As part of my late night/armchair fitness blog reading experiment, I ended up reading a lot of stuff about CrossFit. Of course, I got curious about it, and after dithering around for a few months (quite a few months, actually) I finally went down to my local box and got a membership. As we’re fast approaching the second year anniversary of my first class- 28th January, 2015- I thought I’d blog about my first years in the sport. And yes, I know people argue about whether it is actually a sport or not, but let’s just assume that it is.

CrossFit is, I discovered, much more fun than I thought it would be. Yet it has also periodically been humiliating, challenging, overwhelming. While all exercises are scaleable, the scale of the scale is sometimes still too much. If you imagine the hardest possible version of an exercise as a 10, and the easiest version as a 1, I often start off around minus ten. I went from being a person who, in a normal gym context, is considered to be quite strong, to an absolute weakling- a kind of pathetic lifeform, a mix between Gollum from Lord of the Rings and a newly hatched butterfly. Flap flap, flap flap.

People often say that CrossFit is empowering. It certainly seems to build a sense of capability, that one is able to deal with the challenges life throws at you. I expect this happens as part of the regular practice of challenging perceived physical limitations. Because CrossFit is always hard, and asks you to do things you don’t think you are capable of, this flows across into the mental sphere. You start questioning other limitations in your life. ‘Are these barriers as solid as I think?’ ‘I told myself I couldn’t do X, but I was wrong, so how about I give it a go?’ And, most importantly, the realization that ‘failure isn’t the disaster I imagined it to be’.

CrossFit also seem to change how people approach real-life problems: ‘if I work on this problem, bit by bit- like slowly increasing the weight of a lift- surely I can overcome it’. It’s the classic example of breaking a large challenge down into smaller, manageable chunks and creating positive reinforcements at each stage of this journey. A friend reports that when she is faced with a large, boring word-processing task, she mentally breaks the document down into ‘sets’ of descending size, with a reward after each set. Similarly, when faced with the final 5% or so of a large project- the completion stage I traditionally flame-out on- I use a visualization of pressing a heavy bar overhead. It reminds me that a final burst of energy, of raw power, is always required to finish something.

The years’ notable achievements include my first rope climb, where I hung like a retarded ape, grinning with insane pride, about a metre off the ground. I am also proud to report surviving my first Christmas WOD, which has given me carte blanche to stuff myself on the actual. I’ve also met some really nice people, learned that box jumps aren’t necessarily lethal, experienced the full rainbow of different coloured pull-up bands (cue the soundtrack: I can Sing a Rainbow), and generally become a happier, healthier animal.