We don’t DO CrossFit; we ARE CrossFit

Smells like CrossFit

I wish we had a secret handshake. All the great and enduring cults – no of course I mean “groups” – in history have one. And we qualify as such a “group” right?

Let’s go through the checklist I found online shall we?

• The group displays excessively zealous commitment to its leader. Check.
• Mind-altering practices push the body to the extreme. Pukey says “check”
• The group is elitist. Check. Unless we’re forging pedestrian fitness now.
• The group has a polarized us-versus-them mentality. Check. Unlikely to change unless we bring Zumba into our warmups.
• ‪The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members. Check. Tia and I are considering printing little leaflets saying “Have you Found CrossFit?” and handing them out at Virgin Active.
• Members devote inordinate amounts of time to the group and group-related activities. Check; I’m writing this in between practicing pull-ups from my security door. 
• Exclusive rites and ceremonies. Check. We like to call  ours “burpees”

I’m joking of course. Cult members don’t eat as much cream as we do. (Paleo; I love you.) And they don’t have our killer T-shirts.

Nope, we don’t have a secret handshake. Possibly because no one wants your bleeding palms covered in sticky Friar’s Balsam touching them. What we do have however are T-shirts. And we wear them wherever, whenever we get together with other zealots, whether in our box or not.

Why? Because CrossFit isn’t only about the WODs, it’s about the people, about our attitude, about the big values we embrace and the small things only other CrossFitters understand.

The 5 min flash lunchtime CrossFit workout

Last week someone told me she was doing CrossFit. I mean, “CrossFit”. She described her non-certified trainer and non-affiliated gym with enthusiasm while hobbling like someone who got a little extra loving from Fran. It made me angry. And sad. Angry because her coach is robbing our community. Sad because he’s robbing her of the full, true CrossFit experience.

It’s like this: you can take antioxidant pills, but you can’t duplicate the lip-puckering tartness of fresh berries staining your fingers with their sweet-sour deliciousness. You can WOD anywhere, but you can only feel the heartbeat of CrossFit in our boxes.

It is impossible till it’s not

My new CrossFit shirt arrived yesterday; it’s the ones Rika Diedericks had made when she went to the Games. In the accompanying letter she says: “CrossFit is about community and I definitely experienced this in a big way at the Regionals where it literally felt like I was being lifted through the rings by the amazing support of the CrossFitters in the arena.”

We all know what she means right? How we prove to ourselves, again and again, that we’re better and stronger than we think we are; not because we believe it but because our fellow CrossFitters do.

 Maybe T-Shirts are better than a secret handshake after all because, let’s be honest, none of us are particularly secretive about this beautiful thing we’ve discovered. This thing that’s not a sport. It’s not an exercise. It’s not even a cult. In fact it’s not something you can pin down with words. It’s something you feel. Like love. Like happiness. Like power. It’s infectious and it binds all of us with our individual lives and hangups and aspirations into one magnificent community.

 And it’s never, ever just something you do. It’s something you are. Something we all are.

 

 

 

Embrace the suckiness!

From a bar to a pipe

In 1 week my overhead squat’s gone from 30kg to 3kg. No, that’s not exactly right. You’ll forgive me if the emotion of the week has left me a little prone to exaggeration. The truth is that my OHS is hovering at around 300g, what with my having swapped a metal barbell for a length of PVC pipe.

This seemingly unfortunate situation is the result of an injury. Unfortunately not the kettlebell-to-the-head kind that leave you with a scar to brag about and a story people will buy you shooters to hear. No, it follows a severe injury to my pride when I visited CrossFit Jozi and realised I wasn’t anywhere near as competent as I imagined I might be.

And so I’ve been temporarily banned form the barbell and relegated to the PVC pipe because I’m embracing my suckiness on the way to discovering my awesomeness.

Too old to be new

So here I am at the start of the CrossFit Jozi onramp classes. Not significant in and of itself, because all the new people start out here. Except that for me “new” means “done CrossFit for 7 months”. The 2 girls I’m starting out with haven’t even stepped into a box before. This means they have no idea that their nail files are going to be reassigned as callous files. It means they still harbour the notion that throwing up during a WOD is bad. It means they don’t know that when you watch the beautiful Chris Spealler doing pull ups on YouTube it’s not because you have any desire to learn about pull ups.

Of course I know these things. But that doesn’t mean I know anything; I’m starting off exactly where they are. And before you ask, no I don’t think I’m fitter or stronger or better than them - I came 2^nd last on our baseline fitness test - but it’s disheartening. After 7 months of training at CrossFit 3 times a week and at Virgin on my off days; 7 months of practicing pull ups on the security gate in  the passage; 7 months of watching my weights get heavier, my runs get further and pusups get better, I’m here learning how to tell a burpee from a box jump.

I wouldn’t say my ego is bruised. More like crushed under hundreds of kgs of weights. You know; the weights I’m not lifting any more.

I don’t know squat

Ok, I’m not stupid (although my mom might mention several exs as proof to the contrary) I know there’s a lot I don’t know. But I didn’t realise just how much!

My first class starts with squats. I’ve done thousands over the past months so I’ll be – failing brilliance – competent in these. Except that coach Andre belly-button-to-bar Gadney doesn’t think so. He thinks my knees aren’t wide enough. And my chest isn’t sufficiently upright. And my feet are too far apart. And my butt isn’t down far enough. I want to point out to Andre that my legs couldn’t even stretch open this far when I was hovering in a birthing pool with the midwife yelling “push!”. But when I try to speak, the soliloquy running in my head comes out as: “arrghhhssghhhh.”

I trust Andre though, so if he’s saying it I’m trying it. He’s the perfect coach for new people. No, not because his incredible physique (the reason he can shoot up way beyond CrossFit’s chest-to-bar requirements on the pull up bar) is an example of what the new guys could look like and the girls can look forward to looking at. He’s perfect because he has a warm gentleness; perfect for handling bruised egos and tender newbies.

