Mental Strength

I played professional football, which was no walk in the park, but, I tell you, CrossFit is hard. The mental demands of hitting the variety of workouts that CrossFit prescribes are as challenging as anything I've done. All through high school, I remember working out as hard as I could every day. It was a dreaded thing to have to work out with Coach Henson. Nobody wanted to. He worked you too hard. But one day he picked me to train with him. At the time, I thought he was punishing me.

"He doesn't make anyone else do this." I could easily have seen this coach as a jerk, and I could have seen myself as a victim.

I actually started out feeling that way, but the workouts began to affect me. I became stronger mentally. I was very young and naïve. I didn't realize that he was trying to do the best thing for me. I just knew that nobody else had to work as hard as I did. It didn't seem fair. As it turned out, he was specifically trying to get me a shot at college football.

My work with Coach Henson eventually led to me getting a shot as a "walk on" with the San Diego State University football team; so I went to the gym at the university to start working out. I thought I had a pretty good base of strength and conditioning, seeing as I had worked out with Coach Henson so hard. Then I met Dave Ohton, the strength coach for SDSU. Things got worse.

The rest of the summer that year was spent sweating and feeling like I wanted to quit and forget about playing football.

Mike Houghton played high school, college, and professional (Green Bay Packers, Buffalo Bills, and Carolina Panthers) football for a total of 11 years. He is the co-owner, with Sean Murray, of CrossFit951 in Menifee, California. He is also a high school offensive line coach and a middle- school history teacher and runs a fitness club based on CrossFit principles at the middle school.