How do you lead a proactive life versus a reactive life? How do you stop operating on everyone else's agenda? How do you keep moving forward with health, with fitness, with career, with life and stop getting distracted?

"Getting Sh*t Done" or "GSD" is practical terminology for an age old topic of turning dreams, hopes and ideas into reality. It can also be referred to as goal setting and planning, but that tends to cause people's eyes to glaze over and so they give up before they even begin. In this episode Greg and Belinda discuss how to it's ok to dream, and then how to take practical, actionable steps to move from dreaming to reality.

It's easy at this time of year with all of the focus on the CrossFit Open and the Games to lose sight of the goal - to think that the primary purpose of CrossFit is only to Forge Elite Fitness - to produce incredible specimens of humans capable of performing superhuman feats. But it's never been about that. All of that is just fluff and a byproduct of the primary goal. The primary purpose of CrossFit is to cure and prevent chronic disease. To promote fitness as being the antidote to all that life throws at you and to encourage you to play the long game so that you can age gracefully and with full capacity.

In this episode Greg and Belinda discuss how CrossFit applies to ordinary people. How falling off the wagon is normal and not something to be embarrassed about and how the foundation of all that is CrossFit is nutrition. People often see the barbells and the pullup rigs and think that's what defines CrossFit. But it's only part of the equation. Exercise in the absence of appropriate nutrition is missing a large part of the prescription which equates to fitness and a long and happy life.

You do CrossFit. With its fierce reputation you know you've got this exercise thing nailed. You're doing enough to stave off sickness and disease and to maintain a healthy weight. Or are you?

In this episode Greg and Belinda discuss how CrossFit contributes towards your activity levels and how in fact it may (shock, horror!) not be enough.

CrossFit does indeed deliver the best bang for your buck when it comes to delivering results and is efficient for the amount of time spent in the gym. But you’ve got to actually do enough of it.

In addition, going to the gym for an hour isn’t some miracle cure. If you spend the other 23 hours of your day sitting on your bum then you are probably just scraping by when it comes to sufficient activity to stave off disease, let alone tidy up your body composition if that is also a goal.

The CrossFit Open is upon us once again and the event is something we really advocate being part of. While ultimately it is about weeding out the fittest on earth, for the rest of us it’s just a bit of fun. It’s a chance to test our fitness in the company of friends and it gives us a little goal each year to help us play the long game of sustained health and fitness.

Local competitions can also be used in a similar vein to give you something to aim towards each year where the goal is less about the podium and more about participating and straying outside of your comfort zone.

It’s very easy to keep doing the same thing over and over and remain in the safety of what we already know. However, personal growth comes from challenge and from giving ourselves a little push every now and then. Sharing those experiences with others is what contributes to a rich and flourishing life. And that, in the end, is what it's all about :)

We get it. This stuff can be addictive. And when we start to train because FOMO has kicked in rather than because it’s what’s best for our goals and our body then we are indeed putting ourselves at risk of overtraining. For sure an extra WOD for fun here and there isn’t going to do any harm, but repeatedly flogging yourself in the gym for an extended period can indeed send your body in to a downward spiral that will take more than a day off to rectify.

For the majority of us, exercise is just another stressor added on top of already stressful lives. So whilst we might like to think we can train like a Games athlete its often the case that we can’t recover like one. The reality is we are often squeezing our training in to already bloated schedules and burning the candle at both ends.

In this episode we talk about how to balance your training with adequate recovery. We talk about what it means to train effectively and take rest days. We also talk about the other essential elements of the recovery puzzle including nutrition and sleep which are foolishly ignored or undervalued by many.

People have a fascination with meal prep and its associated visions of plastic containers, steamed chicken breasts and broccoli. Whilst Greg somewhat conforms to the plastic container version, Belinda's version is quite different. And here's the thing - no one way is better or worse than the other. It's what works for you as an individual. Meal prep is something we definitely recommend, but it needs to make your life easier, not more complicated!

In this episode we discuss meal prep and how to make it work for you.

For the uninitiated, Rx'ing a CrossFit workout means completing it "As Prescribed". It means you perform the WOD (workout of the day) exactly as it's written - weight, reps, movement standard etc. To be able to Rx a workout becomes an early goal for many as they embark on their CrossFit journey. However, for the novice CrossFitter (and even some experienced ones), Rx doesn't readily convey what the intention of the workout is. And intention is a critical component of every WOD.

In this episode Greg and Belinda dive in to the sometimes touchy subject of Rx. Whilst both agree that it can be a useful motivator, it can also be a double edged sword when the desire to Rx a workout trumps common sense and overshadows the intent of the workout. 99.9 percent of folks when they walk in to a CrossFit gym just want to be fitter. And CrossFit delivers. However, somewhere along the way some folks lose sight of that initial goal and they become obsessed with the pursuit of Rx at the expense of all else.

On the flip side of this are the folks who forever underrate themselves and their ability. They pigeonhole Rx as being some unobtainable, mythical place that "everyone else" reaches but they cannot. They fear failure, fear looking silly or have a host of other (often irrational) thoughts about their capability.

If there is one thing CrossFit does well, it's to take you out of your comfort zone. It will challenge you physically. It will challenge you mentally and it will challenge you emotionally. And you can emerge out the other side a better, more capable human being. If you let it.

In this episode we recap on the year that was 2017. It was a huge year for Flourish with many events and speciality workshops conducted throughout the year. The Open, Bring A Friend Week, JME Lifting comps, Wod N Wine, Night of the Living Deadlifts and the FFF Challenge - all squeezed in amongst the regular daily training. In our usual style we diverge off into some of the philosophies behind Flourish and how that fits in to the bigger picture of helping you to get better every day. We also look ahead into 2018 in terms of events and workshops as well as get Greg to 'fess up about what his training plans are for all of us in 2018.

There is nothing like this time of year for a bit of reflection, a bit of soul-searching and perhaps even a bit of navel-gazing. While we are not advocates of New Years Resolutions, this is a great time of year to pause and reflect on the year past and look ahead to the coming year. If we are going to “get better every day”, then we need to know what “better” is and where we are going. Otherwise we can end up just aimlessly wandering in circles and then lamenting time wasted and lack of progress made. In this episode we dig in to what goal setting and planning looks like for us and share a few tips and strategies that we use to keep moving forward in both our personal and our professional lives.

It’s cool to be made of steel…. until you work out that in fact you are “The Tin Man” (or Woman). In this episode we talk mobility and its importance to the grand plan of long term fitness. Being fit is not just about being the strongest or the fastest. It’s a game of longevity and life quality. The stuff you do (and don’t do) now will impact your life later on and CrossFit has a great way of bringing this stuff to the forefront of your attention. You can choose to pretend it isn’t there and deal with it “later”, or you can work out how to take your daily dose of medicine now to restore normal movement function in that beautiful machine of yours which is your body. And with Christmas just around the corner, we caution our fellow fitness fans on giving the gift of fitness to friends or loved ones!