Butt out, elbows up

Back at the onramp class it’s not just my legs that are letting me down; my arms seem to be frozen in what I’m telling myself is the winter cold, but is probably fear. It’s because I know Coach Imtiaz Desai is prowling behind me just out of view. Do you remember those games you played as a kid, where you sat in a circle while one person skipped around the back singing “I wrote a letter to my love and on the way I dropped it” and if you were the one they dropped it at you had to chase them. Do you remember how the hair at the back of your neck bristled in nervous anticipation? I’m feeling like that. And then I feel cold iron fingers twisting my elbows up and bam, I’m “it”. In a moment of clarity I realise that (a) his sports science degree have given Imtiaz a distorted knowledge of anatomy because only someone made of pipecleaners can bend this way and (b) this is why  they get you to sign an indemnity form before starting.

I’m hurting, especially my inner thighs. And now my ego is aching worse than ever.

Hey look, I still have all my pieces

So here I am; feeling like I’ve been cast as an extra in an S&M film. My arms are up and braced against the pipe, by butt’s traveling back, my knees are going where no knees have gone before, and at the height of my discomfort Andre says: “squat deeper”. You’re frikking kidding me! If I do my bones are going to explode out of their joints like popcorn.

But wait … 

Who would have thought?  Instead of my body parts parting way with my body, they’re sliding and folding like a Transformer robot. Look, here I am hovering above the ground and I’m working that pipe; not exactly with ease, but hopefully with a modicum of grace. Humm, maybe my coaches don’t get kickbacks from the Linksfield Clinic.

My body feels balanced; it feel poised; it feels beautiful.

A life like CrossFit

No matter how brilliant you are, life will find a way to, “hand you your ass”, as Imtiaz would say. You lose your job, you change careers, you get dumped, and what hurts the most is that you’re left trying to work out where you went wrong, how you’re going to pick up the pieces and dreading having to start all over again. You’re back to square 1. This isn’t the way life’s mean to work! Even if you put on a brave face your inner child is throwing its toys because it’s gone from running right back to crawling. And it didn’t ask for a do over dammit.

But as they say in the X Box classics: RESPAWN! It’s not game over; it’s your chance to come back with renewed vigour, a fresh supply of ammunition and a kick-ass new game plan. It’s your chance to rediscover all the things you can do instead of dwelling on all the things you can’t. A chance to prove to prove to yourself that, as Christopher Robin said to Pooh Bear: “You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think."

And in my case, it’s a chance to fall in love with CrossFit and everything that comes with it all over again. Who knew 300 grams of plastic could make me feel so strong?

                                                                                                                            - Jolene Raison

Real Women Shave Their Palms

Rowing like I never did at Zoo Lake

The Fittest Woman in Africa doesn’t seem to have fussed with her hair or makeup this morning. Yet here she is looking gorgeous. CrossFit girls are annoying that way.

But I’m not here to hang out and curse my luck at not being built like an Amazon; I’m here to get rowing training from one. By the end of today I’ll be rowing like a Greek warrior.

The magic words

I’m expecting Rika Diedericks to plunge right in with advice on how weight training and a thousand hours of practice can get me comfortable with a rowing machine. Or at the very least get my arms and shoulders looking like hers. But no, there’s nothing about wods or lifts at the start of the workshop, the magic formula she opens with is a quote. Yes, really.

The key to rowing, she tells us, is this: rhythm, harmony and balance.

Rhythm, rhythm, rhythm, she stresses. Not just in rowing, but in CrossFit in general. Not just in CrossFit, but in life.

Ahh, and there it is, the moment when the lessons we learn in the box become lessons to use in life. And those lessons do come, as surely and frequently as CrossFit boys train without their shirts on.

The rhythm of life

Throughout the workshop she keeps coming back to this one thing. And it’s this word that’s been rumbling around on in my brain since the weekend. Rhythm!

I’ve been thinking how hard it can be to find that rhythm. It’s like sitting on the rowing machine, sometimes you move in stops and starts, sometimes you settle into a rhythm but it’s all wrong for you and your body feels awkward and slow. You need to find that rhythm that’s uniquely yours.  

And I’ve been thinking of the rhythm of my life: a good morning kiss while I’m still fuzzy with sleep, school lunch tucked in a pocket and a shy “I love you mom”, the aroma of coffee enveloping my desk, a few stolen seconds looking skywards and falling up into the stars when I close the blinds, snug pugs grunting goodnight.

They’re important these small moments that give my life some sort of pattern, stop the Technicolor fabric of my world from simply fraying and fading into the blank nothingness of time.

Can you feel the flow?

It’s that rhythm in your life that helps you keep you moving forward, albeit imperceptibly, even when you feel like the world’s dragging you backwards. Like the beating of your heart, the pulsing of your blood, the ticking of a clock, it’s there like a chanted mantra that “every day in every way it’s getting better and better”. 

And when you’re exhausted and life isn’t playing nice and you can’t see exactly where you’re going, you just keep rowing, you just keep going at your own pace knowing that every rhythmic breath carries to a little closer to your goal.

 
These people, they make music

 And the CrossFitters who are at the workshop, all crowded eagerly around the rowing machines? I realise that I’ve always felt so alone here at CFJ but that somehow during the past few weeks they’ve started paddling right here alongside me. There’s team McCabe are on the far end; they’re going to be married for the next 50 years if their marriage is as strong as their pullups. Neil and Ruby are rowing as if the very future of CrossFit depends on them while Imtiaz is cruising so gracefully I can almost hear oars slice the water. Then there’s Tia, looking beautiful but wearing her pain face and Zu and Annemarie bundled up in what seems to be the entire the CrossFit winter catalogue.

And me? For once I feel like I’m not sinking, and right now that’s enough.

Rhythm, harmony and balance

So after a morning in a freezing cold box soaking up Rika’s words, I came away with these key points: I need rhythm, I need firm abs and good posture and I most definitely need a cheap little orange razor. The razor; for those of you who like me suspected it must have something to do with minimising the drag on your leg hairs; is actually for shaving your calluses with.

And with that I have a neat bundle of instructions that works just as well for life: I’ve got to keep moving forward at my own, regular pace; keep my body strong and standing tall; and get rid of all the dead weight and the people or things that bring me nothing but pain.

Ok, so I may not have Olympic shoulders, but I am working on having an Olympic mind set. In my own time. All in my own time.

                                                                                                          - Jolene Raison

“Harmony, balance, rhythm. There you have it. That’s what life is all about.” – George Pocock

Live Like an Animal

Oink oink oink

The basics of weight management aren’t that hard to figure out: eat like a pig; live like a pig; look like a pig.

And despite what diet pill manufacturers will have you believe, there’s no way anyone’s going from hog to hot while they’re lounging around stuffing their faces with garbage.

