It started as a phrase that was considerably less printable than this.
The sentiment was always the same. The language needed work.
What became #BeAGoodHuman wasn’t born in a branding meeting or a strategy session. It grew out of years of working with the army, with youth sport, with teams of all kinds — and, if I’m honest, out of my own upbringing. It was never about a single moment. It was about a pattern I kept seeing. A standard that kept getting walked past.
Follow along at @craig.spicer — this is where I share the unfiltered reality of building something that actually means something.
The Standard You Walk Past Is the Standard You Accept
There’s an army adage that has never left me: the standard you walk past is the standard you accept.
That’s where this really comes from.
It’s too easy to walk past things. Kids being disrespectful to older people in a park. Someone in a gym stepping over another person’s barbell without a second thought. A situation where the right thing to do is have a polite, honest conversation — and the easier thing to do is say nothing and keep moving.
Most people choose the easier thing. And every time they do, the standard drops a little further.
Be a Good Human isn’t a soft sentiment. It’s a commitment to not walking past. To noticing the moment where the right choice and the easy choice are different things — and choosing the right one anyway.
What It Actually Means
Doing the right thing at the right time sounds simple. It isn’t.
Because most of the time, the right thing costs you something. It’s sacrificial. It’s the harder conversation, the slower path, the choice that doesn’t immediately benefit you. Most people, when that moment arrives, quietly take the easier option.
That’s not a judgement. It’s just honest.
In a gym environment, it shows up in small but telling ways. People who expect a certain standard of respect from others but don’t hold themselves to the same thing. Moving in front of someone mid-lift. Stepping over someone’s barbell. Expecting the community to give them something they’re not prepared to give back.
Right is right. Wrong is wrong. There’s no grey area there, and you can’t selectively apply this standard when it suits you and set it aside when it doesn’t. That’s not being a good human — that’s using the idea of it for your own benefit.
What It Doesn’t Mean
This is the part people misread most often.
Be a Good Human is not an invitation to be a pushover. It’s not about absorbing everything, agreeing with everyone, and keeping the peace at the cost of your own standards.
I’ll be straight with you — I find this hard personally. My business manager and I have even joked about putting a sign on the door: Craig will try and save you. Please be careful with his energy. Because I genuinely want to look after people. I want to help. I want to do everything I can for everyone around me.
But I’ve learned — and I’m still learning — that doing that without boundaries is ultimately to the detriment of the very thing I’m trying to build. The business has to come first. The standards have to hold. And that means sometimes the most human thing you can do is hold a line, not lower it.
You cannot use kindness as a manipulation tool. You cannot invoke “doing the right thing” when it serves you and ignore it when it doesn’t. The standard is consistent or it’s nothing.
Can You Be Exceptional and Still Fail at This?
Yes. Absolutely.
I’ve never seen anyone be truly exceptional — as an athlete or as an entrepreneur — and genuinely embody this standard at the same time. The most exceptional athletes I’ve worked with have often been the most ruthless and the most selfish. Those qualities can drive extraordinary performance.
But they don’t bring happiness.
Money can bring us a lot of things. Winning feels incredible. But having all of those things means very little if you haven’t got people to share them with. The last thing I want is to win alone.
How It Became a Culture
About twelve months into Crazy Strength, I noticed something shift.
We lost a couple of people around that time. Not because of anything dramatic — but because their version of these values wasn’t aligned with what we were actually doing. They believed they embodied what we stood for. But the reality was different.
I’ve never had to forcefully remove anyone from this community. But I have had to hold people accountable — for their actions, their behaviour, their ability to actually apply the Crazy Strength standard. And every single time, it’s an uncomfortable conversation. One that lands hard, that involves emotional rejection, that costs something.
I’m a very emotional person. Those conversations don’t get easier.
But one of the hardest lessons I’m learning right now is that I can’t save everybody. And that’s okay. I can’t judge everyone by my own morals and ethos, and nor do they have to agree or conform.
What keeps the standard alive is the team around me. My close management team — the people who have stayed, who were already living these values before they ever walked through our door — are the reason the ship stays on course. They keep me accountable. They draw my attention when I go wayward. And I’m genuinely lucky to have them.
The Strongest Person in the Room
If someone walks into Crazy Strength and they’re the strongest person in the room — but they don’t embody this standard — they’ll walk straight back out.
I’m not interested in strength for its own sake. Everybody in that room contributes to the bigger picture. We have international lifters training alongside people in their very first session. Everybody is treated the same.
The way I describe the journey — in strength training and in life — is a train. We’re all on the same train, heading in the same direction. Sometimes life means you have to get off at a stop for a while. But we can all be on that train together.
And here’s the thing I’ve learned from fifteen years of delivering coaching courses: I can make anybody a good coach. I can develop a coaching eye, teach movement, build understanding. But I cannot make everybody a good person. I cannot make everybody genuinely care.
That either comes from somewhere inside you — or it doesn’t.
Why the Barbell Teaches You More Than You Think
Strength training draws a particular kind of person. There tends to be a certain neurodiversity in barbell sports — certain behaviours, certain tendencies. We’re all a little bit crazy. That’s part of it.
But here’s what I really believe: it’s more than just the barbell.
Every lesson you learn under a bar — patience, control, aggression when you need it, discipline, kindness to yourself and others — those lessons don’t stay in the gym. They travel with you. They apply to your life, your relationships, your work, the way you handle pressure and setback and success.
That’s why I’m so passionate about it. Not because of what it does to your body. Because of what it does to you.
Does Being a Good Human Cost You?
Probably, yes.
I don’t know that it gives me a competitive advantage in any conventional sense. What it gives me is the moral high ground. The belief — one I was brought up with — that as long as you know the truth about your own actions, that’s what matters.
It’s never a quick fix. If you’re in the fitness industry and you want to build a genuine reputation, a real community, something that lasts — you’re looking at two, three, five, ten years of laying foundations. Not six to twelve months.
Good things do happen to good people. I’ve always believed that, even in the years when the evidence was harder to find. Being positive, being genuine, paying it forward — that was always going to be the long game. And the long game is the only one worth playing.
What I Feel When I Look at This Community
Whole. That’s the word.
International Women’s Day and a group of our powerlifting ladies going for brunch together. A craft morning that the team pulled together because they wanted to. People showing up for each other in ways that have nothing to do with lifting and everything to do with genuine human connection.
We are in the business of relationships. Without positive relationships, we don’t have a community. And without a community, we don’t have a business worth having.
The people who have stayed, who give their time without a second thought, who support each other and build each other up — they are what Crazy Strength actually is.
Your Move
If you try every day to be a good human and feel like the world keeps punishing you for it — I hear you. I felt that way in my teens and into my early twenties.
Pay it forward anyway. Not because the reward is coming tomorrow. But because the person you’re becoming in the process is worth it.
Head over to the Crazy Strength blog for more, and come and find me at @craig.spicer. I’d genuinely like to hear where this lands for you.