Closed

Open: not restricted to a particular group or category of participants <open to the public> <open housing>; enterable by both amateur and professional contestants <an open tournament>

 

Closed:  confined to a few <closed membership> ; excluding participation of outsiders or witnesses

 

Since the beginning of the year, all across the internet and Facebook, those of us who count ourselves part of the CrossFit community have been bombarded by reminders that the 2014 Reebok CrossFit Games Open is coming and we should all sign up. "The Open is for Everyone!" each new blog post and video proclaims. "Test Your Fitness!" Excitement has built, nutrition has been put on lock, training has peaked. For the elite 1% of the CrossFit world this is the beginning of their season - the first step in qualifying for the Games. For the other 99% of us it's a chance to play among giants and see where we stack up in the world of fitness. Just how far off the marks of Rich, Sam, Annie, and Jason we actually are. Overall the Open is fun and builds community, and if you've got even a little bit of CrossFit under your belt, there really isn't any reason that you can't, or shouldn't, try to participate. (As long as you aren't injured...)

 Two years ago I started CrossFit shortly after the conclusion of the 2012 Open so 2013 was my first chance to participate. Like many newbie CrossFitters I was nervous about signing up, despite the assertions that anyone could do it, because after almost a year of training I knew my limitations fairly well. I didn't have pull-ups, box jumps, double unders, toes to bar, muscle-ups - all things that were likely to show up in the Open workouts. I was very much a weightlifting specialist so I knew that the chances of something coming out of the hopper that I wouldn't be able to do were high. It was pretty much guaranteed that at some point during the Open I would be stuck helplessly staring down a piece of equipment unable to perform some movement Dave Castro had cooked up, but I carried the hope that if there was a slim chance that I would be able to get some part of the workout done, I knew I had to at least try. I signed up and waited with anticipation for the release of workout 13.1.

 

As luck would have it, I was at a work conference dinner during the announcement so I couldn't watch it live, but as soon as dinner was over I pulled out my phone to check Facebook and found out that the first workout was burpees and snatches - two things that I could absolutely do. I was ecstatic. And giddy. It was a bit ridiculous how excited I was and as no one that I work with does CrossFit they didn't quite understand my hopping around going "burpees and snatches, burpees and snatches!" Throughout the Open I was able to do less and less as the workouts got more difficult, but I was still able to do something every week and even better, I got to be a part of the community of like-minded CrossFitters at my box, and compare scores with my Dad, and check the leaderboard obsessively to see if I was 20,000th or 30,000th that week. I sat in the Navy Yard Metro station for nearly an hour watching the 13.3 release on my phone because I couldn't wait until I got home to see it. 

 

Even though I had zero chance of making it to Regionals, and the workouts were so brutal that they left me mildly incapacitated for several days, participating in the Open was some of the most fun I have had as a CrossFitter to date. I started and finished the Open at Brickhouse and did the 3 workouts in between at District. I saw several PRs from my friends, first muscle-ups, watched one of my coaches make it to Regionals, and I even learned more about myself as a competitor. The Open came after a few months spent focusing solely on weightlifting and it reminded me how much I loved doing CrossFit. Even more exciting to me was the fact that I had posted scores all 5 weeks and would have this data to compare myself to going in to the 2014 Open when I was going to be Oh-So-Much-Better-At-CrossFit.

 

So, here we are. The Open is upon us. 14.1 was announced tonight, and even though I'm signed up, registered, and ready to go, I am about 99.9% sure that I am going to have to sit out this year. On the very miniscule chance that Castro programs a seated dumbbell press, plate step-up, rowing, plank hold, AirDyne AMRAP - I'm tagging in. Otherwise, I'm going to be a spectator/cheerleader/judge and just enjoy everyone else enjoying the Open. I'll watch the announcements, read the strategy blogs, follow my friends on the leaderboard... but this year the Open is closed to me, at least as far as being an athlete participant is concerned.

 

And you know what? I'm totally okay with that. Well, mostly okay. I won't lie...I'm a little bummed that I won't be in the mix, but I'm not devastated and I'm not stupid enough to risk further injury just to participate. This year my Open test is patience and persistence. 5 weeks of not pushing myself too hard. 5 weeks of not testing the limits of my fitness. 5 weeks with my blinders on, focused on my programming, focused on healing, with my head down - working on getting stronger.