No big surprise. No giant secret. Most people are fat and lazy because; well; they’re fat and lazy.

Running with dinosaurs

Of course, our bodies weren’t made to look or feel that way.

Millions of years back when we walked out of the Garden of Eden or crawled out of the primordial ooze (depending on which side of the Big Bang Theory you come down on) couches and TV remote controls weren’t around. Our bodies were made to either chase down or flee from the mass of creeping, crawling, swarming, swimming, flying life that filled the planet.

We were made to climb up after fruit; to dig down after roots; to run for our meat and to eat it all more or less as we found it. Back then our food didn’t have a longer shelf life than we did.

That’s because there was a time when we adapted to suit our environment. Now that we’re clever enough to adapt our environment to suit our desires; “hunting” means an online search for the nearest Mr Delivery, we can’t run without gym-provided hamster wheels, and “natural flavours” come in bottles.

Beat that body into submission

So here we are with bodies that are broken. Bodies that are bloated and sluggish and diseased. And what do we do? We damage them even more … on purpose!

We take pills to stop our bodies digesting fat, to stop us feeling hungry. We starve our bodies of healthy food, feed them nothing but juice. We pump them full of hormones. We medicate them into submission.

Birds do it, bees do it

Of course there is a secret to looking and feeling incredible. One that diet pill manufacturers will be keeping to themselves because secrets are only worth sharing if you can put a price on them.

The secret is this: let your body live like nature designed it to live.

Don’t gorge as if you’re Pharaoh planning for 7 years of famine. Don’t pay for pills or programmes that help you starve. (Millions of people up in Africa are doing it right now for free.) And stop wearing a couch on your ass.

Let your body live a little! Let it feast on whole foods. Let it run fast and lift heavy stuff. Let it play outside in the sun. Let yourself fall in love with being healthy and fit and not with being skinny.

 

Yes, it’s simple and it’s common sense. But isn’t it odd how something we’ve known at a cellular level for millions of years is suddenly humankind’s best kept secret?

Duck, dive, roll; like no one’s watching

Hey Mom; watch me fly

The kids have gone circus freak on the trampoline. Using the special skills mothers acquire naturally and other people join to CIA to learn; I manage to keep both eyes on my cell phone and on my ninja acrobats and on the rusted metal frame peeping out from under the trampoline’s safety padding.

My son does a somersault with the skill of a bowling pin. Then an Arab spring; body rigid and poised as a beanbag. He beams. I’m sure he hears applause in his head. I know he can’t hear my loud exhale every time he rebounds and I don’t see blood.

But do I stop him? Do I point out the indemnity sign? Do I tell him to put his cycling helmet on? Do I, at the very least, sneak my laptop bag over a rusty corner? No, I do not! And do you know why? Because I’m a good mother!

Play with me

My son is 11, meaning he hasn’t reached that age where he starts treating me like a rash. Right now he still loves when I jump on the trampoline with him. He likes me to swim with him. To chase him. To cycle with him. To climb rocks with him. He has no concept of the fact that his 11 year old body is a pleasure seeking machine whereas my 38 year old one is just holding out for sleep most of the time.

I watch him and his cousin bounce into handstands and collapse on their backs only to arch up onto their feet like street dancers, and I wonder when it all changed.

I wonder when I lost the simple delight of moving my body; windmilling my limbs; rushing around as the wind ruffled my hair? When were those sweet, spontaneous, easy joys replaced by the more contrived and orchestrated pleasures of drink and food and TV and all the other things I occupy my body with?

Maybe it happened when my body became something I had to consciously manage and improve. When it stopped working perfectly on its own and when I started having to work to make it perfect.

Maybe it happened when my body got too heavy to run with. Too weak to climb with. Too tired to swim and swing and jump with.  

I don’t know when it started, but I do know that there was a time in my life when the thing I loved most about my body was my body. I want that time back!

I want my body back

I also realise that at some point I gave my body away. I gave it to pizza and crisps and coffee and when my colon rebelled I gave it to doctors and pills. I gave it to my laptop for 15 hours a day and when I ended every day feeling like the Sandman was threading needles through my shoulders and woke up each morning feeling like they’d made their way to my brain, I gave my body to more pills and more doctors. I gave it to diet shakes. I gave it to a personal trainer. I gave it to the TV.

In the end, my body was simply an aching, heavy load I dragged around. And the burden of maintaining this body far outweighed the joy!

Then something happened

CrossFit happened! Sure, the actual workouts happened, and along with them the fat started vanishing and muscles started appearing. And that’s great, but it’s not the best part of reclaiming my body.

The best part comes with rediscovering the tummy-tilting thrill of something as simple as swinging on a bar (like I did on the jungle gym) and the giddy excitement of trying to tip upside down and get my toes up where my hands are.

It comes from running and hating it and running and hating it and then one evening realising that for a few perfect seconds I feel weightless, blissfully suspended in the amber light of the autumn sun as it drips off the leaves.

The best part comes when you realise that this is what our body was born to do. It was born to run. Born to play. Born to feel beautiful and magical and powerful.

Yes; the best part of Leoni running or doing weights or Michelle training with the Mistress of Pain or me doing CrossFit is that we’re reclaiming our bodies and with that, the birthright we gave up without even knowing it, years ago.

Your body remembers

The beautiful thing, I discovered, is that my body remembers. It remembers when every cell vibrated with energy and vitality. It remembers when that little pot of a tummy didn’t matter because my muscles exploded with power when I climbed trees and rocks and jungle gyms. My body remembers!

And I’m feeling it all coming back to me. Suddenly my body is behaving like a 5 year old; it just wants to play. If there’s a horizontal bar – say the top of my security gate – I want to jump for it. When I’m climbing stairs I want to box-jump them. I’m proud that I have calluses on my hands instead of carpal tunnel. That the ache that nestled behind my kneecap for 16 years is gone and instead my knees are bruised and my shins are scraped.

We all deserve this; this feeling of being so spectacularly alive, not of simply existing.

Most of us gave our bodies away too easily, too long ago. It’s time to get them back! One step, handstand or somersault at a time.

Balls of Steel. Hearts of Platinum.

