This week concluded the CrossFit Games Open, and while most of the gym didn’t sign up for it, I decided to because I have been doing CrossFit for over a year now and I felt I was ready to give it a try. At the beginning of the year in January I had some significant conversations with Sean and Erin about my goals, one of which was to participate in the Open to the best of my ability. I had no intention of competing in any way, but had been intimidated by the Open last year when I was only a few months into CrossFit and wanted to officially graduate myself into the CrossFit community this year by participating in it. Seems simple enough, but of course all the rhetoric in the CrossFit community makes a rather big deal of the Open, and I think for a while I lost sight of why I signed up for it in the first place.
This is not easy to admit to the nebulous audience that potentially reads this blog, but through this experience several of my character flaws were hideously exposed, and had it not been for some great people around me, I might have let them get the best of me. My experience in the open forced me to question why and how I do the important endeavors in my life, and why and how I react when they get hard.
I think the Open developed three really important skills for me: maintaining a positive attitude, cultivating self-esteem, and vigilantly upholding these two skills when the challenge becomes harder than expected. Simon Sinek wrote a book called Start With Why, and while the book is mostly about how great leaders inspire, I have begun to approach all of life’s challenges and not just leadership with the call to “start with why” by asking myself, “why do I do this?” My “why” for participating in the Open was to initiate myself into the CrossFit community and to record a baseline measurement of my skills on which I intend to improve in the coming years through CrossFit. Nothing in these goals demanded that I achieve a specific score on any of the workouts or rank higher than anyone else at all. But for some reason I forgot this.
When 14.1 was announced (a 10 minute AMRAP of double-unders and snatches) I already felt defeated and I immediately felt angry and resentful of the CrossFit community. I had never achieved consecutive double-unders and lamented that the Games programmers had unfairly exposed my weaknesses before I was ready to face them. I essentially blamed them for the failure I was expecting to experience. I went into the workout assuming I’d fail, and when I managed to actually get 60 double-unders (still not consecutively but I fought to maintain a 1-1-2, 1-1-2 pattern and chipped away at each rep) I didn’t celebrate them because I was unable to see how much of an accomplishment they actually were. I had never done 60 double-unders before in my life! Looking back now, I realize just how much of a victory this was.
14.2 was no different. Overhead squats and chest-to-bar were two skills I also didn’t have. I hadn’t much worked on my overhead squat, and chest-to-bar pull-ups certainly isn’t in my repertoire at this time. The minute I loaded up the bar with the weights and felt how heavy it was, I mentally checked out, assuming it would be too heavy for me. That combined with my inability to do the pull-ups and I resigned this workout to failure too. Instead of fighting to get the minimum 10 reps of overhead squats that I probably could have, I struggled and whimpered through 5 before time ran out and I proved myself right and unable to do what was obviously going to be too hard for me. The saddest part was that I actually PR-ed that workout. 65 pounds was the heaviest weight I had ever overhead squatted in my life – and I did it FIVE times!!
At this point several pivotal conversations happened and I re-evaluated my goals and reasons for participating in the Open. I had felt jealous that my friends all did better in the workouts than me. I felt ashamed that I was in last place on the leaderboard for Old City’s rankings. I was embarrassed that other people had seen me fail (at least my perception was that I had failed). My attitude about each of the workouts was “it’s too hard for me”, “I’m not good at this”, “everyone else can do it but me”, “I’m uncomfortable with how hard this is” and essentially, “I can’t”. And then a few inspiring people pulled me aside and showed me the power of positive thinking.
If you go into any endeavor with excuses for why you can’t succeed, or blame someone else for preventing your success, or determine your self-worth by comparing yourself to others, you will ultimately fail. I had done all of these things, but learned through the Open how important my attitude and sense of “why” were.
The following week, another Old Cityzen, Jenn Power and I did push jerks together. This was our first time working out together, and I’ll admit I had always been a little jealous of her. She has a robust fitness background, a slamming body with amazing abs (work it girl!) is a good CrossFitter and scores much better than me. But that day I learned an important lesson in maintaining my “why”. I do CrossFit for the journey and the pursuit of a better me, and no amount of comparing, competing, making excuses, and complaining of failure promotes that “why”.
