The Comeback Fail - A CrossFit Story

It’s been a minute since my last blog, right?

Don’t worry, I’ve been busy and have a ton of material for more blogs – it’s just the time to write them is hard to come by these days.

I thought once my daughter went to college, I’d have more free time to do … well, THINGS. I had mapped out my days of being child-free to include more working out, meal-prepping like a boss, writing in the evening at Barnes and Noble, taking more photos, hanging out with my friends more … maybe even travel a bit. Get back into acting …

But what had happened was … my daughter never really ‘left’ for college. She goes to school 15 minutes away, lives on campus during the week and usually comes home on weekends. Any free time I had, I started filling up spending time with my kid, eating dinner with her, and taking in more work. And then I acquired a boyfriend.

That last one, I’m not sure how I managed, but he’s still around and it’s been about a year. I don’t care how many blogs I write, I am probably going to keep mentioning this fact for as long as I have him. In every single blog. Just kidding.

But I digress.

With all the business going on, I had to give up something because I was losing sleep and that’s pretty important. So, I gave up going to the gym. The only time I could go was zero dark thirty and once that option was gone (due to work), I made a choice.

Not going to pretend that it was hard to do – it was relatively easy.  Like, sooooo easy. Literally, I just didn’t set my alarm for 4am and – boom – no gym. Extra sleep. 

Yeah, there are other times during the day I could have made it to the gym, like after work. I make the motivational memes for the gym page, so I know. Everyone has an hour. An hour is just  one percent of your day. If it’s important, you will make time. Etc.

But here’s the thing: I didn’t want to make time or take time out of my really busy day to do an activity I was starting to not like. I’ll get to that later.

When I leave work at 5pm, I have exactly four hours to go home, cook, work from my second job and spend quality time with my boyfriend or daughter or both … before I have to go to bed to get up and start my day over. Working seven days a week means prioritizing what is important to me in my free time. On my list of priorities, the gym was at the lowest point.

Look, there is no shame in not wanting to work out or needing a break from fitness. No one needs to come up with an iron-clad, unbeatable excuse or reason to validate their decision, but people will judge in the pettiest of ways.  Usually with the posting of Internet gifs and memes. 

Personally, I dislike the memes made using photos of amputees lifting the Pyramids of Egypt to tell me that I have no excuse. 

My honesty is my excuse. Plus, my fitness goal does not include lifting things heavier than all the bags of groceries from the car in one trip or running faster than a speeding bullet. I’m pretty simple - I just want to be able to eat normal food – ALL THE TIME. Spanx pretty much takes care of the rest. But it’s nice to look and feel fit with and without clothes.

Which is what going to the gym does for me.

Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t completely lazy on my sabbatical. I walked, jogged and ran in my neighborhood and even started to like mowing and landscaping my parent’s yard in 100 degree weather.  I kept my body moving. Not the same as going to the gym, but it was something.

What I mostly missed was being social and complaining about workouts I didn’t want to do but knowing I was going to do them anyway and then posting it on social media so my haters can see that my workout is more intense than their workout. (See what I mean about pettiness?)

Anyway, now that the boyfriend is busy and I have cut my work schedule a little, I started going back to the gym. Yay, me, right?

Haha, about that, tho …

Today was my second morning back. I am currently hovering over my laptop which is on the floor, typing this by lowering my dangling arms towards the keyboard like a crane claw, hoping I hit the correct letter the first time. My legs feel like jello and I have to pee, but I’m afraid to stand up because my butt muscles hurt so much I’m afraid sitting is the only reason I have not peed myself. Speaking of standing, I can’t because both legs haven’t worked since about 8am this morning.

In my plan and execution to make a comeback at the gym, I hadn’t calculated for a complete reset in my ability to fitness as well as my pain threshold – it’s at zero right now. Which means I will walk like a baby giraffe trying to find its legs for a few days.

Sexy, right? The only thing that did NOT hurt on my body was my face. 

What did I learn from this? That when coach asked if I needed to scale my reps on my first workout, I should’ve said. “yes.”

My bad. 

I said no, because ... well, stupidity - and because I was ready to kick my own ass, apparently. Mission accomplished. 

Now, I’m paying the price. Needless to say, I will not make this mistake again.

I know I can do more than I think I can, because I did. I should have worked as much as I could without hurting myself. Which is my new plan for when I make my second comeback later this week.

This time around at the gym, since it’s basically a ‘hard reset,’ I plan to just focus on my own fitness goal of being able to climb stairs and not look, feel or sound like I’ve climbed Mt. Everest. Barefoot. Uphill. Both ways. For time.

It’s really that simple.

But getting back to when I mentioned realizing I was starting to not like going to the gym and working out.

It wasn't that I didn't like going, it was that I realized I wasn't working towards MY goal. And during my slightly longer than brief vacay from fitness, I had to reassess that goal and what I needed to do to achieve it because I was losing interest.

Why?

I would go to the gym and lift and cardio based on an assessment that didn’t include my body goals. My

body was growing and shaping into something that I didn’t really want – I was basically working hard in the gym to satisfy the programming goal and not my own.

With the gym and programming I choose to follow, it’s really not that hard to get sidetracked when you’re seeing results – any results.

And the results I experienced were very real, just not my own. It’s self-defeating to keep doing something hoping to eventually see a different outcome. It’s like taking your cheating ex back every single time hoping he will eventually meet your boyfriend goals one day. I had to ask myself what my body goal was and if I could achieve that with the same gym and programming.

The answer, of course, was yes and no. Yes, the gym and programming will absolutely get me to my goal - just with a tweak or two. When I started this fitness journey seven years ago, I basically did a lighter version of this same programming and within months I had met and exceeded my body goals.

So, that is what I will be doing – working out to achieve my own goals.

Just as soon as I can use my body again.

UPDATE: So, it's been several days since I wrote this, and today was my first morning back in the gym. I may have made a mistake, but thankfully the coaches worked with me to get me through the warm-up and stretches. I'm okay, though. I'm okay.