Chalk dust makes you beautiful

What’s the most beautiful moment you can imagine at a gym? That second when the WOD heats up and the boys all decide their abs needs a little fresh air? Or maybe something with a touch of fantasy; say an hour alone in the box with a group of CossFit chicks, a comet hurtling towards Earth, and the realisation that none of them want to die virgins?

The most exquisitely beautiful moment I’ve experienced did indeed involve a group of incredible CrossFit girls … and a room full of shirtless men. It happened unexpectedly at CrossFit Platinum, when Beatrix was doing her final WOD of the 2012 games: in between thrusters and pull-ups Susan, quietly, calmly and caringly, rubbed chalk dust on her own hands, took Beatrix’s hands and then smoothed the dust over her palms. It was the smallest, simplest action; and at the same time; the most powerful and outstanding example I’ve ever seen of what makes CrossFit a sport of the heart, not just the body.

 As the two of them stood there, suspended in a haze of chalk dust while around me athletes grunted and judges shouted encouragement and competitors cheered; I realised that there are my people, every one, and I’m so incredibly proud that they are.

 Whoo hoo; 3 whole reps! 

Pfft; I didn’t need chalk during my final WOD. That’s because, unlike Wonder Woman who got 70 something reps, I got 3. I can’t do pull-ups so I was basically out after my 3 thrusters. But if cheering could have carried me up, chest to bar, I’d have done 3000. My little judge, Candice, got me to try every possible starting position and hand hold, hoping to help me get at least one rep out. “Try it with your hands wide. Ok try it with your hands closer together. Now try it with your palms away from you. Maybe try muscle it up. Right, no, then try swinging.” Candice negotiated techniques, Lisa tried some last minute kipping coaching, and Rheana (who does pull-ups as if her arms are piston driven) just screamed. I didn’t get any pull-ups, but I didn’t give up on the WOD until time ran out … and those amazing ladies didn’t give up on me.

It’s a beautiful thing; the fact that the people I train with believe I’m capable of so much. No, they’re not delusional. They know I’m not like Cindy and Christa; not only can those two move furniture and carry heavy stuff without the help of their boyfriends; they can do it with their boyfriends napping on top. Rather, it’s a case of knowing that we can achieve more together than we can on our own and that the weights or reps we’ll manage alone at Virgin will never come close to the amount we’ll do with our “family” cheering us on.

Even when the score sheet provides absolute, indisputable proof that I am – to use Emily’s word – sucky, they treat me as if I’m at the top of the leadeboard. I’m not; just in case you’re wondering. I am in fact 74^th; which would be awesome if not for the fact that there are only 75 women on it. Yet after every single one of my WODs Thabiet’s come to pat me on the shoulder and say congratulations. After every one! Not because I’ve broken any records, but I guess because he knows I’ve broken my own threshold for pain … and if I’m honest, for humiliation.

Run Forest, run

 It’s strange how there in our gym, pumping iron, pounding the pavement and throwing our bodies over ropes and under bars, surrounded by screams and grunting and occasionally swearing; in these many small gestures, you can feel the love. No one’s ever training that hard that they can’t take a moment to push you. Unless you’ve been there it probably doesn’t make sense, but when it feels as if someone’s deboned your legs while you’re doing yet another 400m run (no, Julian has no sense of restraint when it comes to cardio) and Neil tells you to stop walking and start running, your legs somehow start working again.  When you know you can’t do more than a ladies’ pushup and Craig Ninja puts 5KG on your pack and tells you to go for 10 strict ones; incredibly you’re suddenly She Hulk.

Even more incredible is the fact that it’s not a case of the brilliant athletes trying to get us special-needs ones to do better. More often than not it’s just a case of two regular people making one incredible team. Like Win and I. Gaelen and I have an unfulfilled plan to make ourselves T-shirts; hers will say Win and mine will say Ner. That way, when we’re together, we’ll each be a WinNer. It’s not as funny as you would think. (Or maybe it’s not as funny as I would think.) But that’s exactly what it’s like when we train together. Our lifts get heavier. Our cardio gets faster. Our endurance goes a few levels higher. When I wanted to drop out of the Open because I’d never done a snatch until the day it was announced as the WOD, Gaelen kicked my ass and made sure I dragged it over to the gym. On days I feel like browsing the sweet isles at Woolies instead of doing push-ups, I go to CrossFit because my partner in pain is there.

Sister act

It’s a sadness for me that out there in the rest of the world, “sisterhood” is just a gender-correct tri-syllable. The older I get the more I wonder what happened to the days when women would hold the ladder of success while a sister climbed up instead of snapping pics, hoping she’ll be going commando so they can post it to YouTube. Here at CrossFit though sisterhood is alive and well and the sisters are kicking ass!

Our fellow CrossFitters are more than a bunch of people with scraped shins, bruised hips and a penchant for chalk; they’re our family. We find more than fitness at our boxes; we find a sense of belonging. Our gym is more than kettlebells and skipping ropes. Our gym is Lisa sipping coffee and hanging out when she’s not training us and reminding us that being a mom doesn’t mean giving up your sexiness and being a weight-lifting power athlete doesn’t mean giving up your femininity. It’s Neil’s daughter catching rainwater from the gutter on her tongue. It’s Craig Ninja keeping his pepper spray sheathed and really shining as a coach. And of course it’s Julian; who laughs like a child, with absolute, bubbly abandon and who looks as proud of his peppermint tart as of his Open scores and who saturates CrossFit Platinum from the mats to the rafters with warmth and energy.

It’s all these things that make me feel that I’m not simply going to a gym; they make me feel like I’m coming home.

Do I really know you?

On Saturday I was telling Caro that I keep marrying off people who aren’t even involved and that maybe I don’t know my fellow CrossFitters at all. But now that I think about it I realise that’s not quite true. I don’t know where they live or what books they read or – apparently – whether they’re single or not, but I know that Bronwyn is as generous with her sweetness and laughter as her banana bread; she’s the first girl at CrossFit platinum who came to introduce herself to me and who asked if we could warm up together.

I know Caro knows how to transplant blackberries and that she doesn’t think it’s a waste of time to come in (when she could be home on her couch) just to cheer on 3 people WODing. I know Craig Blue-Shoes isn’t related to Thor and that he speaks very quietly for such a big guy. I know Paul can tell people he’s eating crocodile in a way that makes them believe him, but this “rough ‘n tough” block of muscle is soft enough take time out of his WOD to train with a 14 year old boy.