 

For the first time in a long time I'm at peace and content. I'm in less pain that I have been in months, I've let go of some anger and resentment and hurt that I was holding on to, I'm ready to take each day as it comes, and I'm excited to see what happens from there.

 

Good luck to everyone who is participating in the Open - I can't wait to see what you all accomplish this year!

 

The Long Road Ahead

In the last 6 weeks I've only touched a barbell twice. Once to roll out my quads, and once to put away one that was left in the rack at the end of the day. Two weeks before Christmas, just a few days after getting my back "fixed" I stupidly went right back to the barbell and felt the pain again, but worse this time. Then a few days later when I couldn't deadlift 55lbs twice without pain (but did it 23 more times anyway - like an idiot) I tried to convince myself that this was just how it was going to be. I was going to have to train in pain.

It was probably half martyrdom, half stubborn delusion, but I spent the majority of that workout letting my coach push me, not telling him that the pain was excruciating, fighting back tears, refusing to quit, because I didn't want to admit that I was hurt again. I didn't want to be injured. Again. I didn't want to accept that being in that much pain wasn't okay. In my head, being hurt meant being broken again. It meant being isolated again. It meant restriction and time away from the gym. I meant I wasn't going to get what I wanted in the moment which was to spend as much time as possible doing what I loved and being around other people. I didn't want to be hurt because I was afraid of what it do to me emotionally and psychologically.

For a lot of people, working out is a chore. Something they dread, force themselves to do, schedule it like a meeting so they don't bail on it... and it used to be that for me. It was a lot like forcing myself to practice my instrument when I was a music major. I just couldn't lock myself in a windowless room alone for hours at a time and play scales. As much as I liked playing as part of a band I hated playing alone and didn't have the drive and focus needed to make me a good musician. Getting on a treadmill and walking to nowhere felt like locking myself in a practice room. I hated it. I was able to force myself to go for a few months, but when I failed to see any results it became harder and harder to talk myself into going. So I didn't go for almost six months. I still paid my membership, but I was perfectly fine wasting that money. I'm not that person anymore. Don't get me wrong, I would still hate to get on a treadmill and walk to nowhere, but in the last two years I have been able to find a way to work out that I have grown to love.

When I started CrossFit I started to change the way I looked at fitness. Every training session was something new and exciting. There were people to talk to. People that helped me. I had a team. I wasn't locked in a windowless room. I was seeing results. It was fun. But more than that, it made me feel good about myself. I started to feel strong and confident and capable. I never felt that way doing water aerobics. Not knocking water aerobics, if you love it go for it, but there's something about the feeling I get hitting a heavy snatch or locking out a solid jerk, that just is not equaled for me in any other way. 

So back into my head six weeks ago, knowing I was hurt again, being told that coming to train in pain everyday was not okay, being forced to back off training the way I wanted to, not getting to participate in group classes - I felt that everything I loved was being taken away. That my stupidity and my stubbornness was costing me the only thing I had to look forward to in my day. The one thing that I felt was my key to being happy and healthy. I was afraid and upset and I had a really tough couple of weeks. I was in a lot of pain and my head was a mess. Things were pretty dark and didn't feel like I could talk to anyone about it without sounding crazy. I couldn't quite articulate why I was so upset and scared and even if I could have explained it, I felt like maybe people would think I was being a baby about it all. It helped to have my family around during the holidays and I did my best to manage the pain until I could get back in to see the doctor, but it was definitely a one hour at a time struggle. It probably shouldn't have been, but it was.

When things are tough, and even when they're not, I tend to get stuck in my own head about them, and overthink them, and obsess about every detail of the situation, and I really didn't want to do that this time. I wanted to find a way to just be okay with what was and find a way to get through it. The first two weeks were the toughest because I was still in so much pain and I basically stayed away from the gym more than I had in a long time. It was just too hard and upsetting to be there. Once I got back to the doctor and was able to get realigned again, the pain started to go away for the most part and I was able to start working on getting better. I've tried really hard to not get stuck thinking about being injured and just focusing on getting better. So far I'm doing okay with that.

