The skill/strength segment today was muscle-ups.
So, yeah. Ha ha.
Anyway, like most things CrossFit, I had to take a modification or do what they call a “progression”. My progression was having the rings about chest high—feet on the floor, ass by my feet, rings touching—and getting my chest up and through the rings using my legs. And my arms, but mostly my legs. Then jumping up until my arms were straight by my sides.
Ashley watched my first few and said I had the movement down but, for the next reps, I should make it violent, throwing my head and chest between the rings. It’s true that, with a kipping* muscle-up, that’s what you have to do.
The thought that went through my head was, “But why should I bother?”
And I realized, in that moment, that Ashley was coaching me as if I would someday do a muscle-up, while I was training as if I’d never, ever, in a million years do a muscle-up.
Listen, there are things I do well, physically. If you’ve never seen me salsa, well, that’s a shame. And I’m getting better at double-unders and Olympic lifts and whatnot. But there are certain things that I just believe are impossible for me. (And let’s be honest, chances are good I won’t ever do a muscle-up.)
I think that’s normal. I don’t think I’m a freak. In that regard, anyway. People generally believe they have limitations. That’s why the motivational poster industry exists.
But what struck me about that realization was that I wasn’t even thinking that I was thinking that. It was my reality, the water to my fish.
A wise dude who made a bunch of cars once said, “Whether you think that you can, or that you can’t, you are usually right.”
I wonder how many things I think I can’t do, and I don’t even know that I think I can’t do them.
*using the momentum of your body, as opposed to a “dead-hang”, which is much, much harder