I know Marion made me feel as famous as JK Rowling because she knew my name and told me she liked my writing the first time we met; without her and Farhana and everyone else’s enthusiasm I’d never have had the confidence to carry on with these blogs.

Been there, got the T shirt

 It’s all these people who I’ve gotten to know and loads of people who I haven’t who keep me coming back again, week after week. It’s all of them who make me proud to wear a vest with our name on, because I’m proud to tell the world that I’m part of this phenomenal family.

Whew; I’ve been wanting to write a blog just for all of you for a while, but I didn’t think I knew you well enough. I guess I was wrong; I know the most important thing about all of you: a lot of people have hearts of gold, but only we have hearts of Platinum.

Lettuce Leaves Scare Me

Be afraid; be very afraid

I don’t do diets. I would do them if they included maraschino cherries and chocolate icing. But they don’t. So I don’t.

The thing is that healthy eating never feels like something with a reward at the end; it just feels like punishment for being born with tastebuds. Anyway; apparently Eve embraced an organic, raw food lifestyle and look where it got her! If she’d skipped the apple and gone straight for the tree with the cocoa beans, theology would be telling a very different story.

So you can understand my lack of enthusiasm when Tia arrived home to tell me she’d be eating Paleo for 6 weeks, as part of a challenge at CrossFit Jozi. (That’s her CrossFit gym, CFJ, which is way across on the other side of Jo’burg to mine.) She was excited at the prospect of discovering 792 ways to prepare Brussels sprouts and I was trying to think of even just 1 way to manage 6 weeks without cupcakes. Nothing came to mind. But I had to do something. Something radical! I could threaten to go find my cake elsewhere. I could tell her she was banned from playing with the kids at CFJ. Or I could do the unthinkable and join her in her insanity.

All I can say is, Adam, I was feeling your pain brother! Before I knew it I’d turned my back on cupcakes; who knew a smelly little cabbage-thing could look so tempting when held in such a beautiful – albeit callused – hand.

Imtiaz scares me too

Tia ran through all the Paleo basics with me. No grains; no sugar; no alcohol; no chocolate; no burgers; no pies ... Just the idea of making it through a month and a half’s worth of lunches without gluten-free bread scared me. Although not as much as the idea of doing the pre- and post-challenge workouts with her coach; Imtiaz.

From everything Tia had told me it seemed like Imtiaz ran his gym with military efficiency. The man seemed neat, organised, focussed, punctual to the second; in short, nothing at all like me.

It didn’t help that that WOD was ½ pull-ups, which I knew I sucked at even when I jumped them; and ½ overhead squats, which I didn’t know if I sucked at because I’d never done them.

Hit me baby one more time

Despite Tia telling me I had nothing to be nervous about, visiting CFJ for the challenge was like meeting the in-laws for the first time. You know how it is. You’re nervous because you want to make a good impression. You don’t know where to stand or if you’re sitting in someone’s place. You feel like you don’t belong. You don’t want to embarrass your partner or puke on the floor because you’ve had too much to drink.

Needless to say I made it through the door and onto the floor without turning and running! (Tia was strategically blocking the exit.) My quest for overhead squat excellence ( … or competence … or even just balance as I fell over backwards with the bar) was going well until Imtiaz approached me and gestured towards my back with a sturdy looking stick. A stern looking man in stealth mode armed with a stick? Surprisingly bad for calming the nerves.

Turns out the stick is more for pointing (in this case at the distance I should still squat down) than poking. Who knew?

How do you say “barbell” in Assyrian?

It occurred to me, as I hovered in an impressively deeper squat, that there was something that felt vaguely familiar about CFJ. I realised that in some way Imtiaz reminded me of a Semitic languages lecturer I used to have; minus the comb-over and ability to read and write in hieroglyphics.

The lecturer in question was an aging academic genius who could converse in biblical Hebrew, classical Arabic, and several long dead languages. He was happy to give us 4 periods of lectures instead of the scheduled 2. (Yes, I was that student.) He was equally happy to mark assignments I’d set for myself after I got through the prescribed work. (Yes, yes, I was also that student.) Under the tutorage of this old staunch Afrikaans Christian the beauties of Islam unfurled; the mysteries of Judaism unfolded and the complexities of my own faith were examined.  

Practicing with my little PVC pipe I recognised something of that spirit of discovery and that intensity at CFJ. All this knowledge reigned in by discipline and commitment and underpinned by love for this incredible thing we all share. If only we were WODing in a library my life would have been close to perfect right then.

Take me underwear shopping

So here I am, more or less past the point of fear, at the end of 6 weeks that have been filled with a lot of cooking, an abnormally massive amount of eating, spectacular quantities of coconut oil and a significant loss of centimetres. My clothes are down a size, my bra is down a cup (sadly nature didn’t ask me where I wanted to lose first) and my knickers are so loose I keep thinking someone might mistake me for Sharon Stone.

It’s also been 6 weeks of finding strengths in my weaknesses. The overhead squats that were the cause of a many sleepless nights and hysterical emails to Imtiaz have turned out to be one of my stronger lifts and I’ve gone from PVC pipe to 25 kg bar. More impressively; my thumbs have stopped going numb when I do them, meaning I’m equipped to handle a cup of hot coffee without striking terror in the hearts of our pets.

Damn; this is a good feeling! It’s good to try on clothes and choose between what looks good, not what I can jam down over my hips. And it’s awesome to get dressed in the morning and want to do it in from of the mirror. It’s amazing to walk into the gym and spend an hour, feeling the weight of the world easing off my shoulders as the bar and I take on my problems kg by kg. And it’s really good to feel that sense of lightness that’s settled in my body, a lightness that has nothing to do with how much I weigh.  

That’s how we roll

Tomorrow I’m having supper with my new in-laws at CFJ to celebrate the end of the challenge.

I’m happy to say they’re the kind of in-laws who shout for me when I’m WODing, not the kind who’ll loosen the clips on the barbell hoping I’ll be their shot at winning America’s Funniest Home Videos. (Jamie, dude, you have no idea how good it was to hear someone screaming for me when I was so close to tears doing wall balls.)

I don’t know much about Tia’s family, but I know the most important thing any partner needs to know: they care for her. They cheer for her. They motivate her. Sure, they have a bizarre habit of rolling back and forth on sponge noodles in a suspiciously ADD way when you visit them, but hey, we all secretly want our in-laws to be a little quirky, right?