I started physical therapy a few weeks ago and though all the exercises are deceptively simple and a little boring compared to lifting heavy things, they have been surprisingly difficult. It's no fun to lay around contracting small muscles, rowing, or riding the AirDyne... it's all a little like walking on the treadmill to nowhere, but I know that it's what I need to be doing most right now. I've tried to keep things as consistent as possible, stick to what I've been allowed to do in the gym, and only that, and not push this recovery.

When I was trying to make a recovery plan, my coach told me that I needed to be patient. He told me that it was going to take time. This was difficult for me to hear because of my previous experience with the healing process and being patient. When I broke my legs the doctors initially told me that I was looking at 6-8 weeks. Considering how badly I had been hurt, 6-8 weeks didn't seem so bad. I was upbeat and hopeful and I put on my brave face. I made it through the first two weeks in the hospital, and then the next two in the rehab center and though those were really rough weeks, I got through them. I was scared about the prospect of having to go into a nursing home, but things worked out and I was able to spend the next few weeks recovering at home. After that month I went in for follow up x-rays and was told "let's give it another month." Okay. Just four more weeks...but at the end of those four weeks I had to hear, "let's give it another month" again. I was crushed. My easy 6 week recovery was now moving toward twelve weeks and I was starting to feel like I was going to be stuck in a bed forever.

Sitting up for the first time in 3 months
nervous about trying to stand.

All told, it was actually almost nine months before I was released from physical therapy, able to walk without a walker or cane, and able to drive again. NINE months until things were basically normal again. Recovery ended up being almost six times longer than I was originally told it would be. I could have made a human being in the time it took for my bones to grow back together and for me to learn to walk again. I know that the doctors weren't lying to me when they told me 6-8 weeks, but I almost wish they had been able to tell me how long it was actually going to take. If I had known in the beginning that I was looking at nine months and not two, I might have been able to handle all that time a little better. If I could have seen the end of the road, maybe the journey wouldn't have been so hard. I don't know that anyone could have predicted how long it was going to take, or if I would ever be even close to "normal" again.

Yesterday my coach wrote a post for our gym blog about making goals and staying focused on them. He talked about his own journey over the last ten years and in reading that it kind of hit me what he meant when he told me to be patient and that this was going to take time. Ten years ago I was a month away from being injured in a car accident. I was a month away from a nine month road to recovery that to date was the most difficult thing I have had to do in my life. But looking back on the last ten years, or the last 31, those nine months are just a brief, fleeting memory. I know how hard I had to work to be able to walk again, and I remember all the painful and embarrassing things I had to go through. I remember falling down, and being scared, and weaning myself off of pain medicine - but I got through it all. I got better and here I am ten years later, not only able to walk but able to run, and lift weights, and get down on the ground and get back up. Things that ten years ago, in the middle of those nine months, I doubted would ever be possible.

Six weeks ago, stuck in my head and focused only on the pain, I was worried that I wouldn't be able to get from one day to the next. I was worried that I was looking down a road with no end in sight. Now I realize that the road isn't just a road I'm on until my back is better, it's a road I'm on forever. I don't want to be able to just get back to lifting weights, I want to get back to working on being healthy for the rest of my life. Yes, lifting weights and doing CrossFit is something that I want to be able to do for a long time, but I also want to be able to live without pain for a long time too. If it takes me three months, or even nine, to get my core and back strong enough to be able to lift weights for the next 10-20 years, then that is time that I'm willing to devote to the healing process. If it means dropping out of another competition, and sitting on the sidelines for the CrossFit Open this year, and maybe not competing at all this year - those are choices that I'm going to have to be smart enough to make. I can't keep feeling upset and jealous about what everyone else is able to do, because that's not my goal right now. If I'm looking at them, I'm losing sight of where my focus should be, which is on my recovery plan and the long road ahead of me. I've already made it through the first six weeks, I just need to keep focused and keep moving down the road. I know that I am strong enough to get past this injury because I have been able to do it before.

When the Basket Breaks

Imagine you've got all these eggs that you've got to carry up a hill. Some are fresh, some are hard boiled, but you aren't really sure which ones are which. You've got to be careful with all of them. Oh, and you don't have anything to carry them in...

What do you do?



First, you try to hold as many as you can in your hands and you start up the hill. But you have really tiny hands and inevitably after a few steps you drop one. Luckily it landed on a particularly soft piece of grass and rolled down to the bottom of the hill. It was a pretty important egg, and you weren't that far up the hill, so you go back to get it and start up the hill again.

