Patiently waiting for my opportunity… patiently waiting to be ok’d to get after it. Patience is now my fuel.

This isn’t the first time I’ve been stripped of what I love to do. When I was a senior in high school, exactly one day after being elected captain of the football team, I experienced a snap, crack and pop. The result was torn ligaments in my ankle… surgery… screw inserted and taken out 2 months later. An agonzing 2 months on crutches, watching my best friends work through the best season in our school’s history. I haven’t ever told anyone this but I was jealous.

I was jealous that as I suffered from the consequences of a freak injury, my friends got to experience the accolades associated with success. I was young and immature. Why me? That is the question that ran through my head every night as I laid in bed staring at the ceiling. I’d cry. I’d cry so much I had to switch the pillows out before I could actually fall asleep. It makes me laugh now because I understand how much I needed that pain… that motivation… that fuel. I learned what “short term” really meant. I learned that missing my senior year of high school football meant NOTHING when compared to the next chapters of my life and what I’d have to work for in the coming years.

Actually, I just lied to you. It didn’t mean “nothing”… what it meant was I’d have an advantage the rest of my life. This advantage, this weapon I now had on my side, was hunger. People will do unbelieveable things when they are hungry. For me, being an athlete, I satisfied that hunger by working harder… by challenging myself. By walking onto a back-to-back National Championship football team and proving everyone right; proving that I won’t ever be part of the status quo… falling into a life of normalcy. Fighting for the chance to experience things other people dream of.

Now, fast foward to the present; to where CrossFit is my life. What I wake up anxious to train for; to try and be the best at; to coach others about and better their lives with. These next few statements are for YOU: my competition, my teammates, my clients.

I hope you trained today. I hope you didn’t slack at all in your workout. If you did, shame on you. If you had to “drag” yourself to the box just to “show face”, do yourself a favor next time and just stay home. If you trained hard today, you’re lucky. You just got one tiny step ahead of me and the people who are chasing you.

Do you want to know the difference between back then and now? I’m not jealous of you. In fact, you should be jealous of me. I’m starving. I’m more hungry than you and it’s only been 11 days. When they give me the chance to eat again, I’m going to be a fucking maniac. I’m going to be in-fucking-sane. And you thought I trained hard before. No… I wasn’t hungry then… I was just going through the motions.

You better get back to the box because in a few weeks…
I’m bringing the whole fucking army, baby.