I can't even begin to guess at the triumphs of everyone who did the challenge. For each of us the rewards are uniquely personal. But like everything in CrossFit, even though the daily struggles were ours to deal with as individuals, a big part of our strength came from feeling we weren't doing this alone.

CrossFit Jozi; you rock;  thanks for making me part of your family over the past 6 weeks.

She’s Tiacalifragilisticexpialidocious

Love hurts

The first time Tia touched me I saw stars. I think I may even have cried, but endorphins tend to do a Men-In-Black memory wipe on me. That’s what happens when someone reaches the softest, most tender parts of you; the parts no one has touched before. Or should ever again.

It was a beautiful Sunday morning. The sun was up, the Astroturf was green, the soccer ball was bouncing around like a pinball … and little cartoon birds were circling my head. Not that Tia noticed; she was already chasing the ball across the pitch, oblivious to the whimpering of the crumpled little bundle cradling her ankle, pondering life without being able to wear closed shoes ever again and wondering what kind of a bitch doesn’t even stop to say sorry when she’s kicked you.

If I’d known the answer to that question, I wouldn’t have started FaceBooking Tia about comic books and AA Milne Poems two weeks later; I would have started that afternoon.

Focus dammit

The reason Tia didn’t notice my foot turning an attractive egg-plant purple and swelling in a way that would leave me with an equally attractive limp for over a month is this: she had her eye on the ball. When she’s pursuing something she does so with a single-minded dedication that means the rest of the world simply doesn’t exist for her at that moment.  

Bad when you’re playing soccer with her and you’re nothing by a blimp on the edge of her universe; incredible when you’re her life partner and you’re at the centre of it.

You know you want to

Much later, after we started dating, Tia stopped kicking me and started feeding me instead. The routine; as those who know her will appreciate; goes like this:

Tia: try this.

Me: no:
Tia: just try it.
Me: no.
Tia: ok, have a bite.
Me: no.

Tia: one bite.

Me: no.

Tia: ok here’s a spoon full.  

Me: no.

Tia: just open your mouth.

Me: no.

Tia: isn’t that nice?

Me: akjjehbanchgyul. (It’s difficult to talk with your mouth full.)

It’s true that I spat out the sushi she shoved at me into a cup. (Rather spit it out than puke it out.) And that I ran, like a fertile woman in a room with Steve Hoffmeyer, away from the spinach ice cream she made. And that I sulked for a morning when she put spirulina into my breakfast smoothie, presumably thinking I wouldn’t notice that it looked like the tide had come into my glass. But it’s also true that my culinary world has finally expanded past “vleis, rys en aartapels”.

Yes, I’m bragging shamelessly

So why am I telling you all about Tia and what do I have to brag about? I mean, apart from the fact that she’s the only woman in the world hotter than Kristan Clever? Well because this week for the first time she can reach out and touch dream she’s been chasing since before I met her: to coach CrossFit.

Yesterday when it all happened, in between bouts of pride and trying to figure out who else I could tell, I got to thinking about how far she’s come. And that regardless of how she’s grown or changed in the time I’ve known her, she’s still that same excitable girl, keeping her eye on the ball and chasing it down with total focused determination.

And I got to thinking that it’s like that with anything you’re chasing in life; another degree, another job, another relationship, another body; you’ve got to run at it like a bull, tossing anything standing in your way to the side with your momentum.

Hey, who bolted my weight to the floor?

Last night at CrossFit was a lesson in that kind of focus for me as I stood there staring down at a 30 kg weight debating whether I would lift it up off the floor or whether it would pull my arms down out of my sockets.

You know what I’m saying, right? All of you who’re challenging your bodies right now know what it feels like to face a workout that seems tougher than you are. When we just don’t know if we have the energy to drag ourselves all the way to gym, never mind actually work out. When you’re wondering when the fun will start and the pain will end.  

That was me last night; I had the sneaky suspicion that someone had bolted the bar to the floor so that David could get a few humorous shots in for his incredible collection. When that happens, you need to take yourself to a place where it’s just you and the bar. A place where you don’t have a history with the bar; because history tells you what you could do then and hints that that’s all you can do now. It needs to be you in a space where gravity is the unlwecome guest you’re about to liberate this barbell from.

Whether it’s you and the bar or you and the treadmill or you and your study notes or you and your job or you and the yoga mat and a body rebelling against having your head planted on the floor and your feet up where your head should be; you need to let the world melt away until all there is and you and this thing you want to do.

When my body says no it means yes

You’ve also got to move yourself into a mind-space where “no” just isn’t an option. I’ve had to recondition myself to look at a physical challenge and think “yes”. That’s not something that’s natural or easy for me. I can do it with studying, especially foreign languages, because I trust that my mind is brilliant enough to meet any mental challenge. But I struggle to do that when it comes to physical things. I’m terrified of physical challenges because I’m not used to doing things I don’t excel in.

So I’ve started saying “yes” to the things that scare me. (Who knew a knee-high box could terrify me in ways that Stephen King couldn’t even dream of.) Yes to the things I honestly don’t know if I can achieve. Yes to the stuff I’ve never done before. In fact, doing the CrossFit open has been one big exercise in saying yes for me!

Now when my body’s saying “no” and my mind is saying “well maybe” I pull a Tia.

Me: Try this.

Body: Hell no!

Me: Ok just try the light weight.

Body: No.

Me: Ok what about just a broomstick?

Body: No.

Me: Oh look here’s 20kg.

Body: uhjhsd hsegdehveg. (Can’t talk when you’re worried about splitting your skull with the big-ass weight you’re holding overhead.)

She’s my coach, but ok I’ll share

I look around at this breath-taking new world I’ve discovered; one with CrossFit and Paleo and a body that’s pulsing with the pleasure of movement and energy; and I’m thankful to Tia for leading me here.

Through fights in the parking lot outside Virgin Active when she told me the yoga class I nearly passed out in was a “nice warmup” and fights in the lounge when I told her CrossFit’s a cult not a sport; she just kept following her dream. And she kept saying: “here, try this”; knowing that once I’d gotten a taste of CrossFit I’d be hooked.