You're a little more tired because you've already walked this part of the hill once, but you keep going. It's still difficult to hold the eggs, and sometimes you bobble them. A couple of times you drop one and it cracks a little, but doesn't roll, and you're able to pick it up and continue on. Every once and awhile when the eggs roll, you chase after them and you're able to catch up before they get all the way to the bottom of the hill... but then you have to climb that part of the hill again.

Along the way you find a new egg or two, and they seem like eggs you'd like to have so you pick them up, even though you're having trouble holding the ones you already have. You get a little smarter and try pulling up the hem of your shirt and holding the eggs in a make-shift pouch of sorts. This is working pretty well, but even though you were initially careful with the eggs, the further you get up the hill, the more confident you become in your shirt pouch and forget that the eggs can still break if you don't hold onto the hem just right.

And then you trip. And fall. And the eggs scatter. Some crack, some roll, some break and splatter all over the front of your shirt. And there you are, halfway up a hill with half your eggs broken or smeared all over you, the other half out of your reach at the bottom of the hill. After you spend some time mourning the loss of your eggs, beating yourself up for being so careless, and after a fleeting moment in which you consider the idea of continuing up the hill without the ones you can't reach, you decide to go back down the hill and try to find the most important eggs.

Once you're back at the bottom of the hill you find yourself with far fewer eggs than you had at the start and decide that maybe climbing the hill isn't worth losing the few eggs you've got left. Maybe you can just hang out at the bottom of the hill and hold your eggs and that's good enough. Maybe the top of the hill is overrated. So you sit and hold your eggs and you watch other people climb the hill.

After awhile you get sick of watching people climb the hill, and you really want to give it another try, but you don't want to lose your eggs again. You actually liked climbing the hill the first time, even though it was difficult, and it would be really nice to get to the top. You start to think that maybe along the way you'll be able to replace some of the eggs you lost. But you're going to need a strategy this time. You can't just try to hold onto all the eggs and expect to not drop them again.

A basket. You need a basket for the eggs. Something big, and supportive, with a good structure. Something that won't let you down like your hands and your shirt did. If you don't have to do it all on your own the eggs will be so much easier to carry. Then you find a basket that seems to meet all the criteria and add in your few precious eggs and start back up the hill once more.

The climb is difficult, like it was before, but the eggs are safe in the basket. You're making great progress up the hill, finding more eggs, adding them to the basket. Never dropping one. Even when you switch out your basket for a different one for a little while and take a different trail up the hill - leaving a few of those eggs behind - you and the eggs are still doing okay.

After awhile you backtrack to the first basket and head up the original path again, but the basket you left behind isn't quite the same as when you left it and when you add back in all the eggs you don't notice that the bottom has become a little worn and the weave is not as tight as it used to be. But you really want the basket to be as strong as you remember it and as you try to make your way up the hill on the old path, you're finding the climb much more difficult than you remember it being.

Wasn't this easier before? Wasn't carrying your eggs in this basket all that you needed before to get up the hill with the eggs intact? Then the unthinkable happens. The bottom falls out of the basket. There you are again with your eggs on the ground. Cracked. Broken. Splattered. Rolling away from you.

They warn you not to put all your eggs in one basket.

So, what do you do when the basket breaks?

So Let's Give it Up for the New Year

Making resolutions for the new year is not a revolutionary concept. Every year hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people take the arbitrary flip of a calendar page as the catalyst to pull out the sponge and bucket, clean off the chalkboard, erase the indiscretions and bad choices of the previous year, and declare a do-over. Diets are started (again), gym memberships are purchased, grand blueprints are drafted that will make the architect more money in a job that will be more satisfying, promises to spend more time with family are made. Intentions are good, motives pure, but in reality the number of resolutions left unfulfilled when the last page of the calendar turns are staggering and can lead one to lose hope in resolutions all together.

That is, if one only focuses on the list of items left unaccomplished.

A few days ago, my coach Amanda challenged everyone at Brickhouse to "let go of the typical goal setting strategies and dig deeper." I read the blog post when it first showed up in my newsfeed, and I thought about it for the rest of the day. Then I read it again. I already knew this year, thinking I had failed at all of my goals for 2013, that I wasn't going to make a typical resolution list like I did last year. I thought back on the year from my current headspace (which hasn't been very positive lately - defeatist has been thrown my way a few times) and all I could think of were the things I didn't do, the goals I didn't reach, the deadlines I set and missed.

