Feeling the Urge….

Wow, it has been a long time since I’ve updated this blog. I have to say, I have gone through a period of really feeling resentful of Crossfit, my coaches, and the way it hurt my body. I injured myself six months ago, and I am still having pain on a daily basis. It really sucks. It is definitely better and nowhere near as severe as it used to be, but it is still there, a constant reminder of what happens when you push yourself too hard in the wrong ways.

In the meantime, a lot has changed in my life. I’ve moved to an entirely new section of town, my partner of four years and I broke up, and I have basically just been trying to keep my head above water. I have been wanting to get back into a regular exercise routine but am unsure of what that should look like. After I moved, I started looking around at the gyms near my house, hoping to find something boot campy and women-centric, but so far no dice.

But lately I have been having the urge to get back to Crossfit. It’s weird. I miss pull ups. I miss toes to bar. I basically miss everything having to do with the bar. I have thought about going in a different direction, doing something more acrobatic because of my love for swinging on the bar, but I also really miss the weight / body movement elements of Crossfit. I miss the way it makes me feel. I miss my muscles. I miss my body feeling like one solid muscle, all moving together in perfect harmony. I miss the powerful, invincible feeling that Crossfit gave me.

Even though I haven’t been exercising much (I HAVE been doing a lot of yoga, which has felt GREAT) I don’t feel too out of shape. I definitely am out of shape in Crossfit standards, but my body has retained most of its form. I am for sure filling out, my curves are getting more curvy, my love handles are more meaty, my belly isn’t defined anymore, but it’s fine. I love my body. It is fucking sexy either way whether I am at my muscley peak or softer. This is one thing that Crossfit has definitely helped with. Even though I haven’t worked out in awhile, it really changed the where my body stores fat and how it looks on me. I still feel / look fit even though I’m not actively working out. I forget that the reason is because I spent a good 1.5 years working out like a maniac. I have myself to thank.

The physical / appearance part of Crossfit was always a side benefit (albeit a very nice side benefit) to me—it has never been the main purpose of why I wanted to work out. And it is not the reason I want to go back either. I don’t have any insecurities about the way my body is looking, I just miss working out. I miss getting sweaty and tearing up my muscles and being sore and feeling my body work. I MISS THE ENDORPHINS. That is probably the truest reason. As I am building myself back up emotionally and stitching my heart pieces back together, I find myself wanting to build myself up physically as well. I want to kick ass!!!

Anyway, I am going to check out a new gym today. I am kind of excited about it but also nervous, of course. It is a Crossfit gym that also offers martial arts / self-defense / kickboxing / boxing / yoga classes. And it has a sauna! I am really excited about it because I feel like if it feels right and the coaches seem intelligent / smart / focused on preventing injury that I could create a good routine that still incorporates Crossfit and hopefully some other things as well. I DON’T WANT to go back to the 3 days on, 1 day off routine of Crossfit. I think it’s too much. I don’t think it allows my body enough time to recover. I’m not planning on competing in Crossfit, I just want to challenge my body and get stronger. I don’t need to be so intense about it all.

The way I see it, I would love to do Crossfit a couple of times a week mixed in with other things, both gentler (swimming / yoga) and maybe more intense (kick boxing / martial arts). Before I got injured, I was getting really curious about martial arts, which I have never done before, as I really like learning sequences of movements. I am not really sure what to expect since I know there are many different kinds of martial arts, and the idea of sparring is not really something I’m interested in, but that’s why I’m going to check it out. This gym focuses on ji-jitsu.

Anyway, I will report back after I go today. I am planning on checking out the Crossfit class, just because that’s what I’m most comfortable with and I’m really curious about how my body will respond. My plan is to take it SUPER SLOW AND EASY. EEEEASE my body back into it. I am over straining my body. I want to be good to my body / my mind / my heart / my soul. I want to make individual decisions that are right for me, not just go along with things because that’s what everyone else is doing or pushing for (the double-edged sword of group fitness.) Wish me luck….

I Spy a Crossfitter!

Yesterday I was walking around DC where I’ve been stationed the last week or so, when I passed a Crossfit. It looked pretty elite, with a bunch of rowers (6 or 7?) in their upright position  near the window. As I continued walking down the block, I passed two ladies. It took me a second to realize that they were Crossfitters! They were both super buff in the way that Crossfitters look (big arms/shoulders/calves), and since I had just passed a Crossfit, I figured I had a pretty good chance of being right about it. That’s the first time I’ve ever recognized another Crossfitter purely by looks, although I suppose passing the Crossfit a few seconds before probably gave my subconscious a clue to associate their body types with the program.

When I passed them, I wanted to stop and say, “Are you guys Crossfitters?? So am I!” But of course I didn’t. I couldn’t help but wonder if they recognized me as a fellow Crossfitter, but I seriously doubt it. I’m surprised I recognized them, to be honest.

Anyway, I’ve been trying to stay active but it’s hard. I’ve been taking really long walks places, which is good. But I’m also traveling and unable to really cook and eat the way I like to, which means a lot of eating out, etc. Not good.