It occurs to me that she doesn’t know how much of a role model she is to me. How her tenacity – that people misread as stubbornness – is one of the things I admire most about her. How the unwavering belief she has in me has made me aim to be better than I believed I could be. And how her refusal to let go of her coaching dreams, even when things went wrong and she was gymless and desperately missing her CrossFit Family, inspires me to pick up the bits of the dreams I’ve left behind (my writing, for example) and focus on following them again, in whatever way I can.

When I think of Tia the image that usually pops into my head is of this small person charging after a soccer ball, hair tied up, head down, fists balled, looking for all the world like the Little Prince(ess), racing across a planet that belongs to her alone.

Tia, love, you’re deserve this so much. And you’re going to be so brilliant at it. As long as you keep running I’ll be right there cheering.

She's

Float Like A Dung Beetle, Sting Like An Eel

Don’t let me be Eric the Eel

Yup, I’ve finally answered the question my mom’s been asking for 37 years: “If your friends all jumped in the fire would you do it too?” Clearly I would. Why else would I have signed up for the CrossFit Open with barely 2 months of training behind me?

Ok, so here it’s more a case of “if your friends all jumped into the box,” but I’ll admit she’s right; I’m doing it because my new friendies (as Gaelen calls them) are doing it. And no, I never really gave it any thought other than “everyone else is doing it, I should do.”

It’s that kind of brilliant forethought and planning that got me to the day of the first WOD, dizzy with terror asking myself: what the fuck was I thinking? (Answer: I wasn’t). I can’t do a pullup. I can’t do a double under. I can’t sprint more than 100 m. Yet there I was, about to take on 5 weeks of workouts? I was thinking maybe I took a kettlebell to the head and I just didn’t remember.

So I phoned Tia and told her I didn’t want to do this anymore. She gave me the speech about trying my best and being part of the fun. And she meant it all sincerely. But at the time, all I could whine back in response was: “I’m going to be Eric the Eel. I don’t wanna be Eric the Eel!”

Swimming like a pug

Eric, for those of you whose knowledge of swimming only extends as far as the medal ceremony, was a freestyle swimmer at the 2000 Olympic Games. He catapulted his country of Equatorial Guinea into the headlines in a way I doubt any man with two arms and two legs, or really even just a leg, will again.

While the day’s winning athlete took gold and a new world record in 47.84 seconds, young Eric made it across the pool in just under 2 minutes; more than twice the winning time. In fact, it took Eric longer to swim the 100 m than it took anyone else to do the 200 m.  

I can only guess that the Equatoguinean's enthusiasm caught the coach’s one eye, while the other, blind one, was turned to the scoreboard. Short of doping the entire team and bragging about it on Twitter, there’s little the coach could have done to ensure his team’s total annihilation on the world stage, that would have been worse than sending Eric in to bat for them. Or flop around in the shallow end as the case may be.  

Eric you see hade never swum in a pool this big before. Judging from footage of the day I suspect he never actually swum without his armbands on before.

Eric swam like a rock with flippers on. Put simply; Eric sucked.

How many am I from last?

But back to me. I made it through the day building up to the opening WOD by checking the scores of the other athletes. Not the leader board; I don’t really care about some girl who managed 120 burpees in 7 minutes. Overachiever! I checked the lowest scores. I kept telling myself that all I had to was beat 56. No, 51. No, 43. No, 35. I wasn’t aiming high, I was aiming not to be the person people remembered as the one who sucked worse than Eric.

By the time 7.30 arrived I was ready to throw up. Fate; who prides herself on a keen sense of humour; dictated that I should be doing my burpees with WonderWoman. (You Platinum CrossFitters know her as Beatrix.) If not for the obvious absence of a lasso and the conspicuous presence of a boyfriend, I would have sworn I’d seen star spangled knickers poking out of her shorts. And here we were about to WOD together. No pressure then.

I’m happy to say I didn’t puke. And I didn’t come last in the world. Hell, I didn’t even fall off the porch we were WODing on. (Although that might have helped.) What I did do was “walk” my way through all 7 minutes. I was vaguely aware that somewhere behind me WonderWoman was streaking through the WOD with Amazonian speed. And no, I didn’t feel any surge of competitive edge driving me a little faster. I had Lisa shouting “just one more” and Tia screaming “rest on the floor, don’t rest standing” (yes you really all sound like you’re shouting when my heart’s beating in my ears) and in my head an even louder voice was screaming “don’t come last in the world”.

Before we started Julian had reminded us we didn’t need to go into full pushup position from the floor; we could snake our way up. I kind of hippod my way up and down, moving with the speed and grace of, well Eric.

Last in the world? My personal best!

Here’s the thing I only remembered on Thursday night after all my bitching and whining; there was a time when I idolised Eric the Eel. I was pregnant when Eric did his thing and I actually kept a newspaper clipping about him to give to my unborn son one day. I remember thinking that I wanted my boy to know, that in a world where we worship perfection, being the best you are counts for a lot more than being the best there is.

You see, Eric had only been swimming for 8 months when he went to the Olympics. And had never swum more than 20 metres at a go before, because that’s how big the pool was at the hotel where he practiced. Plus, on the day of the race, both other athletes in his heat were disqualified, so Eric made his slow, lopsided way across the pool and back with the spotlight and the critical eye of the world firmly and unkindly on him.

Yup, Eric came last in the world that day! He also set the record for the slowest athlete ever in the history of the 100 m freestyle. But that’s not all he did; he also beat his personal best and set a new national record for his country.

In short: Eric is one of the greatest Olympic athletes ever to face the cameras in nothing but a banana hammock.

Being Kristan Clever

I managed 55 burpees. Not the best. But most definitely my best. I didn’t come last in the world. Neither did Gaelen. Nor did anyone else in our box as far as I know.

But you know what, I realise now that even if we had, that’s not what we’d remember in a few moths. And we won’t look at the little block with a number in beside which we sign our name as if it describes what the Open meant for us. I reckon that every one of us; those who bettered our best and those who felt we let ourselves down; those who missed out because they had tickbite fever or didn’t get their score in on time; those who helped judge and those who came to cheer: we’ll remember the magic we all shared just by being part of this.

We’ll remember Kristan overtaking the men on the leaderboard as if it was us doing it. We’ll remember the 70 year old who rocked it harder than some 17 year olds thinking “one day that’ll be me”. We’ll remember swelling with pride when people in our box hit triple figures or even just made it through those 7 minutes breathing, feeling as if their triumph is ours. And we’ll be proud that we were part of something that truly celebrates the human body at its beautiful best and the human spirit in both its most humbled and elevated form.