Then I read this post on Words by Lisbeth: The One Resolution That Might Work. Lisbeth basically says to, "Make one resolution for your ENTIRE year. One. This resolution only has two words, and I’m going to give you the first word: Be ______________."

Both of these posts resonated with me, so I've spent the last few days thinking about my Desired Feelings, Highest Values, and Needs for 2014 and wondering if I could encompass all that thought into a two word resolution: Be (insert feeling here). When I sit at this keyboard on December 31, 2014, how do I want to feel looking back on the year that just passed? Where do I want to be? What do I want to have accomplished? What do I need to do over the next 52 weeks to be sitting at the keyboard feeling the way I decided I wanted to feel when I wrote this post?

I knew that I had made a list of 13 Resolutions for 2013, but I couldn't really even remember what they were. I was able to find them and when I reviewed the list I found that I hadn't failed as much as I thought I had.

The items I starred are ones I am counting as successes. Even though I haven't been as successful with diet and exercise as I wanted to be, I am extremely glad that I have been able to maintain my A1C levels and stay off of medication for diabetes (#2). I competed in not 1, but 3 meets in 2013 (#6) and improved each time. I actually even started to like wearing my singlet. Though I can't completely check off everything on the list, I know that I made some progress on almost all of the goals I set, and with the exception of running another Rugged Maniac, I think most of these will remain goals I have for myself in the coming year. In truth, looking back my 1st and 13th goals are fitting bookends to the list as they are the most important and overarching. I think I could count these among my highest values and needs. Health and Self-Reliance.

Then I was browsing through my Facebook Year in Review and was reminded of even more of the successes and good moments I had in 2013. Granted, most of them were CrossFit and Weightlifting milestones (hitting a 100lb snatch, cleaning 130lbs, deadlifting over 200lbs, competing in every event of the 2013 CrossFit Games Open, getting my first double unders) and the memories that will stay with me (the DCF AM/PM Throw Down, volunteering at the Mid-Atlantic CrossFit Regionals, finishing Murph for the first time, competing at the MDUSA Open Tryouts, doing Hope on the National Mall in DC, being back home in Roanoke for the 2013 BHC Garage Games). It really wasn't such a bad year after all.

Then I saw this picture and realized what my resolution would be. The feelings that I want to chase are reflected in this picture.

 

 

The feelings are proud, and accomplished, and happy. Most of all happy. This picture was at the culmination of my first year on this journey, right before I left for my competition in Richmond. I had been training hard for the last few months preparing for the competition. I felt strong and ready and excited. I was at the lowest weight I had been in a long time. I had been eating well. I felt good. I want to feel that way again, and better.

 

My resolution for 2014 is Be Happy.

 

I still need to do some work to figure out the highest values and needs to get there, but all this next year my focus is on being happy. Choosing happiness. Laughing more, crying less. Living life and not just existing. Not being as focused on what I can and can't do in the gym - I know a lot of this year is probably going to be spent not hitting PRs and milestones, at least not above and beyond the ones I hit in 2013. The cool thing I realized when I talked to my coaches a few weeks ago is that I'm in a really great place, even though I've been injured. Especially since I've been injured. It's almost like I get to start the journey all over again. All those really amazing feelings I got to experience when I started CrossFit, and all those mile markers I passed along the way, I'll get to feel and see again.

 

I'm excited about 2014. Let's get to work.



Finding My Snatch - Part One

Disclaimer: This post is about the Olympic lift known as the snatch. If you happened upon this post looking for something else, shame on you. Also, I'm going to be saying 'snatch' a lot in this post, so get all your giggles out of your system and when you've composed yourself we'll continue on...

