Maybe you all are a bunch of CrossFit freaks, who can take a week or two off for work or vacation and jump right back into the daily sufferfest, but I'm a creature of habit. I do best when I'm out there four to five days every week without fail - even if that means interrupting a vacation to cobble together a workout using a rock, a tree stump, and my running shoes one day and then doing some sort of inverted burpee creation in my hotel room the next. If I miss three days in a row, I'm still ready to get after it. Any more than that - missing a week or being inconsistent for a month, and I start gravitating toward the couch instead of the gym, because the truth is effective training hurts. Since my allergy to pain has been acting up, my couch has gotten more of a workout this summer than I have.
I've turned into a weekend warrior, as I either work into the evenings during the week or take some down-time after working too much the previous day. Being a weekend warrior isn't too bad, if the activity you pursue is familiar. It's sort of the opposite of training. You do activities that keep you from losing all physicality, but you don't develop new capacities. At the same time, you don't hurt yourself. Of course, if you do CrossFit as a weekend warrior, where the activity is constantly varied, things don't work out quite so well.
After a summer, where my workouts have more often been days at the beach and looked like this:
3 rounds of 10-15 minutes:
Carry 4-year-old daughter and lift over waves that break from chest to head high;
Rest as needed between rounds.
or
Bike 11.25 miles with 1,000 vertical feet of climbing
42:18
rather than this:
Warmup
3 rounds Cindy+20 KB swings
Heavy Shit
Deadlift 135x5, 215x3, 265x2, 305x1, 320x3, 330x3, 305x3
Metcon
Quarter Gone Bad
5 rounds (0:15 on, 0:45 off)
- 135# Thruster 4-4-5-5-4
58# Pullup 3-1-3-2-1
Burpee 7-5-6-5-7
I found myself nursing a couple of injuries - a groin injury that developed from squatting heavy, on a day I needed extra warmup and didn't take the time for it, and a wrist injury I picked-up trying to jump back into a PMenu cycle after 3 weeks off. The former is manageable. After six weeks, I'm pretty sure the latter will require medical intervention.
I won't be olympic lifting anytime soon, but there's plenty that I can do to keep myself in motion. First, I need to figure out how to get myself in motion. Sure, there's the "Just-do-it" approach, but that doesn't do much for me. I need a program to follow. I've had good luck with my own (at least the sticking with it part, if not always the results), so I'm not shopping around for the latest fad, whether that's CF Football, MaxFit, or OPT. I need to figure out a program that works for my nutty schedule, but more importantly, I need to figure out what the hell I'm training for.
The blog header reflects this ambiguity. I'll tackle this big question next. How about the three or four of you who read these ramblings? What are you training for? I'm sure you've seen this question dozens of times, and I've had good answers in the past. They just don't work for me at the moment.
3 comments:
I love your blog and your style of writing :) Anyway to answer your question, I do it (not nearly as often as I should) to get and maintain a certain level of fitness and as a way of warding of injuries associated with strength and bone loss due to aging. Each time I see the WOD and sometimes even the warm-up itself, my respiration increases from intimidation, but once the workout is complete, I'm always happier and looking forward to the next one ... But it's always a bear getting past the initial intimidation of each and every WOD for me.
Training to not be a fat ass because I sit at a desk all day!
Thanks for the comment, Lita. That was enough to get me out for a rare midweek session, and one week later, it looks like I may be finding a routine. Last night was a motivational challenge, but I got into the gym and did something at least. Another week of this and I may start looking forward to the the postmetcon buzz. Right now, it still feels wrong.
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