Category: Liftin’ Heavy Objects Over Ma Head

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

I’ve pretty much always wanted something for nothing. I want to get the job without earning the credential; I want to land the role without auditioning; I want to find my soul mate without leaving my living room.

That’s not to say I haven’t worked in my life. I have. I’ve worked hard. (Ask me sometime about the three summers in college when I sold books door to door eighty hours a week. Or the unpaid overtime I’ve put in since becoming a teacher.) But I never want to. I always want goods and accomplishments and relationships to land in my lap as I rock in my rocking chair on the deck.

CrossFit is a constant reminder that, you put nothing in, you get nothing out.

Sure, I want to be able to do a pull-up without bands. But guess what, I sometimes skip the pull-ups in the warm-up, so pffthpt, I’ve been stuck on the blue and skinny purple bands for months. I’d also like to be able to clean & jerk more than 100.5 lbs, but I haven’t worked on it since that one time. So nope.

It goes the other way too, though. You work, you get better.

For one, I’m not sure when it happened, but all of a sudden, after months of push-ups with my hands on a box or my knees on the floor, I just started doing regular push-ups. They’re ugly, but I do them.

Then, Friday night, at open gym, I push-pressed 90.5. I looked back in my notebook. Last recorded one-rep max, back at the beginning of the year: 63 lbs.

And for the longest time, I couldn’t do double-unders. I tried. I would get one or two. I whipped great welts on my arms and legs. I cursed the rope. Four, if I put a single bounce in between. I bought a Buddy Lee because I figured the problem was the crappy ropes we have at the gym. The problem was not the crappy ropes we have at the gym. I kept practicing. I took out the single bounce. Last week, I did fifteen legitimate double-unders in a row during the WOD.

Why I love/hate CrossFit: You get exactly as much out of it as you put into it.