Hello friends!
Today is kind of a special day for me. And thanks to the
magic that are content calendars and scheduled posts, I am able to publish this
post on the actual day (not three days late like I am with birthday cards).
Anyway…
Today is the two year anniversary of when I f’ed my shoulder
up at Crossfit. It’s also kind of the one year anniversary of when I grew up a
little.
I remember April 2, 2014 very well. I had been doing
Crossfit for 22 months. I was absolutely not the best Crossfitter, but I had
finally overcome the knee injury that I had when I started and the hip problem I
developed while doing it, so I was feeling great.
Hell, I was 23. I had that Blink 182 song stuck in my head
for the whole year (and if you click on that link you will, too), so I felt
like a straight badass all year. Crossfit only fueled that badass attitude. Of
course I felt great!
 |
| Just your typical, industrial Crossfit gym. |
Anyway, the workout was a tough one.
100 toes to bar15 wall balls every time you come off the pull up bar
(Links to movements.)
I was just getting the hang of toes to bar and walls balls
were never a favorite of mine. I could have scaled it down with a lighter wall
ball or an easier ab move, but I was a badass! Badasses don’t scale!
Also, I had promised myself that if I did 10 workouts
without scaling I could get a pedicure.
So I did the workout as written. I came off the pull up bar
a bunch and missed a bunch of the wall balls. Nothing about it was fun or
enjoyable, but I did it because that’s what a Crossfitter does.
And if you know anything about Crossfit stereotypes, you know
that getting injured is also what a Crossfitter does. And that’s exactly what
happened next.
Bright, sharp pains were shooting and radiating through my
shoulder. Taking off my sweaty sports bra when I got home was nearly impossible
and involved a good bit of rolling on the bed and counting “1…2…3” as I coaxed
myself to move.
I’m not going to recount the whole next year. It involved
lots of pretending I was okay, “going light” on the weights, and one handed
hair washing.
A gym switch and a year later, I was onto my second doctor
with no real improvement to show for it. But as I was telling that second
doctor all about my year long injury (and all my other injuries) I had a very
interesting revelation.
Here goes:
Crossfit (and anything else that causes you to push
yourself) is really great, but only until you push yourself to stupid, painful
places. And once you get to that point you lose all the benefits you gained
from pushing yourself in the first place.
A shorter version of that revelation is this:
Pushing yourself is great, but only when you do it smartly
and with control. Once you lose control you lose all of the benefits.
 |
| I'm definitely not the fastest, but I'm probably not the slowest. |
That’s a tough understanding for a 24 year old and a Crossfitter to come to. Both of those things lent themselves to making me think that I was invincible and all my decisions were great.
I’m definitely not invincible and my decisions are not all great. (This is the point when all of my older, more mature friends start nodding and laughing at me. That’s fair. I deserve it.)
In the year since I’ve had that revelation my shoulder has
gotten better. It still bothers me sometimes and likely always will. But the
difference between 23 year old me and 25 year old me (aside from lots and lots
of things) is that I’m completely and totally okay with having limitations. I
no longer view limitations as things that need to be blindly defied.
This is not saying that I’m accepting mediocrity or that I’m
succumbing to complacency. I’m not doing either of those things. I’m still
Crossfitting and setting crazy
goals and being a badass in other ways. But now I’m more of an intentional
badass with a little bit of self-control and forethought (and a bum
shoulder).
 |
| Competing in my first Crossfit competition and not expecting to win. |
So there you go. Happy anniversary to my shoulder and to my
small modicum of maturity.
Your turn, friends. Tell me about your sport injuries.
Cheers, Kara
No comments:
Post a Comment