Also, I was doing yoga today in the apartment I rented, which I’ve done lots of times before and for some reason, I totally crunched my back. Not sure exactly what happened, but I got into a pose that just KILLED ME. I immediately got out of it and had to lie down on the bed for awhile. It was so painful, and my back still hurts a lot. I can’t really bend anymore, and I’m having a hard time picking things up off the floor/getting dressed/etc. It only happened a few hours ago, so I’m hoping that the pain will subside after a good night’s rest, but it is really discouraging. I don’t feel like I was pushing my limits at all in the yoga pose, but it feels like I’ve backpedalled a lot on my progress.

Part of it might just be that I haven’t been in an ideal situation for back healing. I’ve been carrying around really heavy bags (with my laptop, camera, notebooks, etc.) for work and I’ve also been sitting in uncomfortable chairs to work, for hours at a time, every day. Ick. I’m sure those things probably didn’t help and may have primed me to re-injure myself.

I hope I feel better tomorrow. 😦

Still Out of Practice

Hello, everyone. I haven’t posted a blog in almost a month, but that’s because I haven’t been to Crossfit in …. 1.5 months. Wow, it feels like a lot longer than that!

I have been in physical therapy working on stabilizing my low back for the past 6 weeks or so. I think I wrote a little bit about it while it was going on. My physical therapist encouraged me to do “trunk stabilizing” exercises like Turkish get ups, good mornings, different kinds of stretches and movements, etc. He wouldn’t let me swim or run, but said that walking was OK. He wasn’t super happy about me biking but I wasn’t going to stop, so I have been biking quite a bit too.

I left Portland last week for a month-long trip, during which I probably won’t get too much exercise in. I did get one session in, though, last week, at a surprisingly well-equipped hotel gym. It was kind of amazing how much equipment they had, even though they didn’t have any standard pull up bars and the gym was full of machines. I did find out that I can do pull ups on one of the machines, though, so I practiced a few kipping pull ups – I think I did about 20 or so. It felt SO GOOD OMG. Kipping pull ups are definitely what I miss the most about not being in the gym. I just love swinging on the bar so much.

I went through a bunch of the exercises that my physical therapist was having me do and walked on the treadmill for awhile, working out for about an hour or so. It felt really good to move my body, and now, three days later, my hamstrings are still killing me from the good mornings I did with a weighted bar I found in the gym.

Overall, my back is feeling a lot better, but I can still “feel” it at the end of the day. There is a certain ache that builds up after awhile, especially while I was traveling and carrying around a lot of baggage (literal baggage, and probably some emotional baggage as well heh heh.) I worry that I will never be “well” enough to get back to Crossfit. Or that I will go back and immediately re-injure myself. I honestly have been thinking a lot about whether Crossfit is right for me. I have learned so much from it, and I really love the community and the program, but I do think the speed element can be problematic.

I really miss it.

I have been thinking a lot about body image since I haven’t been able to go to Crossfit. I can feel myself getting softer, although I know I am my own worst critic. My boyfriend is consistently supportive of my body. He always has been, long before I started Crossfit and really got into shape. He reminds me that I won’t lose all the muscle and stamina I’ve worked for a year and a half to build in just a few weeks and dismisses any complaints or worries I express over my body.

Once I started Crossfit, it was easy to love my body. My body looked better than it ever had before. But now that I am unable to do it, I am sinking back into some insecure thoughts and feelings about my body, which makes me realize that my body image is not quite as strong or secure as I may have thought. It makes me wonder how much vanity is rooted in exercise. Looking sexy is definitely not the WHOLE reason that I started Crossfit or continued doing it, but let’s be honest, it is part of it. It’s hard to grow up in the culture we live in and NOT feel like your life is going to be better if you are in shape.

It’s also funny to me because even at my peak, I don’t look anything like the standard of beauty perpetuated by today’s media. I am bulky, curvy, strong. I will NEVER be thin. I will NEVER be 115 pounds. Or even 130 pounds! I’m not even sure that some of the people who see me realize how strong and in shape I actually am just because the vision of who is “fit” is so skewed by what you see in magazines and on TV. I look nothing like them.

At any rate, I just wanted to check in and let you guys know I’m alive. Alive and not doing Crossfit. But spending a lot of time thinking about my body and trying to make good decisions for my body and my psyche.

Speaking of which, I’ve been getting really into YouTube yoga! Especially ones that are supposed to be really good for low back pain. Talk about combining spirituality with exercise. I love it. Yoga makes me feel so great.

Plank Out

Today we started with benchpresses. I started at 35# and worked up to 85#. I did 6 of them.

Next we did our WOD, which was 5 rounds of:

20 ring rows (I did mine modified)
40 double unders
60 second FLR (forward leaning rest)

This was tough. Ring rows suck, and 20 is a lot of reps to do in a row. Ugh. I modified them by putting my feet on the floor instead of a box and going from there. I had to move up quite a bit by the end of my 5 rounds to make it happen, and I took it pretty slow, usually doing 5-7 at a time.

