We Go Together like Rips and Friar’s

I don’t do CrossFit for the WODs. Hard to believe I know. But it’s true. I don’t do it for the thrill of flinging myself upside down only to realise that puke comes out easier that way. I don’t do it for the tingling exhilaration that comes from recapturing my kettlebell mid-flight on its way to bowling the coach down like a skittle. And I definitely don’t do it so I can brag about how I’ve given blood this week … and probably some skin too.

I do CrossFit for the people.

Alone like a broken bar

“When you ask people about love they tell you about heartbreak. When you ask them about belonging, they’ll tell you their most excruciating experiences of being excluded. When I ask people about connection the stories they tell me are about disconnection.” I read this achingly brilliant bit of wisdom by Brene Brown in bed yesterday.

(I apologise for not being able to put the little accent sign above the second “e” indicating it’s pronounced “ay”, but my knowledge of word only stretches as far as punctuation I can use for smileys. Plus, it annoys me when a letter acts like spoiled single child, wearing the linguistic equivalent of a plastic tiara and refusing to make pretty sounds by playing with the other children.)

So back to Brene-pronounced-Brenay. She’s right isn’t she? Not only about us feeling sense of disconnection. But that we believe we’re unique in this regard. That we’re alone in feeling that we’ve never quite belonged. Isolated in our conviction that somehow the world doesn’t quite see us for who we really are.

Yet here we are, all of us, telling ourselves there must be something bigger to be a part of, if only we could find it. All of us feeling all the while that if life really is a cabaret we’ll always be the shmucks outside parking the cars.

 

If I follow you to your box will you keep me?

It’s true I think of most of us that we spend a large part of our lives, whether we’re conscious of it or not, looking for that place where we belong. For people we connect with.

And then we find CrossFit!

But according to Brene the finding is just the first step. “For connection to happen we need to let ourselves be seen, really seen … vulnerably seen.” Yes I realise she means emotionally. I didn’t get through a language degree without being able to find 3 levels of meaning in a simple “Please Call Me”. But I think that when it comes to CrossFit it’s about more than that.  

I style my hair with chalk

You know those pictures in National Geographic showing flood, famine and quake survivors looking like supermodels? Well we look nothing like that. I’ve seen many pics of myself training and I look pretty much the same as I have since becoming a mom: larger than I seem in the mirror, eyes glazed with too little sleep and even less sanity.

 Most of us do. Except the girls from CrossFit Platinum. At the end of their workouts they look like they’ve been kissing Rich Froning in the rain, not splashing in other people’s sweat. But that’s because Julian splices his athletes’ genes with the DNA of wild mustangs. It’s true. If you don’t believe me you haven’t seen Beatrix run.

So this is how CrossFit allows us to be seen as we really are: terrified, elated, exhausted, sweat soaked, crying, panting, puking. And more than that, seen as we are when we’re pushing harder than we knew we could. Lifting heavier than we thought we were capable of.  Seen as the amazing, capable beings we sometimes forget that we are.

 Help! I got pinned doing a back squat

But while we revel in our strength here we also submit to our vulnerabilities. In the box we learn it’s ok to ask for help. To say we can’t do something. To say we’re not perfect. That we’re not strong enough to do this alone. Really all the things we’d never say out there where to show vulnerability is to show weakness and to show weakness is to expose your jugular to a vicious world. And unfortunately, in the real world men in body glitter aren’t queuing up trade you eternal life for a chance to rip into your veins.

Smash it to Linkin Park

Yes, I’ve smashed out thrusters to “I’ve become so numb” hoping that at some point it might actually happen and anaesthetise my chest cavity as my lungs try to make a break for it through my ribs. But apparently, if Brene is right (and I think she is) “You cannot selectively numb emotions. In our moments of most intense joy, we are often at our most vulnerable.”

 And that sums it up for me I think. Here in my box my emotions run riot. Sometimes I leave shattered by the intensity with which they strike. Here I find my agony and my ecstasy. Here I find a family. And they see me as I really am. But more importantly, they help me see myself as I really am.

And here with them, I sometimes feel vulnerable … but I never, ever feel alone.