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.

I’d Give My Right Rib To Be Skinny

Strong is the new sexy. Only not today.

The next time someone asks me if I’m not worried about getting too muscular, I’m going to say: “well I was aiming for morbidly obese, but it's helishly expensive.”  It’s not that I don’t appreciate people worrying that throwing some weights around is worse for my health and wellbeing than vegging on the couch with pizza, it’s just that I find comments like that … what’s the word I’m looking for … STUPID.

“Keep young and beautiful if you want to be loved”

Annie Lennox said it, but only because we all believe it. I’ve been humming the song to myself as I page my Pale Comfort Foods Cookbook. And at the same time mulling over the tragedy of living in a world where we think that skinny is better than healthy.

It doesn’t make sense. In what universe do we revere women whose chief strength is the ability to survive on 5 peeled grapes a day? Oh yes, the same one where girls hate their bodies because no matter how they try they simply don’t look like famine victims?

And yes, it’s the same universe where people cringe when you mention the weight you just PBd on because “oh, like aren’t you scared you’ll get big arms?” Which I totally get of course, because if I had a choice between a body that (a) rattled as I walked, (b) small children could use as a flotation device or (c) I can climb mountains with, I’d obviously choose a or b.

Bring me your bound, your blinded, your blubberous

It’s a trend really, this thing of celebrating bodies that are broken. Especially when it comes to women; this is the way we’ve rolled over the centuries:

• With corsets that crush your internal organs and constrict your lungs so that you faint so often you need to carry smelling salts with you.
• Using belladonna to brighten the eyes, even though you wouldn’t actually see it for long yourself, seeing as how it also causes blindness.
• Arsenic; excellent for lightening the skin; even better for corroding it.
• Breaking a child’s feet in half and folding the front half in underneath, then binding it. Men loved it; presumably because when your wife can’t walk she can’t leave you.
• Removing ribs, yes, it’s still a winner today, takes your waist down a size instantly without all that annoying dieting.
• Swallowing tapeworm eggs; because living with a parasite killing you slowly from inside is better than living with fat. And clearly better than simply eating well.

But why learn from generations of suffering women? Today we cram diet pills down our throats with enough appetite suppressing “legal speed” to have powered all the boys in Vietnam. We starve ourselves and live with the dizziness, nausea and weakness, because we need to be skinny to be beautiful and we need to be beautiful to be loved.

Skinny girls look good in clothes; fit girls look good in nothing

(Yes, I totally stole that line. Don’t you love it?)

So at which point are we going to start assigning value to our bodies based on how far we can run, how high we can jump and how energetically and unashamedly we can make love with them versus how small we can shrink them or how artificially we can manipulate them?  

Surely it’s about time! About time to love our bodies because they’re healthy and they’re fit. About time we feed our bodies with generous amounts of divine, fresh foods instead of starving them.

I know I sound evangelical, but if you’re at CrossFit then you’re one of the women who’re already judging your body by whether your arms could hoist you up into a tree to watch the sunset, not by whether your biceps are too bulky.

If I eat this pill I can eat those chocolates

In a world where we have so little control over so much of what happens to us, the basic wellbeing of our bodies is the one thing we can control. We can’t control what goes wrong and what freakishly good genes we have, but we can decide what we put into it, what we do with it and ultimately what we get out of it.

But taking control isn’t easy. It’s hard. It’s fucking hard! Especially when there’s always cake at work and you need to fit in exercise between permanent work and freelance work and kids and housework and the shit life drops in your lap.

You know what’s harder though? Being locked in a body that doesn’t work the way you need it too because it’s too weak from dieting or heavy from pigging out or just too fucked up from years of stuffing it full of garbage.

It comes down to one simple thing I guess: I want a body that gives me the freedom to squeeze all the magic I can out of life, not one that’s a prison. You’re with me, right?