To Breakthrough, Start Small

“Too often we convince ourselves that massive success [or breakthrough] requires massive action.” - James Clear, Atomic Habits

(ADAPTED FROM A NEWSLETTER SENT January 10, 2025)

Last week we kicked off our Breakthrough Blueprint program. Mark Tiderman and I have been talking about the potential to deliver “More than CrossFit” to people since before the gym was ever a thing. We both have decades of experience in leadership and development beyond our roles as coaches in the gym, and this program is the first step in a direction that I am personally very excited about.

For those of you who are part of our inaugural cohort, this may be a bit redundant, but for the rest of you, I wanted to share a little bit about what we’ve been up to and why it matters.

First, I want to introduce you to Atomic Habits - a book and concept by a Badin HS alum, James Clear. Atomic Habits is a NYT best selling guidebook for comprehensive and meaningful lifestyle change. In the book, Clear explores ideas around building habits and practices that can help individuals upgrade their lives. And, in the first few chapters, Clear specifically talks about the concept of starting small. In fact, the name “Atomic” specifically speaks to “the single irreducible unit of a larger system.” And, part of what we’re helping the Breakthrough Blueprint participants do, is adopt seemingly small habits or lifestyle changes that will be a “source of immense energy or power.” (That’s the other definition for “Atomic” btw)

So, the first idea is adopt small changes or new habits. The second is to upgrade your identity, which emerges out of those new habits. “Becoming the best version of yourself requires you to continuously edit your beliefs, and to upgrade and expand your identity.” This email is actually a new “habit” that I’m adopting as I step into my upgraded identity as a leader.

I shared with our group during the workshop last weekend that I had been planning to start a weekly newsletter for the gym for months, but I’d been so overwhelmed by the scope of something that felt so big. The reason I hadn’t been able to start was that I was living in an old identity, one of small CrossFit gym owner and coach, not community leader. Moving forward, I’m still coach Keith at CrossFit Fairfield, but this thing is so much more than CrossFit; It’s a lifestyle and community transformation laboratory where we are all learning to apply the tenets of physical fitness - like discipline and perseverance and doing hard things - to our mental, emotional, and spiritual lives.

This really came into clear view for me when I started seeing the responses that our members submitted in response to a simple question I wrote on our new whiteboards: Why do you CrossFit?

The answers below are from a picture I took a few days ago, so it’s very incomplete, but it tells a story of something so much more than figuring out how to squat more or do double unders. Those things are great, don’t get me wrong, but the people who take on the challenge of doing those things are also the people who take on the challenge of learning how to be better people.

Speaking of incredible people, I want to shout out Danny Scraps and Danielle Schaaf, our members of the month. They’re both going through the Breakthrough Blueprint program right now and I’m so excited about the incredible energy they’ve both brought to the gym as members and I’m even more excited about the identities they are continuing to take on.

If you would like to nominate someone for member of the month, please send me a text, email, IG DM, or smoke signal. I’m so excited about celebrating the amazing members of our community who make this place so special.

Lastly, I want to welcome Nick Baute to our coaching staff. When Nick and his wonderful wife Kayla joined the gym early last year I immediately asked Nick if he would be interested in coaching. The wisdom and maturity he had to decline at that time is why I’m so excited to finally have him join our coaching team now. He wanted to learn the culture of our gym, meet and develop relationships with our athletes, and grow as an athlete himself before he took to the coaching floor.

Whether he was on the team officially or not, Nick has been an incredible leader and mentor to quite a few of our athletes from day 1, and he’s absolutely ready to step into a bigger role.

I’ve genuinely been so impressed by how Nick has grown as an athlete and I can’t wait to watch him develop as a coach.