Double unders weren’t terrible. Luckily I am pretty proficient at them, so I was able to bust through them pretty quickly. Most of the people in my class couldn’t do them, so this is where I was able to kind of speed ahead of everyone. I didn’t do great, though – I tended to do about 7-10 before messing up, which isn’t awesome for me.

The 60 second FLRs were torturous. A FLR is basically holding a plank position for 60 seconds on the rings. We didn’t have to do the 60 seconds unbroken though thank god. I mostly did them for 20 seconds at a time. I know that doesn’t sound like much but that was seriously all I could handle. This is so hard for me! The person next to me was able to do his all in one go, or broken up into 30/30 or 40/20. Crazy!

This took me 24:35 to complete. I didn’t feel great during this workout. Since last night my stomach has felt a little bit off. Mostly just full of liquid. I think I drank a little too much wine last night, and I tried to counteract it by drinking a bunch of water before I went to bed. I didn’t feel hungover at all when I got up, but I have felt slightly off all day. Then I drank a bunch of tea before the gym, and I could feel everything sloshing around in there. I was pretty nauseous by the end of the workout. Which was a shame because there was a paleo food cart outside my gym today!

Even though I felt pretty terrible, I stopped and got a salad anyway. Paleo is pretty meat heavy and I’m a vegetarian, so I wasn’t sure they would have anything for me, but they did! I got a broccoli and kale salad with avocados, cashews, apples, cucumbers, and tomatoes. OMG. It was seriously SO GOOD. And I am not a huge salad person. It was sweet and salty and creamy and DELICIOUS. I also got a hibiscus lime tea that was amazing. If you are in Portland, the name of the truck is called Knuckle Dragger. They are just starting out, so check their Twitter feed to find out where they’ll be.

Knuckle Dragger hibiscus tea and broccoli and kale salad. SO YUMMY

Oh, and one more thing – I think my body has recovered mostly from my first three days in a row back at Crossfit. I was seriously so sore yesterday it was kind of crazy. Eric massaged me a bunch, and I went to a meditative yoga session at the ashram near my house, which was also pretty therapeutic and helped me stretch out. I am really loving yoga and hoping to add it into my regular practice.

Annnnnd I’m Back Again!

OK, so my Crossfit progress has definitely been suffering the last few weeks, but I think we are at the end of that. I have been doing a lot of traveling lately, but I should be back to my regularly scheduled life for the next bit of time, which will hopefully allow for more Crossfit time.

I made it to the gym today. We started with bench presses on the 5-3-1 program. I worked up to 75# and did 14 reps of those.

Next we did the WOD. It was 3 rounds of:

10 hang power snatches (I did 53, RX was 75)
15 ring dips (I used an orange band to modify)

I did this in 5:38. Super short workout. The hang power snatches were OK. After my last time at Crossfit, I decided I was going to try and go lighter on my weights and focus more on my form, which is why I stuck with 53# for this workout instead of pushing it up to 65#, which was my first instinct. After my last workout, my back was really sore which leads me to believe my form wasn’t great on my power cleans or my deadlifts, which is why I wanted to take a step back.

Ring dips were OK. I can’t do them very well, but the orange band helps a lot. My arms were definitely burning by the end of this.

Although I haven’t made it into the gym in awhile, I’ve been staying fairly active. I went up to the mountain to see my partner this weekend and on Saturday we did 1.5 hours of yoga, a hike, and then a couple hours of snowboarding. On Sunday I did another 1.5 hours of yoga and about 3 hours of snowboarding. And then on Monday I did half an hour of yoga followed by a 2 hour cross country skiing trek. I forgot how much I love yoga! It was so nice and felt so great.

Unfortunately yesterday (Tuesday), my knee was killing me. It actually started in the middle of the night between Monday and Tuesday. My right knee is pretty weak because I had surgery on it after an injury 10 years ago. It is being held together with a screw. I’ve always been kind of worried about doing Crossfit with it because I have had problems with it before but it’s been surprisingly OK. I definitely feel more sore on my right side and sometimes it causes me some problems, but for the most part, I think Crossfit has really helped strengthen those muscles around my knee in order to stabilize it.

Anyway, I’m not sure what triggered the pain, but it could have been snowboarding or skiing, both of which involve bending your knees a lot. Snowboarding in particular requires a lot from my right knee, which kind of helps steer and also initiate turns. When I tried to fully extend and straighten my right leg, a searing pain shot through my knee and leg. It was reallllly painful. I couldn’t walk after that for awhile and had to limp around. It felt a little better as the day went on, but overall, it was still really painful, so I decided not to try to go to Crossfit yesterday even though I was in town and could’ve made it to an evening class. ( We were doing box jumps and those are pretty hard on my knees, so I decided against it.)

Everything felt better this morning. I am still feeling a little tender but mostly solid. And luckily today’s workout was not knee-heavy at all, so it worked out. Hopefully that will be the end of it, but I am still pretty confused/worried about what initially triggered the pain. It would be a shame to find out that my body isn’t really equipped to snowboard considering how much progress I’ve made in learning.