Carl Paoli

NYT bestselling author. Coached CrossFit Games champions and Olympic athletes. Your body is the first thing you lead.

[Carl Paoli @carlpaoli]

your body is the first thing you lead.

the body tells the truth first.

[Carl Paoli @carlpaoli]

@nealkhosla Congrats!

[Carl Paoli @carlpaoli]

https://t.co/3bGIM4SBan

[Carl Paoli @carlpaoli]

I typed every word of Freestyle with three fingers.
What I remember most is not making the bestseller list. It is sitting across from @tonysherbondy at Coups Cafe in Palo Alto, going in circles for a year, trying to find the book inside everything we had recorded and written down.
Then Nick D’amico and Ryan Smith gave it a visual language. Erica P. made the chaos work.
The book carries all of us.

[Carl Paoli @carlpaoli]

@chris_cav @CrossFitGames The linoleum! Ha. Too good. Thank you for the love, Chris. We shall meet again soon.

[Carl Paoli @carlpaoli]

I was anxious about being at the @CrossFitGames . 11 years had passed, and I felt like I had walked out on that community. Then one of the judges reminded me of details from a seminar I had forgotten teaching. I thought the work was left when I did, but other people kept it alive. https://t.co/VF3H1Q20Mx

[Carl Paoli @carlpaoli]

@chris_cav @CrossFitGames Wow. This picture would have been perfect for the essay. Thank you for your kind words and support over the years. People like you change the lives of people like me.

[Carl Paoli @carlpaoli]

Universal ideas should emerge from concrete experience, not replace it.

[Carl Paoli @carlpaoli]

A beautiful sentence still has to survive reality.

[Carl Paoli @carlpaoli]

Practice reveals philosophy more reliably than philosophy produces practice.

[Carl Paoli @carlpaoli]

Do not confuse elegance with truth.

[Carl Paoli @carlpaoli]

Depth comes from sustained engagement, not continual searching.

[Carl Paoli @carlpaoli]

Effort and life are not the same thing. Ask the effort to stand in for your life, and the effort goes hollow, and your life gets smaller.

https://t.co/6aDfik0mJM

[Carl Paoli @carlpaoli]

Insight is not the finish line. It is the start. A note is not the race. A conversation is not the race. The work has to hold when the pace changes. In the body. In the room. In the family. In the decision. In the return.

[Carl Paoli @carlpaoli]

I am not trying to sound finished. I am trying to stay in relationship with what I am learning. Some of this will change. Some will get more precise. Some will become public language. Some will fall away. The work is alive because I am still inside it.

[Carl Paoli @carlpaoli]

@RobertGreene Coaching taught me this: the moment I need someone to move, think, or respond the way I would, I stop seeing who they are. Observation creates options. Judgment narrows them.

[Carl Paoli @carlpaoli]

@CiprianiRanieri Most people think they know. Very few understand what the work actually is. Probably only my clients.

[Carl Paoli @carlpaoli]

Competence is part of dignity. Not elite competence. Basic competence. Can you get up. Carry what matters. Move through the day without feeling like your body is something you have to negotiate with. The small things are not small when they give a person their life back.

[Carl Paoli @carlpaoli]

Annie's memoir is out now. Iceland Annie: The Evolution of a CrossFit Games Legend: https://t.co/RDb7isEzK8

[Carl Paoli @carlpaoli]

I watched @IcelandAnnie get her first muscle-up at the 2009 @CrossFitGames
Then it became the movement she dreaded most. Her body had it, but it had turned into a mental obstacle, not a physical one. The beginning and the end were clear. The part between is where the work was.

[Carl Paoli @carlpaoli]

Full essay here: https://t.co/biS7GyG5fh