or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Barbell

04Sep11

I suppose that I have just always been a little bit fat, and in elementary school, girls who are a little bit fat don’t get picked first for kickball teams at recess (or picked second, or fifth, or even next-to-last). Me? Everyone knew I was chubby, clumsy, and a nerd. So I was never team captain of anything out-of-doors. It wasn’t even so much that I didn’t like sports or being active, because I really always have. I loved skating and riding my bike as a kid, loved swimming and jumprope, even kickball sometimes. I played every sport I was allowed to join at school, even though I knew I kinda sucked, and even though I knew my teammates would remind me as such. But it was never that I hated sports, or moving around, or learning something new. It was the social ostracism of being a chubby and clumsy girl that made me hate team sports to the ends of the earth, and it was the harsh climate of judgment that made me quit and start avoiding P.E. and sports at any cost. Along with starting to think of myself as the opposite of an athlete, I started to think of myself as incapable, and not as worthy, and ugly, and ultimately, hating my body and believing it didn’t deserve care.

As I journeyed to adulthood, these attitudes about myself didn’t change much. I was sort of fraudulently teaching young girls about having a positive body image in my work life, while internally struggling with such negativity toward myself. Slowly, though, I learned (and still am learning) to understand how to see myself as myself, not in comparison or contrast to something else. And then I found out about Crossfit.

NOT a Crossfit guy

Honestly? When I first learned what Crossfit was, I dismissed it as something that would be too hard or extreme for someone like me, a lifelong non-athlete. I thought it looked intimidating and ridiculously difficult, and (ok, I’m going to go full-on brutally honest here for a moment) it looked like everyone who did Crossfit was vain, overly extreme, and psycho-competitive. I had never lifted a weight in my life (other than my little 5lb. dumbbells I bought special for the Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred workouts, which, in retrospect, was a lot of wasted time). I had never been a runner, never done a pull-up, couldn’t do a basic push-up, and had never known how to use athletic skills to accomplish any actual functional movement. And then there was my back pain. I have had pain that has kept me in bed, pain that has kept me from spending time with friends, and I was afraid to aggravate it or hurt myself. At work, I sit. I tried yoga to attempt to lessen the tension in my muscles, but I wondered what it might be like to try to strengthen those muscles instead.

I was terrified, but after many months of gentle suggestion by someone whose opinion I trust, I decided to try it. I scoured the internet for the “right” Crossfit gym for me–and found that a lot of Crossfit places emphasize a very rigid, militaristic, bootcamplike, extreme vision of fitness, and started to lose my nerve. Then I found the website of a gym that showed pictures of regular-looking people doing amazing-looking things, and they were smiling and looked like they were enjoying it.

I went to my first introductory class right as May was starting; the workout was 1 minute on a rowing machine, 1 minute of push-ups, 1 minute of box jumps (internal dialogue: “what! what the fuck! what person can jump on top of that?!”), and 1 minute of air squats. Then, as I later learned to be the custom of Crossfit, I did that all over again. And then over again. And at the end, the coach propped me up as I struggled for breath, she asked me how long I thought that had taken, and my brain was a jumble even though I knew it was only 12 little minutes. I realized how hard my body had worked in such a short time and I thought, hey, that was kinda fun. I signed up for the first set of classes where the coaches would teach each of the major types of Crossfit movements, and prepared to learn a whole new language. I was very fearful, because I didn’t want to start trying and then learn that I couldn’t do it. I learned a lot about Crossfit in the first week, and while my ass was thoroughly kicked by the foreign movements and new muscles being woken up from 28 years of sleep, I also discovered where I already had some ability–my legs were strong, and I was pretty flexible, and I learned quickly. Finding out that there was something at which I was naturally able, and also that I could learn to improve at the things where I wasn’t naturally able, was the kickstart I needed to feel confident and let go of being too afraid to fail.

Annie Thorisdottir, 2011 CrossFit Games winner

I’ve Crossfitted for four months, and in that time, have seen tremendous impact on my body and what it can do. And I know that for many people, exercise is a way to look good in a bathing suit or lose weight or look good for their wedding/after their baby was born/post-divorce and pre-dating again. And I have to admit that women who do Crossfit have awesome bodies, objectively and often times even well within the traditional Western ideal of beauty. But I also have to admit that as I’ve gotten further in, I’ve cared less and less about how it makes me look, and more and more about how it makes me feel.

And maybe that’s the thing that has kept me going more than anything else; I’m not looking at myself in a mirror every day and going, “well, my stomach is flatter and my arms are more toned, so I guess it’s working.” I’m not standing on a scale with my fingers crossed that I’m finally under some imagined benchmark number. I’m in the gym, with a barbell resting steadily on my shoulders as I squat underneath the weight, and I am stronger and stronger. I’m running around the block and actually making it back through the doors without having to stop to walk. I’m doing pull-ups with a rubber band for assistance, and then finding that I need to move to the next rubber band that offers less resistance because I’m able to lift more of my own weight. I’m doing push-ups off of my toes instead of my knees. I’m jumping on that same box from day 1, except now I can do 20 in a row before I even feel my legs getting tired. Yes, my body looks different, because my muscles are more developed to support the movements I’m performing, but I’m not thinking all the time about what these movements are doing for how my body looks. I feel like I have reached a new peak in that journey of separation from the “ideal body” and what it looks like, and it’s because I learned how to understand my body’s functional value rather than just its aesthetic value.

Four months of Crossfit has turned me into a slightly competitive person, but not in the way you might think. I look at the woman next to me who is deadlifting twice as much as I am, and I am excited for the possibility of getting there someday, not jealous or down on myself. I look at myself and my own progress, and every day I challenge myself to do better or do more or do it faster or more efficiently. And I keep improving and keep feeling the difference and pride of being able to do something like that. So why do I keep doing Crossfit? It makes me stronger, physically and otherwise. It makes my relationship with myself a lot better. I’ve made friends and we share our victories and progress and support each other. It’s fun, it’s motivating, and it makes me feel like a superhero when I can lift 75 lbs. over my own head. It’s something I look forward to after stressful days in a chronically stressful job. It’s a way for me to take care of myself. It’s difficult, and makes me feel good when I can push through anxiety or exhaustion to finish strongly, rather than crumble beneath those feelings. I feel better in so many ways, and I know it’s because I have learned how to be myself in my body, and because I know there is a road ahead where challenges lie, and know I can meet and exceed them, and have no reason to doubt that I am capable.

Filed under: general rambling and so forth   |  3 Comments
Tags: body image, crossfit, embodiment, exercise, feminism, fitness, girls, health, mindset, self esteem, strength