At the top of a clean.
While we were away for Thanksgiving, Katie wanted to try and drop in on a box to get a workout in. Having already made the decision to try CrossFit for this offseason, I couldn’t see any reason not to join her. Maybe I should have thought that through a little more.
I had correctly guessed that most boxes would have grueling, insane Thanksgiving day workouts. I did not expect that the box we decided to try, Stability Crossfit, would have a total ass-kicker of a Black Friday planned for us.
The main workout was three sets, consisting of 21, then 15, then 9 reps each of cleans and box jumps. No big deal, right? Wrong. Oh, and then there was a “cash out” which was to consist of 30 reps each of “knees to elbows” (in which you hang from a pull-up bar and touch your knees to your elbows) and “toes to bar” (in which you hang… you get the idea).
After a brief warm-up, Ryan (the coach) gave some really thorough instruction on how to do a clean, and then we practiced for a bit at low weight before starting the workout. Cleans are a rather complex movement, but I was feeling confident enough after the warmup and instruction to try for 95 lbs for the workout. I mean, it’s only three sets, how bad could it be? I also went ahead with the prescribed 24″ box for my jumps, seeing no reason why I shouldn’t. After all, it seemed so easy in practice.
What I failed to account for, and what almost killed me, was the lack of recovery embedded in a CrossFit workout. While I’ve become an experienced weightlifter and athlete over the past few years, most of my gym routines involve the typical rhythm of do a set, wait a minute to catch your breath, and do another set. CrossFit is more a long the lines of, do a huge set, do another huge set, do a slightly less huge set, and continue until you’re standing there, hands on your knees, looking at the bar on the ground like it just insulted your mother.
Jumpin’ to the box.
One of the pillars of CrossFit, for well or ill, is the timed workout. This is mostly meant to be a measure of your progress, so that you can see how much faster you completed a given workout since the last time you attempted it. But the tangential effect is one of competition, both with yourself and your fellow dupes athletes, to see who can finish first.
I blasted through my first set of cleans, moving the 95 pounds from the floor to my shoulders as quickly as I knew how. I didn’t realize how much that had taken out of me until I stepped up and jumped on top of the box the first time, and almost fell on my face. My legs said they had put in enough effort to easily clear the top of the box. Gravity disagreed. By the time I finished 21 reps, I was sucking wind like I had just finished the sprint at the end of a 5k. Oh, and I still had two more sets, of 15 and 9 reps.
My pace degenerated from a sprint to a grind, and I could hear other people banging out reps behind and beside me, speeding through their workouts as I faltered. It took me almost as long to do 15 cleans as it had taken to do the entire first set of cleans and box jumps, and I was having to pause more frequently to catch my breath. The whole thing was sorta nuts. While I was clearly suffering, and not doing anywhere near as well as, say, every single other person in the gym, I was loving it.
I finally finished my second set and looked around, realizing that almost everybody else was done. Katie was behind me, knocking out her last few reps of box jumps and simultaneously cheering me on. The nerve! I looked at the bar and cursed myself and my confidence for not having gone lighter. What was I trying to prove, anyway?
Then a funny thing happened. As I was sizing up the bar and trying to make myself pick it up, everybody who had already finished saw me struggling, and gathered around me to shout encouragement. Total strangers, with no personal investment in me, chose to learn my name and cheer me on. At Ryan’s order, I put my hands on the bar and started working, heaving lungs and shaky legs be damned. I finished the cleans one at a time, like a competitive eater finishes a 64 ounce steak, miserable but determined.
Then I stepped over the bar, trying to take a few seconds to catch my breath, but Ryan started counting down from three, and I had to start jumping. I jumped. I landed with both feet on the box and stood, then stepped back down for another rep. I was close enough to being done that I knew it didn’t matter how much my body protested. My experience from racing has taught me that I just had to keep going, and worry about the recovery when it was over. I jumped. My impromptu fan club/support group cheered. I stepped back down and they clapped, telling me how many were left and that I could do it.
Finally I was finished, and I was as overwhelmed by the support I had received as I was by the workout itself. It had taken me well over 17 minutes to complete a workout that many of my cohorts had finished in 8, but that didn’t bother me. I rested my hands on my knees and let my lungs pump fresh oxygen into my body, waiting for my clouded vision to clear and the lightheadedness to subside. I’ve been here before, so I wasn’t worried. I’ve pushed myself this hard more times than I can remember, but usually, I’m the only one around to appreciate it. Usually, the only encouragement I receive is my own internal dialogue, and it isn’t always so positive. For a solo athlete, what I experienced at Stability was as strange as it was welcome, and it vividly illustrates what has made CrossFit such a phenomenon in the fitness community.
Finally we all headed over to the pull-up bars to finish our cash-out, and I grunted and struggled along with all the new friends I will probably never see again, laughing and joking like I had been going there for years.
If you’re ever in Virginia Beach and want to go get your butt handed to you in a workout and still walk away smiling, stop by Stability Crossfit. They’re doing it right.