A little piece of my soul dies when someone says they don't like to snatch. I think it's really a lack of understanding. They have just never felt the magic of a perfect, or close to perfect, snatch. Not to say that I have ever done a perfect snatch or that I will ever do a perfect snatch, but I'm pretty sure I've done some that were really good and that were better than some of the really crappy ones I've done. And I've done many, many crappy, pressed out, caught on my toes, arms bent way too early, jumped off my kneecaps, flat out ugly snatches. No one likes an ugly snatch. http://youtu.be/rroMc2WqzUw

I admittedly wasn't a huge fan of the snatch the first few times I did it. It was just another new "CrossFit" thing I had to learn, at which I was a hot, struggling mess. In the beginning it was just me and an empty bar trying to figure out how to get it from the ground to over my head with a wide grip while keeping the bar close and not lifting it around my stomach and what the hell do you mean "scarecrow arms"?!?! It was complicated and awkward and felt clumsy and unnatural. Hook grip, what? Ouch. But... my zombie finger? How can I hook grip?

Somewhere along the way I decided that lifting heavy things was the one part of CrossFit that could be my happy place. I came to the realization pretty early on that I wasn't going the CrossFit Games unless I bought a ticket, I'd never be a gymnast again, pull-ups and muscle-ups were so far down the road that it was comical to even think of trying them. Me working on pull-ups is what I like to call an AMRAP extended arm hang. Burpees were hard, running was tedious, jumping rope was painful and tiring, and if I only focused on how much I sucked at all of that I would have left every class feeling defeated and like I was a failure.

When I realized that I was pretty strong, despite my other shortcomings, I started to hang on to my ever increasing squats, presses, and deadlifts and feel good about those things. Then I wanted to get better at all of the lifts and be super awesome at all of them, and figure out the Olympic lifts, which I found much more complex and mysterious. I'd watched weightlifting a little during the summer Olympics, but I didn't really know much about it as a sport - the rules, the structure of competition, weight classes - and it's still an ongoing learning process for me that I actually really enjoy.

When I moved to DC and started adjusting to a new box I found that the programming didn't focus as much on the Olympic lifts as I had gotten used to and, as I wasn't able to go to as many classes as before, I think I only got to snatch twice in the first few months. I was having serious snatch withdrawal. I missed snatching. A lot.

I traveled to Richmond in October of 2012 to watch two athletes from Brickhouse compete in a meet and was seriously bitten by the weightlifting bug. I decided then that I was going to compete one day too, and if I wanted to work on my lifting I was going to have to take matters into my own hands. I found an unsanctioned CrossFit Olympic lifting meet that was being held at a local DC CrossFit box and thought it would be a good way to get my feet wet and start to figure out the world of competitive Olympic Weightlifting. One of my coaches at DCF gave me a basic lifting program, I started dedicating all my gym time to lifting, videoing my lifts, and watching as many videos as I could find and comparing what I was doing to what those lifters were doing and trying to figure out how to lift that way. I even bought some weightlifting shoes (albeit ones no serious weightlifter would buy).

Videoing myself was actually one of the most helpful things I did early on, especially since I didn't have a dedicated coach watching my every lift. There were things I was doing that I would have never been able to fix without having the video. I could go to one of my coaches and say, "I keep missing out front, what am I doing wrong?" and we could watch the video and realize, oh I'm looking directly at the ground every time I catch the lift - no wonder I feel like I'm falling forward. I know in the first two months that I wasn't doing everything right all the time, but what I was doing was getting in reps. Spending time on the platform with a bar in my hands. Learning to focus out in front of me and not look at the ground. Figuring out the difference between pulling the bar over my head (like in the ugly snatch video) and pulling myself under the bar. Feeling what a bad lift felt like. Falling on my butt. Failing. Over and over and over again. All these things were helping me get ready for that first competition, but there was still so much to learn.

 

Snatching in my first competition - and oh, looks like I'm looking at the ground...

 

Living in Pain

It's been a few weeks since my last post, and it has been an interesting time. I haven't been able to let myself write because as much as I want to be open and honest here I've been hesitant to put forth what I felt would only be a tedious string of self-serving whining and wallowing. I decided the better choice was just to keep it all in, spend a lot of time in bed, stew and stress over it, and then unleash all the pent up frustration on those least deserving of my crazy when they least expected it. Awesome plan, right? Totally healthy. Coaches love it when you burst into tears in the middle of a workout don't they?

In the four months since I injured my back I haven't spent much time being happy or enjoying life. I haven't been fun to be around. I haven't been able to find joy in many things. Truthfully, I was too focused on being hurt and on the things that I couldn't do. Pain is an attention whore. I have always said that I have a high tolerance for pain - that after my accident it takes a lot of pain to really "put me out of commission" as it were, but it isn't really true. Yes I can live in pain and still function for the most part. I can get out of bed and groom myself and go to work and cook and clean and exist, but when I'm in pain, that's basically all I am doing. Existing. And that existence is so devoid of joy and fulfillment, you almost wonder what the point is.

