The Return to CrossFit

I wanted to wait a month before posting about this so I didn't jinx it, so I did. Back in mid-May, I had a realization that riding was yet again going to be an uphill battle if I didn't cross train properly for it. I just didn't buy an easy enough horse to sit! So I redoubled my TRX efforts and things did get better.

Come mid-June, I'm fitter but not *fit* and I'm looking up things I wanted to do in Big Sur and Lassen for the camping trips this summer. I found myself thinking "well, that hike looks amazing but it is probably too hard for me" or "I can probably pick between these two hikes because whichever one I pick is going to make me sore for two days so I can't do the other" and that's when I had another realization. I'm so sick of not being fit enough to do everything I want to do. I miss being strong, I miss when hikes were more of a fun activity and less of a workout.

TRX is great, don't get me wrong. It's way better than nothing and has helped me a lot in getting my strength back so I can sit TC's trot much better. But it's nothing compared to CrossFit. There's just no way to make it as hard as putting a whole bunch of weight over your head.

Need to be able to climb mountains as well as ride, okay?!

The main reason why I quit CrossFit is because of my wrist injury. I was just constantly either in pain or having to heavily modify everything. I was also struggling financially and it seemed like paying to be in pain or not being able to do the workouts as stated was just silly. So I quit and started going to the cheaper gym near my house that was half as expensive and had a more flexible schedule than my original one.

Now, the expense isn't as hard on me as not being fit is, so that issue was eliminated, and it's just my wrist issue. I decided to go to the internet, as one does when they are looking for medical answers. It turned out that I had cancer the CrossFit website had just put out an article about issues in the front rack where they went over all of the mobility you could do to fix it.

There's for sure something wrong with my wrist, but if I could take some of the pressure off of it by doing mobility elsewhere (+ wrist exercises + diclofenac sodium), that would be ideal. I don't need to do front squats, or any prolonged front rack like that (I can modify with back squats), but it'd be nice to do cleans without having to worry. I read a lot and found a bunch of exercises that I started for the month of June. They focused on wrist mobility, but also on getting my lats and triceps more flexible. Those are key in getting my elbows further up for the front rack, which is going to take weight off my wrists.

I then looked up boxes in the area. There were four that were about ten to fifteen minutes away from my house. I found one that would be ideal, but was a little bit expensive, so I went with my second choice, which had a 3x per week option that was less expensive. I figured that at least in the beginning, three times a week was plenty, and I still have a trailer payment. If this one doesn't work, I'll switch to the pricier one.

I went in to chat with them about my wrist. They seemed eager to help me out, so I started with a half off groupon that allowed me to go for an entire month without signing up for an auto payment. This was huge in my book, as I didn't want to start, have my nerve pain come back with a vengeance, then have to quit and have to deal with a payment. There was a very clear end point where if it wasn't working, I could just stop.

I started at the end of June. My first class was AMAZING. The coach was super nice and had an old wrist injury of her own. I had some pain, which is just what it's going to be, but I made it through the workout easier than I had expected (granted, I expected to throw up and/or pass out) and wasn't too sore the next day.

I kept going back.

Don't get me wrong, my wrist still hates some of it. But definitely not as much as before, and I'm really diligent about my mobility every single day at work (I have a lacrosse ball + human-Surpass at my desk). I get to class early for wrist mobility, I roll out my lats and triceps at home. And I am working with a loaded bar on a rack to experiment with getting my front rack to a place where it doesn't put as much pressure on my wrist.

Basically me after my first week asking "when is
this going to stop being so hard??"

Now it's been about a month and I'm feeling so much better. My anxiety is down (and is directly related to missing workouts now), I feel so much stronger, and I'm much less worried about the long hikes anymore. It will be a while before I can do them without feeling like death, but at least they're easier than some of the workouts we've had to do so far.

It's also been a nice change to have more to do socially. Moving up here to live alone and go to a very independent job every day (like literally I have NO meetings on my calendar, it's all just me sitting at my desk, sometimes no one says a word to me... honestly given who my coworkers are, that's fine, but I miss my old job), away from many of my friends (though closer to many others!) has been a little tough. CrossFit boxes tend to be really friendly and have a sense of camaraderie to them and this one is no different. No one has been at all judgmental at my lack of strength and insistence that I lift real light whenever there's a front rack involved.

Honestly the only issue I've had is trying to eat enough food and drink enough water at work to not feel like crap in the class! Still working on that...

I'm really excited and hopeful, but I know I'm not out of the woods yet with my wrist. I still need to work hard on mobility for my wrist, take things slow, and make sure I'm not setting myself up for failure here. But I'm so happy to be back.