Looking at it all like that I realise I don’t have to worry about being like Eric after all; I’ll have to go a long way to be even half that good. But that’s ok, because me at my worst now is still better than me at my best two months ago.

I guess, when you think of it that way, the Open never really ends.

OMG you want to see my 1RM PSN? Pervert!

Do you speak CrossFit?

There are days when CrossFit hurts my brain more than my body! Just when I think I’ve got the hang of the moves I realise I’m lost in the endless acronyms. In fact, I start many classes in mental agony, trying to decipher everything Julian’s written on the whiteboard, using the mental agility of a WW2 code breaker, hoping the rest of the class won’t think I’m as dumb as I feel.

Following hot on the knee-socked heals of the acronyms in terms of causing confusion and panic is the jargon we use for the moves themselves. Like someone named Labuschagne who insists on introducing herself La Bu Shay; no one would dare call something: “bending-over-to-pick-up-something-bloody-heavy” when they could call it a “dead lift”. Presumably because you work harder when the very name implies – even threatens - bodily harm if you don’t buck up and do it properly 

So in a charitable effort to save fellow CrossFitters from bursting into tears simply from the exertion of unravelling the acronyms or deciphering names of moves, today’s little blog is dedicated to understanding the language of CrossFit.

 What WOD you like to do today?

Finishing first in terms of reps are CF, WOD and box; all pretty obvious when you think about it.

CF: CrossFit (doah); the sport and of course, the addiction.

BOX: A functional sounding name for a CrossFit Gym. And no, despite all the ads you don’t need to worry that we’ll ship you off to a foreign country while you’re training. You need to qualify for that.

WOD: since you’ll use it every day, take note that it’s not in fact pronounced doubleyou-oh-dee, even though I said it that way for months. (Probably because I frequently have pee-oh-doubleyou in my mind when I’m trapped at the back of the class grunting through my warm-ups.)

There are of course many interpretations the new, suffering CrossFitter is likely to assign to WOD. For example, at CrossFit Platinum where a warm up isn’t a warm up unless you’ve done so many military style pushups that you find yourself yearning for a crew-cut, it’s a common misconception that WOD means Warmup Of Death.

Even I didn’t have it figured out until a few months ago! Before I joined CrossFit; way back when I was still sprouting roots on the couch while listening to my girlfriend rave on about CrossFit with glazed eyes and a kind of zealousness that suggested she might wait on the top of a hill wearing only her Vibram Five Fingers, for a comet to take her to that big box in the sky; I assumed it meant: Way Of the Demented. (Actually I might not have been that far off there.)

But no, it’s just: Workout Of the Day. That simple. Learn to love it … and sometimes to fear it.

WTF?

Once you’re WODing at your CF box you’re ready for the next exciting step in the CF name game.

AMRAP: not a pyramid marketing scheme involving carpet shampoo and fabric softner. It means you need to do As Many Reps As Possible within a given time. A possible equivalent being: SWD; Stop When Dead.

RFT: Reps For Time. It’s just you in a race against time as your see how much of something you can do before the egg timer sounds. If, like me, you’re still at that point where you manage 2 sets of a 5 set workout in 20 minutes while someone else (let’s call her Christa because, well that’s her name) manages all 5 in 13 minutes, you’ll want to amuse and motivate yourself with non WOD related benchmarks. Like how many spots are swimming in front of your eyes at the 5, 10, 15 and 20 minute mark.

Rx’d: in the great tradition of things that make zero sense but that you accept anyway (like waxing on and waxing off) you need to accept that Rx means doing a WOD as prescribed. In other words, when you use a 5kg ball and do jumping pull-ups instead of the 20 kg and strict pull-up; you didn’t Rx it. Just a reminder to the new peeps who seem to have dropped a 0 off the 800 m run: faking it is not the same as Rxing it.

I like to move it, move it. I just don’t know how.

As soon as you’ve got the acronyms sorted, you’ll have to master the different moves. And although there are so many you can go through a month of WODs without repeating them, these are a few of my confusing favourites:

Double Under. This is not in fact the CrossFit equivalent of a missionary styled threesome. It’s a daring skipping move you can only attempt when you’ve been at your box for a few months, by which point you’ll have imbibed enough of the superhero DNA we spike our water with to actually make a go of it. A Double Under involves the skipping rope going under your feet twice for every one time you jump. You’ll know you’ve mastered it when you hear the sonic boom.

Clean. A nifty little move designed to keep orthodontists in business. It’s a lift that ends up with your elbows bent forward at a karmasutric angle, with the bar resting across your soon-to-be bruised clavicles. You don’t really understand the meaning of the phrase “beat yourself up” until you’ve unwittingly gone chin-to-bar with this one.  

Renegade row. Although it calls to mind weekend picnics in a colourful rowing boat with a handsome, exiled freedom fighter, it actually means doing pushups on weights and then hoisting one weight at a time up next to you. Because of course regular pushups aren’t hard enough. (Ps: Cindy; it would make the rest of us feel better if you could use smaller weights with this one. Or no weights. Hell if you could do it on your knees, that would be perfect!)

Sumo Deadlift High Pull. Sounds like very small, very tight underwear for a very large (or alternatively, very well hung) man, but it’s really just holding the bar in the middle and hiking it up under your chin as your arms flap up like chicken wings.

Annie/Fran/Cindy etc. You can imagine my distress when my girlfriend first arrived home, sweating and smiling broadly, and announced “I did Annie.” It seems CrossFit decided that if we could name hurricanes after women, we should do the same with WODs. CrossFit HQ won’t confirm that they’ve used names of famous dominatrix for this purpose, but I suspect that’s because they’re avoiding the bad publicity.  

*Burpee!* You’re excused.

You know, for boxy little gyms, CF boxes have so much going for them! They’re bursting at their reinforced seams with stuff that makes us laugh (especially at ourselves), stuff that makes us feel like we’re part of a team and stuff that makes us feel like we’re in on something special, something that the rest of the world doesn’t know about. And it’s incredible how something as simple as an acronym can reinforce those things.

So what if we don’t have a secret handshake? We’re slowly developing a secret language. A handshake would be nice though. Maybe also midnight meetings and a password. But at the very least a handshake.