Since the accident, almost 10 years ago now, there really hasn't been a day in my memory that I haven't been in some sort of pain, even though it's not exclusively accident related. It hasn't always been to the point where I'm sulking about in a joyless stupor, but there's consitent discomfort somewhere on my body, pretty much every day. I've gotten to the point where I take it as a given, that's it's just the hand I've been dealt, it's something I have to live with and work through. I should know the difference between soreness, general discomfort, and injury pain - but truthfully it gets hard to decipher sometimes. It become a daily game of Pain Assessment 20 Questions: "What hurts today? Do you know why? Did you do something to hurt that part of your body? Is there bad weather in the forecast? Was it hurting yesterday? Does it hurt more than the other things that are hurting you right now? Has it ever hurt here before? Scale of 1-10...can you live with it? Do you have a choice?"

I try to only worry about pains that I can't trace to something specific I've done, that are in new or odd places, that last longer than a few days, etc. People will tell you to listen to your body and that the pain is telling you something is wrong. I was never trying to be one of those "Go hard or go to hell, pain is for wimps, push till you die, puke, or pass out" people, but I also didn't want to be the girl anymore that quit, or gave up, or used pain as an excuse to not try. I felt that if I didn't go to workout on days that I was in pain, I would never go. I lumped all the pain together and envisioned it as a wall I just had to push through, that eventually if I just kept pushing I would get stronger and the pains would go away and one day I wouldn't be in pain anymore. And this kind of worked, initially.

In my first few months of CrossFit the ability to push through that wall of initial "pains" and fears and keep trying new things allowed me to make gains in the gym and get stronger. It allowed me to lose weight and find physical and inner strength I forgot I had. It helped me reclaim the abilities I thought my accident had taken from me. And I did feel better. Doing CrossFit and focusing on a diet free of inflammatory food helped to get rid of my constant headaches, stomach aches, joint pain, and other general discomfort pains that I didn't really pay attention to because they were all just a part of the overall state of suck that I'd been living in for at least the last 8 years. Through that time I always thought, "Wouldn't it be great to wake up one day and have absolutely no pain and think 'Damn I feel fantastic today!'... I wonder what it would be like to be one of the people that can do that?" On several days in those few months, except for some residual muscle soreness from the previous day's workout, I actually had days where I came pretty close to feeling great when I woke up. I felt rested, and strong, and ready to take on the day.

Then somewhere along the way I kind of forgot what it meant to be smart about pain management. I started pushing myself too much and ignoring the real signs that something was wrong. I was stubborn about not "giving up" and not wanting to rest and not wanting to miss days in the gym. I didn't want to scale and I didn't want to stop when it hurt really bad and all of these things were really stupid of me. These were the things that caused me to hurt my back and to keep it from getting better over the last few months. For every little gain I may have made toward letting my back heal I did twice as much damage by pushing too hard. I took a reduction in pain as my green light to ramp up my effort in the gym. Even if I was in excruciating pain to the point where I was laying on the floor in tears the day before, if I felt good in the moment the next day that was my okay (in my head) to go for it with everything I had. And I'd get through, but a few hours later I was in pain again.

The reasoning of someone who is moderately insane.
 

It took yet another coach intervention to get me to the point where I finally let all of this sink in and was able to take stock of where my mind was and how destructive I was being. I finally admitted that I hadn't been honest with myself or my doctor or my coach about how much pain I was still in on a consistent basis and I agreed that I needed to seek out what the underlying problem was that was causing my pain. Even on my best days, there was still that nagging lower back pain. Now that I have the answer (sacral torsion) and have a plan on how to fix it (putting the sacrum back where it's supposed to be and doing PT to help keep it there and in the meantime being smart about what I'm doing in the gym to REALLY let it heal this time) I feel much better about things. I have to limit the days that I'm in the gym and focus more time on what I'm doing to further my cause outside of the gym.

