strength

i’ve always thought of myself as a strong person – physically strong.  i’ve sort of prided myself on knowing that if furniture needed to be moved i could do it.  i needed no help lugging around luggage or boxes or bags.  help with my groceries?  not necessary, i’ve got it.  but, recently, i’ve discovered that while i still think of myself as strong – i’m not.  i don’t know that i’ve deteriorated to official weakling, but i am certainly fast on my way.  just before i decided to redefine myself as nowhere near as strong as i thought i was, i came across a business card for crossfit chiang mai.

what is crossfit?  it’s “constantly varied high-intensity functional movement”  it’s “fitness for life”.  and it’s really challenging.  really.  i happen to know one of the trainers – i didn’t know he led this secret trainer life, but knowing the trainer certainly made it easier to give it a go.  i went for my initial assessment.  the work out included rowing, pushups, pullups, squats and sit-ups.  nothing too difficult – at least reading it on the board wasn’t difficult.  the brilliant thing about crossfit is it’s completely scalable.  need to do push-ups and can’t do an all out push-up? that’s okay, because you could do a girl lever push-up.  can’t do a lever push-up?  that’s okay, you can do one leaning against a bar.  (i have personal experience with this.  you’d be surprised how hard it is to do a push-up against a bar when you have absolutely no very little upper body strength.)  and pull-ups?  those are scalable, too.  and squats?  yep,  scalable, or relocatable (i don’t think that’s crossfit lingo).  i kept falling forward, the solution to that is to get really, really close to a wall.  facing the wall.  as you go up and down – and your form is not so good and you end up leaning too far forward – you can drag your face along the corrugated metal.

i survived the assessment, i might not have been able to lift a coffee cup the next day, but i’d gotten in the required numbers of each thing.  it’s only been a few weeks and changes are already noticeable.  i can do a squat,  with no help from a wall.  i can do a girl lever push up.  it’s not pretty, but i do get it done.