Who Knew Your Armpit Could Be Sore?

Or: Why I’ve Realized That There Are Too Many Stairs In My Life
Or, OR: Ouch.

I joined a CrossFit gym… from my brief time so far, this is how I’d describe CrossFit…

Suffering.

Or, using every day movements (squatting, jumping, pushing, pulling) at a high intensity (repetitions or rounds) to achieve fitness.

(Sounds like suffering to me.)

See, I’ve had a roller coaster relationship with fitness. I’ve been in amazing shape; I’ve been severely under-conditioned (currently).

If you know me well, I’m an extreme person. 0-60 mph. Either I do nothing, and sit on the couch in my pjs and eat Pad Thai every other night, or I’ll get up off my ass and do some kind of work out every day. It’s a curse, actually, and what has caused my roller coaster relationship with fitness. If I’m gonna work out, I’m gonna do it well. If I’m gonna be fat, I’m gonna do that well, too.

So, here’s to hoping for a healthy, fit 2012. I attended my first “foundations” class last night. The gym makes you take 6 foundation classes to learn the basic elements and movements of CrossFit so you don’t injure yourself. I went to a trial class a couple weeks ago, and, I was in awe of the gals that were there, overhead pressing 65 lbs like it was nothing. And I’m still skeptical that I’ll ever get there… but we’ll see. For last night’s Workout of the Day (WOD), we did a 10 minute As-many-rounds-as-possible (AMRAP) WOD. (I work for the government and use acronyms all day, and now they are taking over my personal life now.)

Our instructor told us that we’d be doing squats in our WOD. I thought, “I got this. Look at these Mongolian Mountain thighs. I CAN SQUAT FOREVER. Koreans are the KINGS AND QUEENS OF KIMCHI SQUATTING.”

Then, he told us that we’d do push-ups and pull-ups.

Oh…merrrrr.

So our WOD was: 5 pull-ups, 10 push-ups, 15 squats. We all had to do some modifications, because there was no way this girl can do a pull-up, but I was able to run through six rounds of the WOD. As we were all pushing through, it felt very reminiscent of Basic Training, with our Instructor walking around, critiquing, encouraging (okay, not so much like Basic), and telling us to go harder. Telling us that the only thing stopping us from doing another round was…US. That I needed to actually tell my body, “MOVE”. I could almost hear my Basic Instructor say:

“Pain in weakness leaving your body”

Today, I’m wearing my hair down and messy, because there is no way my biceps will allow me to brush my hair.

Weakness is leaving my body today. And I’m super proud of that.