When Tony Robbins first became famous he was conducting evening and weekend seminars that included what people called a fire walk (a walk across a bed of hot coals). The fire walk was really about something different and much greater than just being able to walk across a bed of hot coals.

The fire walk is a metaphor for possibility. Most people entered with a very strong belief “walking on fire is impossible.” Going from a belief of “this is impossible, I can’t do it” to an experience of “I did it!” breaks down barriers and walls and opens a door way to the path of “What else is possible?” It is a sudden and immediate change for self concept world view. The person who was afraid to ask for a raise, a leap off the high dive, ask for a date, or speak in public is now empowered. After walking on fire you’ve walked over your limitations to a place of new found courage and possibility.

As an athlete, we have the opportunity to do our own daily fire walk and take other people with us. How do we get there? We can go there during a single workout. Intensity is the fastest path. We go there by deciding to dig deep within. It is a choice to keep going, giving total effort and finding that we have more. We can also go there over time individually and as a group. This occurs in increments as daily workouts, nutrition, and recovery practices transform our abilities, our bodies, and our world. It is the development of new skills, abilities, and a daily practice of exceeding limitations.

Training has the potential to be much more than just a physical transformation. Training can be a metaphor for finding our own greatness. Intense training gives a person the experience and verification to transform oneself and one’s life.

Working out at Flow isn’t just about building muscles. Working out at Flow is about building character, habits, and traits that take us someplace new. When you do a workout go deep within and find your place of greatness and consider what else can you do? Can you do more? Can you make a greater effort? When you find your best self and set Personal Records, ask yourself where else in life can you PR? Where else in your life can you obtain a new skill? Where else in your life can you better your performance? As you step outside the gym, consider “How can you take your Flow practice into your life?”

​Wolfie

Folks are always asking me, “I want to do X but also Y and Z and it’s not working and I’m getting discouraged.”

Here’s my answer: Throw all that shit out.

“Gain muscle” and “lose X lbs” and “run a marathon” and “do a million pull-ups” are all great goals but if you’re an average person who just wants to feel, look, and perform a bit better, it doesn’t fucking matter because you need to get into better overall shape and eat better, period. I guarantee it.

Throw all that detail shit out. Stop reading the goddamned interwebs and magazines. (Except me.) Stop distracting yourself with crap.

Then focus on this ONE goal:
Get as fit as possible while nourishing yourself — truly, deeply nourishing yourself — as well as possible.

Forget about calories and focus on making every bite of food you put in your mouth the best possible quality — the most nourishing; the most lovingly prepared; the most mindfully eaten; the freshest and realest; the most full of vitamins and minerals and other good stuff. Don’t skimp on your protein, colorful fruits and veggies, and good, real fats. (Yeah, that includes egg yolks and butter.)
Eat slowly. (This piece is so profoundly important I should almost write a book and charge for it.)

Forget about workout details and focus on this: Jump high. Run fast. Hit hard. Build a heart-lung-muscle engine with lots of power and work capacity. Be real with your movements. Recover hard — guard your sleep and your playtime like a starving dog guards a steak.

Forget about getting the macronutrients perfect and focus on how you feel when you eat. Does what you eat make you feel light yet powerful? Does it make you feel like you could beat down Mike Tyson and every virus in the world? Do you eat with joy and care and a deep, abiding sense of love and self-nurturance (which is not to be confused with “I deserve this piece of sugary chemical shit because I had a bad day!”)?

Do this consistently — every day — to the very honest best of your ability and don’t bullshit yourself about what you’re eating or whether you put in your most earnest effort.
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Everything else is irrelevant.

​Wolfie

It’s a cliche that’s been around forever, and it’s just as true at Flow as it is in every other aspect of your life. Are you bad at overhead squats? Well avoiding them and the exercises to improve the flexibility necessary to do them won’t make them any easier, nor will it make overhead squats cease to exist. My advice would be to work hard to improve your flexibility and practice the hell out of them so that you can take them off your “I hate doing [insert movement here] because I’m not good at them” list.

There’s really no way to get around that, is there? You are responsible for 100% of your results, 100% of your strengths, and (more importantly) 100% of your weaknesses. If you suck at it, then somewhere along the line you made a conscious decision to suck at it. You must have, because if you wanted to get better at it you would’ve simply worked to improve it, and not working to improve it means that you want to suck at it. Sorry bro – that’s the truth.

You don’t get a promotion by sitting on your ass complaining about how much you want a promotion. Nor do you get stronger by sitting on your ass complaining about how much you wish you could be stronger. If you want that promotion then start doing something worthy of a promotion. If you want to get stronger (or better, faster, leaner, whatever) then do the things that will make that happen.

​And whichever you choose to do – suck at things or master them – realize that you never, ever, have a reason to complain about them. You cannot complain about the outcomes you chose on purpose. You choose not to practice overhead squats? Then you’ll suck at overhead squats – and you’ll do it on purpose.

The good news, however, is that if you choose to practice as if you want to master them, then that’s exactly what you’ll do – and you’ll do it on purpose.
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Show me what you got.

You can’t save everybody. That’s a fact.

It took me many, many years to realize this.

I can’t save all the obese people in the world from themselves. I can’t fill the emptiness inside of them that some are so desperately trying to plug with food. I can’t commandeer their grocery carts at Kroger and toss the cookies and pasta and bread. I have to wait for them to walk through these doors and commit to exercise, meat, and vegetables.

I can’t save the eating disorder crowd either. I can help them to snatch and row and talk about good choices, but they have to learn to love themselves and pick up the fork and eat.

I can’t save the skinny nerds from getting beat up on the playground. I can put muscle on ‘em, sure, but they have to learn to put up their dukes and defend themselves. I can’t throw their punches for them.

I can’t even save the strong folks. The ones who tear up the place during the WODs, desperately fighting some battle with themselves that only they understand. I don’t even know their inner war, let alone how to score it.

And, ultimately, I have to realize that maybe I don’t know best. Maybe my ways aren’t the best ways. Maybe some people are happy right where they are — and they have no reason to believe the life I can give them is better. They don’t want my help. So I have to let them be. See, I can’t save everybody. Most days, I can barely save myself.

But what can I do?

Take this day and make it right. Work hard, train hard, provide a little insight here, a little guidance there, a little support over that way.

I can coach people, at Flow . . . and, in some ways, in life. Fight the good fight. Take a heart and make it braver. Take a will and make it stronger. Use these words here right now to help somebody push on when they don’t think they can push anymore.

And love them all, in some way.

It’s all any of us can do. Each of us must find our strength and use it. To help ourselves, to help our families, to help others.
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You can’t save everyone. But you can help most people you meet. So do that. And it will have to be enough.