Let The Fun Begin...

This morning was ridiculous. I had an emotional break down on the way there, crying that I wouldn’t be strong enough or fast enough or even be able to finish a work out. The workouts I’ve done with Doc are no longer than like 20 minutes, & now I’m expected to last an hour??

I arrived at CrossFit Glory at about 10 till, hoping to start early because I had to work at the ham store RIGHT after. (This was only adding to the stress of the whole workout thing, I cannot stand being short on time).

Well, I got there before the trainer. As I stood in the rain waiting, wiping the tears away from my eyes, half way hoping he forgot, I pulled myself together just in time for Sean to pull into the parking lot.

Sean is from what I understand, the head trainer. He’s young, very in shape, & seems to be extremely passionate about CrossFit. He reminded me a lot of my older brother, which certainly gave me an instant calming feeling. I heard about him from a few people, a family friend, my favorite past trainer, Patrick, & somehow my parents got word of his awesome training abilities.

CrossFit Glory is not your usual set up. There’s no treadmills, no machines, nowhere I can run & hide. It was a big open space, some medicine balls, a few rowing machines, some pull-up bars, lots of kettle bells, some racks, & some weights. It really looked like a weight lifters heaven, not somewhere you’d usually find me. It kinda looks like that one side of your normal franchise gym where all the hot guys workout… Yeah, I don’t go there much.

Anyway, Sean explained to me that there is a different workout each day & everyone does the same thing except it’s scaled to your own abilities. This is scary & at this point, I hadn’t even started working out.

The first thing we did was a warm up… We did the following, four times:

15 seconds of jumping jacks

15 seconds of squats (to my satisfaction, he said I have great form).

15 seconds of mountain climbers

15 seconds of jumping squats

That sounds easy, but I seriously thought I was going to puke. My quads were killing me, & jumping really isn’t my thing. (It makes my whole body jiggle, not a good look). I thought I was going to have a heart attack & we’re only 4 minutes in…

Following the warm-up, Sean showed me how to do a proper deadlift, shoulder press, & shoulder press jerk. The deadlift was easy & I actually could lift quite a bit of weight. I have always been told I was naturally strong, in fact in high school it was propositioned that I go into weight lifting, but this isn’t the most attractive idea to a 17 year old girl… Anyway, I was glad that I didn’t totally suck at the deadlift or the shoulder press. Now the jerk is a different story. It’s basically a shoulder press with a jump, & as I mentioned before, jumping just isn’t my thing.

& we’re not done yet… Following this, Sean showed me how to use the rowing machine. I had never used one before even though I’d have many opportunities to. This is one of my dad’s go-to machines. Rowing wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t particularly easy either. I felt like my stomach got in the way of the bending motion but maybe I’m rowing the fat away… ;)

Lastly, we got to the one thing I’d dreaded the most, pull-ups. I had heard that pull-ups were plentiful in the life of a CrossFitter, they weren’t kidding! I was that kid that couldn’t even do one pull-up on the fitness exam in elementary school. The idea of even trying to get my chin over that bar is a f***ing nightmare to me. Sean assured me that they had ways to help me do a pull-up. He put a band on the bar that you put your foot in & it supports some of your weight, allowing you to pull up. After getting away from the fear that the band would snap, I stepped into it. And to much embarrassment, I still couldn’t pull up… not even a tiny bit. So we moved to what is probably the last resort, reverse pull-ups. I’m convinced Sean made these up on the spot to make me feel better, but who cares, it worked. What I did was stand on a box, jumped so my chin was over the bar, & lowered myself as slow as possible, which wasn’t slow at all. After doing like 5… Sean said it was time to start my workout.

“Wait, what??? That wasn’t my workout? You gotta be kidding me!” I was already dead.. My legs were shot, my arms were shot, I wanted to cry... But I'm not the kind of person to give up so I pulled myself together.

My workout was as follows:

500m of rowing

40 squats

30 sit-ups

20 push-ups

10 pull-ups

I finished it in 11:40 but it seemed much longer. I was rocking through the rowing but Sean told me to slow down because I had further than I thought… He was right, by the end of the rowing, my whole body was jello, but I finished! & that’s all that matters.

I have my next workout with Sean tomorrow… Hopefully it will be just as hard because I feel great tonight. Not really, but I know this soreness is the result of hard work (: