The most valuable thing I walked away with wasn’t a passing score.

crossFit level 3 test – the clock

I emptied my pockets. They scanned my palms, checked me for devices, and watched while I locked my belongings into a small gray security box. They handed me a dry-erase board (the kind I use to write reps and rounds for the WOD) and a black marker. I smiled and thought that this should be fun. Then they sat me down in front of a computer with a clock in the corner of the screen and told me I could begin.

Early in the test, I hit a question that took me almost eight minutes to work through. When I finally landed on the answer and saw it sitting there in the choices, I stood up and did a little “hell yeah!!!” dance right there by my little cubicle. I was ridiculously proud of myself for figuring it out until I looked back at the clock and realized what that victory had cost me.

Eight fu***** minutes.

That was the moment I realized I was fighting two separate things. The first was finding the right answer. The second was finding it within the required time domain. Four hours didn’t feel like much time anymore. It felt like I had started an AMRAP at a pace I couldn’t possibly sustain. At that moment, I couldn’t help but laugh at the irony. CrossFit defines fitness as increased work capacity across broad time and modal domains. Apparently, my mental work capacity had not yet caught up to the intensity of the exam.

I used every second they gave me. When I finally clicked submit, I knew there were a handful of questions I had guessed on because I had run out of time. I walked over to the proctor and, before either one of us said a word, we both knew the outcome. I half smiled, nodded, they offered that quiet look of empathy that didn’t require a conversation, and they handed me the two stapled sheets.

When I walked outside into a beautiful sunset, there was no confusion or the anger that comes from feeling an exam tried to trick me. It never felt that way. Nothing on those pages surprised me. I knew where I had gotten hung up, and I knew which domains I had spent too much time in.

I simply wasn’t CrossFit Level 3 fit yet.

But, I did sink into the front seat of my truck and let myself cry for a few minutes before I called my seminar sister. I didn’t want to tell her I had failed, and I definitely didn’t want her to hear me crying, but I called anyway.

this time felt different

If you had asked me a month ago what failing the Level 3 would feel like, I would have painted a completely different picture. I imagined spending the next day questioning myself, just as I did years ago when I failed my Level 1. Back then, failing felt personal because I thought the result defined my identity as a coach. Yesterday hurt, but it did not reach that same dark place. I wanted those letters after my name. I wanted to close this chapter and move on. Somewhere during the last week of studying, though, something inside me had already changed.

Two months before the test, I was asked during a podcast if I felt ready for the Level 3. I answered yes, but that answer came from hope more than confidence. There were still gaps in my understanding. I had learned an enormous amount over the previous months, but the information was still segmented. Programming belonged in one box while anatomy lived in another. Nutrition and movement standards felt like separate languages. I understood the individual pieces, but I hadn’t yet achieved a synthesis of the whole.

That was why I postponed my original test date, and looking back, I think it was exactly the right decision. At the time, I thought I simply needed more hours with the material. I assumed another few weeks would give me enough time to memorize the things I hadn’t quite locked down yet. Looking back now, I realize I didn’t just need more time. I needed a completely different way of looking at what I was studying.

So I kept going.

I built outlines, highlighted articles, and made flashcards. I reviewed benchmark workouts until I could recite them from memory. The hours slowly piled up until my dining room stopped looking like a place to eat and started looking like a classroom. Kodiak slept beside my chair while I covered whiteboards with notes. I walked barefoot through the backyard with flashcards in my hand. During the last ten days before the exam, I cleared almost everything off my calendar. I didn’t even leave my house much or visit with family. It was just me, the books, Kodiak at my feet, and the quiet hope that if I put enough into the process, eventually everything would click.

the breakthrough

About a week before the exam, something finally did start clicking, and it’s difficult to explain unless you have spent months staring at the same material. I stopped seeing programming as one subject and anatomy as another. Nutrition stopped living in its own chapter, and movement standards stopped feeling like isolated things to memorize. Somewhere along the way, all of those little compartments started collapsing into one another. The methodology wasn’t asking me to master a collection of random journal articles. It sure felt like that in beginning but …it was asking me to understand why they all existed in the first place.

That realization changed the way I studied because I stopped asking, “What do I need to remember?” and started asking, “Why does CrossFit care about this?” Every article, every benchmark workout, every progression, every coaching cue, and every concept eventually led me back to the same place. They were all trying to help me answer one question better.

What does the person standing in front of me actually need?

That, at least to me, is the elegance of CrossFit. The methodology is remarkably simple once you stop looking at it as a stack of information and start looking at it as a way of thinking. The scenarios, athletes, workouts, injuries, goals, all change. The answer is almost never the same, but the question never changes. Every concept in CrossFit exists to help a coach make one better decision for one real human being at a time.

If I could give one piece of advice to any coach preparing for the Level 3, it would be to stop asking how to remember more information and start asking why CrossFit cares about that information in the first place. The exam is not testing your memory, it’s testing your judgment.

the fear

Last night, someone messaged me to say they were taking the CrossFit Level 3 in a week. They told me, “If you can fail it, I’m terrified,” I didn’t have to wonder what they meant because I had spent the last several months living in that same place. I had built this exam up into something so enormous that failing felt almost unthinkable. Looking back now, I can see what that stress was doing to me. My body knew it long before my mind admitted it. My cortisol was through the roof, my anxiety was higher than it had been in a long time, and the scale hadn’t moved in over two weeks. Every time I put myself under that kind of pressure, my body responds the same way. I wanted this so badly that I had convinced myself failing would somehow be the end of the world.

Now that I’ve actually lived through it, I almost feel silly for giving that fear so much power.

So let me ask you a question if you’re studying for your Level 3. Not the emotional answer you’ve been telling yourself at two o’clock in the morning, but the honest one. What is the worst thing that actually happens if you don’t pass on the first attempt? You walk into a room. You do your best. Your athletes still need you on Monday morning. Your affiliate still opens its doors. The people who love and respect you don’t suddenly stop. The world doesn’t fall apart.

the two stapled sheets

This morning I woke up expecting to feel devastated, but that feeling never arrived. There is a scene in The Holiday where Cameron Diaz tries to force herself to cry, and absolutely nothing happens. You know she really goes for it. That was me. I lay there thinking I was supposed to be steamrolled. I had cried in the truck the night before. Surely there had to be one more ugly cry left in me. Nope. The well was dry.

I actually laughed because I felt like I had earned one more emotional breakdown, but in that moment I realized what those two stapled sheets actually were. They weren’t trying to bring me down, they were feedback.

Every day we humbly ask our athletes to receive feedback without taking it personally. We tell them their knees are caving in, their mechanics need work. We explain why it matters, and then we get back to work. Somewhere along the way, I think we started believing we should be exempt from that same scrutiny.

We aren’t. Those results simply showed me my limiting factors. They were a diagnostic map showing me exactly where I need to train next.

the pursuit

For years, I believed that losing weight, writing a book, or opening an affiliate would finally be the thing that transformed me. Every milestone mattered, but none of them changed me the way I imagined they would. The pursuit always did.

The CrossFit Level 3 is no different.

Yesterday I didn’t receive the designation I wanted. I received a clearer picture of the professional I am still becoming. If you’re taking the exam next week, pass or fail, you’re going to walk out knowing more than you know today. I’m not there yet, but “not yet” has never once meant “no.”

Today, I’m okay.

In fact, I’m better than okay. It feels good to let my brain come up for air after months of studying. I’ll take a day or two to enjoy that feeling because I think I’ve earned it. Then it’s time to get back to work.

Those two stapled sheets are already becoming a plan. I’ve started restructuring the next phase of my studying. The next exam date is going on the calendar because deadlines create accountability, and every day will have dedicated time to train the areas where I’m still weak. That’s all this is now. Assess. Identify the limiting factor. Improve it. Repeat.

Funny enough, that’s exactly what CrossFit has been teaching us all along.

So, screw it.

We keep moving.