As Jenn approached the bar just before PR-ing her push jerk she said aloud with a big excited smile on her face, “this weight is light!” While it seemed silly and maybe even a little sarcastic, her genuinely positive attitude and optimism meant by this statement drove every rep, and this got her a PR even though the bar was actually very heavy. I drew so much inspiration from her that day and have since, and we became fast friends with whom I now celebrate accomplishments. Now instead of being jealous, I feel genuinely excited and happy for her when I see her succeed.
I digress for a minute now because I was inspired by something else that happened over the course of the Open. In the final announcement of workout 14.5 the 5 previous champions of the CrossFit Games, Rich Froning, Graham Holmberg, Jason Khalipa, Samantha Briggs and Annie Thorisdottir went head-to-head and did the workout together. Rich won, of course, and Samantha Briggs put on a hell of a show, but the most inspirational person I saw that day was Annie. When I first got interested in CrossFit, two years ago, I watched hours of Youtube videos of her winning the Games in 2011 and 2012. She seemed invincible, and she was beautiful and strong and someone I really admired. After announcing her withdrawal from the 2013 Games due to a back injury, Sam Briggs came out on top to with the 2013 year, and I wondered how devastating that must have been for Annie to have to drop out at the top of her game. This year she is back, and although she is still a contender for first, she came in last out of the five at the 14.5 announcement workout. It made me realize that even the “Fittest Woman in the World – 2011 and 2012” can come in “last” in a workout. And the most admirable thing about her was how she took it. The minute she finished the workout, with all of the other champs surrounding her and cheering her on, she stood up, smiled, waved at the screaming crowd, and high-fived her competitors. No whining or complaining or blaming or regret. No excuses or sour expression or rolling on the floor making sweat angels. Just a big, proud, grateful smile.
The last three workouts of the Open became fun for me after I checked my attitude. I approached them all with reasonable, attainable goals and actually ended up achieving beyond these goals. In 14.3 my goal was to get through two rounds, and I actually ended up getting through 3! AND made attempts to lift the 185-lb deadlift (which would have been a PR) to begin my fourth!! On 14.4 I got not only my FIRST EVER toes-to-bar, but I got 49 of them!!! And of course 14.5 culminated the Open in the greatest victory of all. A task priority of thrusters that were heavy for me and burpees with no time limit to save me could have been incredibly daunting, but I set out to finish the workout in under 40 minutes come hell or high water. Throughout the workout I thought, “this weight is light”, stringing together as many of those heavy thrusters as I could, finishing at 38 minutes and 37 seconds. And instead of lying on the floor and panting and moaning when I was done I stood up, looked up at the people around me cheering me on and I smiled and said, “I did it!!”
So my first ever Open is over and I’m proud of how I did, not only for the physical feats I accomplished, but more importantly for the personal growth that came from it. My “why” for doing CrossFit has never been more resolved and my respect for the “sport of fitness” has never been greater. In celebration, I made one of my favorite paleo foods this weekend, and although it’s not one of my own recipes, it is used in many different dishes in my kitchen. It is from one of my favorite paleo blogs, Against All Grain, by Danielle Walker. Her recipes are so delicious and she has taught me so much about paleo cooking and baking. This weekend I made some of her crepes for breakfast, and poured some berries reduced with ¼ cup of maple syrup on them.
I then used the leftover “crepes” I had as “shells” for paleo tacos (I topped them with spicy ground beef and taco veggies). For her recipe, check out her blog, here. She is one of the best!
This coming week I start a new fun journey in self-exploration: the Paleo Zone Diet. Another goal of mine this year is to experiment with this diet and see how it works. So I used the crepes this weekend as a send-off to indulgences for a while. My next post will probably be about the Zone Diet, so stay tuned, and stay paleo!
-Julianna