This next phase is going to be less about the work I'm doing in the gym and more about diet and rest and mental strength and finding my happy again. What I've done so far has been getting answers, making a plan for recovery, and being okay with limited gym time. As much as I've missed being in the gym 5 days a week for the last 2 weeks, I have enjoyed feeling rested. I've spent a lot of time looking for positivity. I've clicked on almost every link anyone's shared on Facebook that claims to "restore your faith in humanity" or "make your day." I've purposefully sought out things that will make me laugh and smile. When I was looking for all my Christmas music in the files I transferred from my old laptop I found an entire folder of music that dated back to the days when I downloaded everything from Napster transferred all the music from my CDs to my computer, and I've had a great time listening to Christmas music and rediscovering a lot of the music that I listened to in the early 2000s. I've been singing a lot and playing my piano. I've been remembering that I'm much more than a weightlifter or CrossFit athlete. CrossFit is still really important to me and is still a huge part of my life, but instead of feeling down about not getting to go to the gym as much or getting to do as much while I'm there, I'm trying to fill the time with other things that I enjoy that I haven't made a part of my life as much in the last year or so.

It makes me feel like a broken record to say this, but my next step is to really get my nutrition dialed back in and my recovery on point. I will have much more time to plan and prep and sleep and rest and get myself back into a routine that works for me now, not me a year ago. I realize that part of the reason I was pushing myself so hard in the gym, despite the injury and excruciating pain, is because I was afraid of how much weight I've gained in the last six months and of finding myself back at 350 pounds. I knew everything else was so out of control I didn't feel like I could afford to not be in the gym every possible day that I could. I was holding on to the one piece I thought I could control. Now I can focus on all the other pieces I wasn't before and hopefully that will make the few days that I am in the gym much more productive. This is definitely a new approach for me, but it feels like a good one so far and I'm excited to see if I can make it work.

The Loudest Voice

I hear voices. I hope I'm not the only one this happens to. I hear them when I'm in the middle of my workouts. Even if there are multiple voices competing, there's always one that wins. Like the crying baby in a busy diner, the one that has the ability to pierce through the fog of ambient sound and that beats hardest on your eardrum will be the one that you can't ignore. The one that tugs on your sleeve and demands your attention.

Sometimes it's a scream - roaring over the music and the sound of dropping barbells, rising over the sound of my labored breathing and my heartbeat pounding in my ears. Other times it's a nagging whisper - a tiny voice that breaks through the silence I try to create when I'm focused on blocking out the world and doing my work. Sometimes it's both.

The voice isn't always an encouraging voice. A determined voice telling me that I can do it, that I'm strong, that I have one more rep in me. A voice that reassures me that I won't pass out and that the pain will be over soon if I can just keep going a little longer. A voice that cheers me on and lets me know that my best is good enough. That voice used to be the loudest voice. The voice that blocked out that nagging whisper that told me the weight was too heavy and I should probably set it down. The voice that said you look stupid and everyone is going to make fun of you. The voice that said you're not as good as everyone around you. The voice that tried to keep me fearful and make me doubt myself.

I'm not sure exactly when the encouraging voice started getting quieter and harder to hear. Like someone slowly turning up the volume on a stereo, the nagging whisper that told me I wasn't good enough has gotten louder and more intense over the last few months until it became the only thing I could hear and the voice that kept me going in the beginning and made me feel like I could take on the world faded off into the background. I haven't been able to hear it very often lately. Some days I don't hear it at all. Sometimes I think I've stopped listening for it altogether. The discouraging voice gets so loud that I can't even hear my coach reassuring me or my teammates cheering me on. Those negative thoughts rattling around in my head even seem to distort everything else I hear, making instructions like "shoot for x number of reps/rounds" sound like "if you don't hit that number, you're a failure."

I let the voice beat down on me until I gave in and agreed. I'm not good enough. I'm always going to be last. I'm so sick of being the slowest and never finishing. I got upset and frustrated and let the voice turn something I love and look forward to all day long into something I started to dread. I'm done thinking like that. I realize now what's been going on and I'm going to have to start working harder to listen for the reassuring voice. To focus all my energy on hearing the truth and believing that my best is good enough. I know I don't have to compare my effort and my work to anyone else. I can be competitive without competing against others. I just have to keep trying to be better than the day before. I can't always listen to the loudest voice I hear, because it won't always be the one that's telling me what I need to hear. Hopefully one day I'll be able to tune out the negative voice altogether.