If I were asked to sum up my Crossfit journey so far it would be “doing things I said I never would”. I scoffed at my coach (and told him he was crazy) when he said I would join Crossfit, enjoy lifting barbells, and eventually participate in competitions.
The first year was incredible – I discovered that there were so many things I was capable of. But every honeymoon period comes to an end, and there have been many weeks where I’ve felt like I wasn’t making any sort of progress.
My sophomore year at Crossfit has been one of the hardest challenges of my life. But one of the most magical things about being part of this community is the overwhelming support that you get, and how that level of support can completely change your attitude and response to challenges. That is exactly how the past twelve months unfolded for me… I started to look at every setback as a challenge to overcome and an opportunity for my skills and confidence to grow.
The day after the 2023 Crossfit Open registrations went live, I was sitting at my desk at work and in the space of 5 minutes, without a thought and before I could talk myself out of it…
89 days is not as long as it seems – I blinked and found myself laying in bed at 10pm, wide awake on 16 February 2023 waiting for the announcement of the first Open Workout.
I could devote an entire blog post on each Open workout alone, but I won’t. My main purpose for signing up was to gauge my fitness 2 years in, and to identify what I would like to work on for the remainder of the year…so the details are only important to my Coaches and I. But there were moments in each one that were profound for very specific reasons, which I’m going to attempt to put into words…
23.1 – The Open is the start of the competitive CrossFit season. To encourage everyone to participate, every workout has an RX (as prescribed) version, for your pro or Elite level athlete; a scaled version, for those who do not have all the requisite skills; and a foundations version, for your absolute beginner level crossfitter. I was both disappointed and encouraged when this WOD was announced because were it not for the gymnastic movements, I would have been able to attempt to RX this workout (but okay, from the get go I identified 2 skills I wanted to work on). We had 14 minutes to complete as many reps and rounds as possible of 5 different movements… Even in the scaled version, the last movement in the sequence was a skill I did not have. I didn’t think I would even get to it because of the amount of work that came before. But I did get to it.
I had a whole minute to try and get my very first pull up 🤣🤣. I did not have an Annie Thorisdottir moment 🤣🤣 But I gave it a go anyways, despite the inevitability of failure and that my failure would be in the public domain for all to see. This year, the scores of all non-affilliate attempts had to be submitted with video footage of the attempt (yep, my maiden CrossFit Open attempts are on YouTube) – I was more nervous about having myself filmed than I was about doing the workouts…yet another challenge that I would have to overcome. But I did, and more than the score, that was a massive win for me.
23.2 – there are days where a workout contains all the movements you hate or suck at. The second Open WOD was exactly this for me, and the mental strain of this one was a lot worse than the physical. For 15 minutes, I had to run and burpee 😩 and then move straight into a one rep max of my worst lift. The first 2 attempts went up okay… The 3rd weight I failed twice. But even after 2 failed lifts and fatigue really setting in, I was able to take direction from our head Coach and eventually end with a successful lift (and here, I must give huge thanks to him for the constant check ins and words of encouragement through the weeks leading up to the Open and during – it kept me from slipping into a counterproductive headspace).
When I started crossfit, I could never bring myself to attempt a lift again if I’d failed it. I had to learn to get up and try again. The last minute of this workout was proof that I’ve finally begun to embrace failure for what it is…a stepping stone to progress.
23.3 – I’ve spent most of the past twelve months rehabilitating injured shoulders. It’s been a slow, at times painful, frustrating process, but we’ve managed to get me back to training overhead again. When the final Open workout was released, my heart just sank. Technically, it was the most demanding one, shoulder heavy and full of catastrophic potential. My coach ended up judging this one for me. He is the one person who knew the full extent of my anxiety with this WOD, but he kept me on track with movement standards, and was calm – and this was very likely what enabled me to remain composed. With all the work he’s put into my rehab (and training in general, over the past 7 years), both physical and psychological, it was fitting that he judge this one.
The workout I was most afraid of ended up being my highest score of the three, a testament to his efforts and the biggest validation of the work we have put in.
With that last workout, our head coach asked me whether I was chasing a score and placement on the leader board. It was never about that at all, and it was something that I kept foremost in my mind throughout the three weeks.
The Open did exactly what I hoped it would and more- it gave me a reason to make some much needed changes, it showed me where my fitness was at, it helped me set goals for the coming months and fueled my excitement to start adding to my abilities.
Inky Impressions 