Category: Liftin’ Heavy Objects Over Ma Head
CrossFit! CrossFit! CrossFit!
Chimney Sweep, Crocodile Wranger, Rodeo Clown
After a two-week break, the re-entry into the classroom was turbulent. I had had a fantasy that my fourth graders would spend their vacation days thinking about how their behavior affected others, what they could do to make the classroom more positive, and in what ways they might be more respectful to me.
Nerp.
By lunchtime, I was asking Facebook for career suggestions.
My sister offered astronaut. I’m getting kinda squirrelly about flying in my old age, and that’s just between RDU and Laguardia. A trip to the International Space Station might make me a little wheezy.
Some friends wondered about my being a professional dog rescuer or dog-sitter. Those I could go for…Do they come with health insurance?
Suzanne mentioned pole dancer. Well…I mean, that requires a lot of upper-body strength, doesn’t it? Also, I forget, how do strip joints feel about hip-to-knee cellulite?
Are they pro- or anti-?
Anti-, right?
Moving on.
Though I really like Steve’s recommendation that I become a guru-on-a-mountaintop, that sounds like I’d have to be, you know, wise or something, so I think my sister-in-law had the best idea: bajillionaire.
Now all I need is one bajillion dollars. Pony up, folks.
I’ll Be Dancin’
There’s this guy at CrossFit who does all the Workouts-of-the-Day Rx. (If you do the WOD as prescribed, you get a little ‘Rx’ next to your name on the board. For reference, I’ve gotten an Rx, well, lemme see…NEVER. Not even fucking close.)
He’s medium height, muscly, rrrrrrripped but not bulky, clearly about 2% body fat. Wiry, I guess you’d say. Sinewy maybe. If he doesn’t climb rock faces on his day off, I’m a monkey’s uncle.
He not only does the WODs Rx, sometimes he’ll do them twice in a row. Or he’ll finish and go out for a run. (I usually do a half-assed downward facing dog and then hobble to my car.)
Anyway, we’re doing the WOD the other day. A song comes on I don’t recognize, but he does. “Lady Gaga,” he says, in the middle of a set of pull-ups.
He proceeds to sing, “Stop callin’, stop callin’, I don’t wanna think anymore! I left my head and my heart on the dance floor!”
And then he runs to the wall, kicks his legs up, and does 15 handstand push-ups.
These people crack me up.
Liftin’ Heavy Objects, Namely *Myself*
Here’s the thing about CrossFit: it makes me feel bad.
I know, I know. I’m getting stronger, and I should feel good about that. And as long as I’m doing the goddamn Workout of the Day, I should be proud of myself.
But I’m just not.
Yesterday’s WOD was three rounds: run 1 km, 10 muscle-ups, and 100 air squats.
Well, of course, I can’t do muscle-ups—listen to how it sounds: it involves muscles taking one in an upward direction…for the record, from a dead-hang to a straight-arms-by-your-sides position on gymnastic rings. I don’t have any muscles that can do that. So I took the modification. Or the modification of the modification.
And air squats, I can do those, though I did only 50 each round. (Honest to god, I blocked the 100 out of my mind. I didn’t realize I was doing half of the prescribed number until the end, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to go back and do the rest.)
And running. Man. I am just not a runner.
You know, my sister and I trained for and walked a marathon, not once but twice, in 2006 and 2007. We also, two years ago, “ran” a half-marathon. Wa got us both commemorative donkey necklace charms, to symbolize how we trotted like burros for 13.1 miles.
She’s kept it up—god love her. She’s into it. But I just hate it. I just hate it so much.
For one thing, I’m not built like a runner. I’m built more like a…shot-putter maybe, or a hooker in rugby.
Or a burro.
Or a gourd.
Anyway, between not muscling-up and modifying everything down and watching everybody disappear into the distance in front of me…well, I just feel bad about myself.
De Oppresso Liber
I joined CrossFit a week or so ago. Do you know about CrossFit?
It’s a gym. Most importantly, it’s a gym on the same block as my workplace. But it’s not like other gyms. CrossFit is all about push-ups and pull-ups and squats and turning over tractor tires. Yeah, I don’t get that last one either.
Anyway, the trainers are all very strong people. I was helped yesterday by (let’s call him) Brutus, a very muscly fellow, with a cartoony-handsome face, a great deal of patience, and a tremendous knowledge of how to lift heavy objects over your head. Brutus looked like he could pick up my Subaru with his neck.
We were doing the clean and jerk. Do you know how many steps there are to the clean and jerk? If you guessed two, you’re wrong, wrong, my friend. There’s eleventy-four tiny steps to the clean and jerk. And Brutus knew every last one. Intimately.
Well, I did about 75 of them, or parts of 75 of them, albeit with a paltry 15-25 pounds on my bar, but fuckin-A, bubba, I kinda teared up at the end there. I was so exhausted and proud of myself.
My favorite part was when we were stretching out. Brutus, the could-pass-for-special-forces guy, got us into upward-facing dog and told us, “Try to relax your tummy.”
Tummy. Hee hee.