I’ve been reading a book lately called Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara — a behind-the-scenes look at what it took to make Eleven Madison Park one of the best restaurants in the world. It’s a fascinating read, and honestly, I keep finding myself connecting it back to the gym and to life in general.
There’s a chapter that’s been stuck in my head. Guidara talks about the pursuit of perfection — and how chasing it in one specific area can actually cause you to miss everything else around it. His argument is this: instead of trying to make one thing perfect, what if you focused on making every area just one percent better? The cumulative effect of improving everything by a little bit, he suggests, elevates the whole far more than perfecting a single piece ever could.
I read that and immediately thought about all of you.
The Trap of Chasing One Thing
We’ve all been there. You want a muscle-up. You want to hit a new back squat PR. You want to string together double-unders without tripping yourself up every third rep. And so you lock in on that one thing — you obsess over it, you drill it, you spend every open gym session chasing it — and sometimes it works. But sometimes it doesn’t. And sometimes, in the pursuit of that one thing, everything else quietly plateaus.
Here’s what I’ve observed coaching athletes over the years: the ones who make the most dramatic long-term progress aren’t always the ones who hyper-focused on a single skill. They’re the ones who quietly got a little better at everything.
What 1% Actually Looks Like in the Gym
Let’s use the muscle-up as an example, because it’s one of the most coveted skills in CrossFit and also one of the most misunderstood in terms of how to get there.
Most athletes who want a muscle-up spend their time on the rings, trying to piece together the transition. And yes, that matters. But a muscle-up is really the sum of a lot of moving parts — pulling strength, pressing strength, body tension, hip drive, timing, and confidence under fatigue. If you improve your strict pull-up by just a little, work on your ring dip consistency, add a little lat engagement to your kipping swing, and spend a few minutes on hollow body positions each week — suddenly all of those one-percent improvements stack. And one day, the muscle-up shows up almost on its own.
We see this play out in class all the time. Think about an athlete working toward a heavier clean. They could spend all their energy trying to pull the bar higher — but what if their receiving position is unstable? What if their front rack is tight? What if their first pull off the floor is slow? A one percent improvement in each of those areas — a slightly better setup, a little more patience off the floor, a fraction more mobility in the wrist — and suddenly the lift feels different. Not because they perfected one thing, but because everything got a little better together.
This Applies to You as an Athlete Too
Think about what it means to be a well-rounded athlete. CrossFit, by design, asks us to be competent across many domains — strength, endurance, gymnastics, speed, coordination. If we pour all of our energy into getting really good at one thing, we often do so at the expense of another.
But what if you committed to showing up consistently and giving just a little more attention to your weaknesses each week? What if the athlete who dreads running leaned into those intervals just a little more? What if the strong athlete who avoids gymnastics spent five minutes after class working on holds and positions? What if everyone added just one more day of showing up per month?
The math adds up fast. A one percent improvement across all areas of fitness doesn’t just make you slightly better — it makes you a fundamentally different athlete over time.
And This Goes Beyond the Gym
Guidara’s point wasn’t just about restaurants, and mine isn’t just about fitness. This principle applies to how we show up in every area of life. As a parent, a partner, a friend, a professional — perfection in one role often comes at a cost somewhere else. But a little more presence here, a little more patience there, a little more intentionality in the small moments — that’s what elevates the whole.
At CrossFit Lincoln, we talk a lot about trusting the process. This is part of what that means. Not every day needs to be your best day. Not every lift needs to be perfect. But every day is an opportunity to be one percent better than yesterday — in your movement, your mindset, your effort, and your community.
That’s not a small thing. Over time, that’s everything.
So the next time you find yourself fixated on one skill, one number, one outcome — zoom out. Look at the whole picture. Ask yourself where you could get just a little better across the board. Chances are, the thing you’ve been chasing will follow.
Trust the process. Embrace the one percent. Show up.