Forging elite fitness is the CrossFit tag line but it might as well be forging fortitude. If you’ve been doing CrossFit for any length of time you’ll know what I’m taking about. It’s what you come up against midway through the WOD, when your mind is telling you to put the bar down, rest, this is too hard, you can’t go on. We learn more about ourselves at this moment than we probably ever wanted to know…

The mind is the hardest thing to train and it is when we hit that seemly insurmountable wall of “I can’t” that we have an opportunity and a choice. What we choose goes far beyond the WOD and effects all aspects of our lives. Do we cave and give in or do we push through one more rep, one more round?  Our choices build momentum and train our minds. We can either become mired in our self imposed limits or we can push against those walls that hold us back, refuse to be overwhelmed by hardship and find out just  how extraordinary we can be.

Everyday we have the power to choose. We get to say which way it goes.

Jon Gilson of Again Faster in Boston has a good post about one of his clients and fortitude that’s worth the read.