The Push

I've been in a melancholy and introspective state of mind the last couple of days and when that happens I think a lot. I'm probably at the lowest point of my journey so far right now. Deep, deep down in a valley. One of the biggest reasons that I wanted to move back home is because over the last few months I've been on the down slide to this point and sensing that I was heading down this road I wanted to be back in a place that was familiar and where I felt I would be in the best position to climb back out. That's where I find myself now.

 

In many ways starting from this point is harder than being back at the beginning. I've lost ground in the weight loss arena, I'm mildly injured, and I'm having to scale way back on everything in the gym. One of those things alone can be pretty defeating, but all of that at the same time has been difficult for me to work through. Add in stress, going on work travel, moving and living in a transient state, the chaos of my parents remodeling their kitchen... not to make excuses, but it's definitely taken a toll. I know starting over is harder than starting initially, but I have to look at every day from here on out with the same optimism that I had on day one. It's going to be a lot easier to climb out of the valley and move forward if I can do that. In my thinking about how that's going to happen, one of my thoughts today was that this is going to be a lot like pushing the prowler.

 

Photo by Tim Young

This thing I'm pushing in the picture is a prowler sled. It's one of the many fun toys we get to play with in CrossFit. Sometimes we use it inside, sometimes we take it outside. You load up weight, grab the handles and push it some pre-determined distance. There are many ways to make this exercise more challenging. Many things that factor into the ease or difficulty of the push.

Pushing the prowler on a flat surface, no weight added, on the high handles is relatively easy and can be done fairly quickly and efficiently. Adding more weight makes the sled harder to push. Switching to the low handles adds a level of difficulty. Uneven ground can complicate the issue. Pushing the sled uphill is harder still. Multiple passes in a row is really tough. Up on the high handles, back on the low handles, adding weight each time... this was exactly an event we had to complete in the Garage Games. Each pass was a little more difficult than the last, especially considering that this was part 3 of a 3 part event.

Reflecting on this event today I was able to draw some parallels to what I'm facing right now. Like the prowler, things in life are more difficult when they're more complex, when you're already a little beaten down, and when you add more weight, which unfortunately I have. I learned at the doctor today that since my last competition in May I have gained back 22 pounds. I know I shouldn't be, but I'm ashamed of myself for the weight gain because I should have known better than to let it happen, especially knowing how hard I worked to lose those 22 pounds in the first place. I feel guilty for not being more honest with myself and others about how much I've been struggling and making it seem like things were better than they are. I feel regret for all the bad choices I made. I'm upset that for the last few months I gave up on myself and didn't care enough about myself to fight harder. I'm mad that I let what I wanted in the moment overshadow what I really wanted in the long run.

Ultimately though, shame, guilt, regret, and anger aren't going to help. It is what it is, I am where I am, and I just have to try again to keep moving forward. Like when you're pushing the prowler, sometimes it stops and you can't make it move. Sometimes you need to let go, back up a little bit, get a little lower, put your head down, and start pushing again. You only have to get the sled to move a little and then just keep putting one foot in front of the other and build up a little momentum and eventually you've covered more ground than you thought you could. At least that's the hope. When things get tough you have to focus on the push and not on how far the sled has to move.