In the first round of a WOD like “Kelly” (a 400-meter sprint, 30 jumps onto a 24-inch box, then 30 wall balls, five rounds), you think, “Why am I doing this? I could be watching TV on a treadmill.” Your rationalizing brain still works well enough to have thoughts like this. By round four, your ability to formulate alternative scenarios is completely gone.
— “Learning to Breathe Fire: The Rise of CrossFit and the Primal Future of Fitness” by J.C. Herz
A few weeks ago a buddy told me he’s been working out every day for a couple months. For part of that he’s been using ClassPass to try out different classes. I did a ClassPass trial so I could join him for a few classes. A Barry’s class ripped through most of the trial credits, but I still had some left so I thought I’d try out CrossFit.
(Also the coaches were super welcoming even though sometimes I do overthink if they’d rather not have ClassPass people coming in or if it’s really not meant to be used more than a couple times and the expectation is that I join for real etc. continual overthinking etc.)
First workout was:
- 2-mile run
- 100 cleans
Or it might’ve been 50 cleans (100 total because it was a partner workout)
The weight doesn’t matter other than that it was very light for internet standards. But definitely enough for me to be toast by the end. I mean the run left me toast already because I’m not in shape.
(I’ve read enough self-development books that I know I should be saying “I’m not in shape… yet!” but anyway yeah I’m not in shape.)
I looked deep in my email to see how my CrossFit experience went in the past. Looks like I did it for 3 months in 2013 in New York and then for 2 months in 2016, also in New York. And I did a few classes in 2011 in San Diego.
I usually ended up tweaking something and stopping. So check back in a few weeks to see if I’ve suffered the same fate. Hope not! The main way I’m trying to avoid that is keeping the frequency pretty low initially.
This time I’m aiming to go 1-2 times a week (instead of 3-4 times a week I had in mind in the past) for these first 6 weeks. There’s a trip to Hawaii and a small chance at some point I’ll be shirtless in front of family. So it’d be nice to be a few pounds down.
And I know yadda yadda yadda, it happens in the kitchen and all that and workout wise 2 hard workouts will not do the trick. But it’s fun, there’s a little bit of chit chat, and I sometimes get the mere-mortal non-olympic version of the feeling described in the quote that opens the book above (which is a history of CrossFit that I’m enjoying quite a bit.)
At the peak of tremendous and victorious effort, while the blood is pounding in your head, all suddenly becomes quiet within you. Everything seems clearer and whiter than ever before, as if great spotlights had been turned on. At that moment, you have the conviction that you contain all the power in the world, that you are capable of everything, that you have wings. There is no more precious moment in life than this, the white moment, and you will work very hard for years just to taste it again. —YURI VLASOV, RUSSIAN OLYMPIC WEIGHTLIFTER, THE FIRST MAN TO CLEAN AND JERK 200 KG
The white moment is why doing 100 cleans is more interesting than a few sets on the functional trainer.