Thriving in a Partner WOD...

This post offers my own musings on how to thrive in a partner-WOD, regardless of the box-culture or history in which you find yourself. I had a fantastic workout this morning, the first day back after two weeks of travel-holiday-family time. Had I attempted this 8 years ago, however, the environment would have ejected me from ever wanting to try anything like it again. But I am 8 years wiser to myself, my own head-talk, my body’s movement because of the CrossFit methodology held in a variety of boxes. I love my current box AND I recognize it’s been through the ringer over its decades of existence. Or perhaps this is simply a generational thing and I’m the older woman becoming invisible to younger generations who can see me less and less. It doesn’t really matter to me, because I repeat, I had a fantastic workout and loved being able to move precisely as I did. I DO find myself curious and in learning mode as a longtime religious-and-non-traditional-community-participant and organizational leader with how human beings receive community together…or they do not. [see note below] 

A bit of context, first. CrossFit gyms have distinct cultures emerging organically from the owner and his/her/their webs of connection. A box begun in Southern California urban will always be different from a small-town box in Appalachian Midwest, for example. The methodology undergirding the movement remains the same, but context shapes collective interaction. As any longtime organizational or communal leader knows, these cultures continue after a box is sold to a new owner, naturally, adding the next layer of energetics, interpersonal styles/connections and norms for the whole. Boxes that have been around since the beginning of CrossFit (say, 2005-2007) have a most complicated cultural stew, bringing in newbies while maintaining the OGs shaped by old CrossFit HQ and new CrossFit corporate successes and failures. I don’t actually know quite when my current box began, but it’s close to an OG box, I’ll guess.

Hypothesis, then: a day’s WOD that prioritizes a “partner” or "team" structure can give you a glimpse into the energetics and fractures in any CrossFit box. How the community functions, or does not function, as a community. What is prioritized when folks gather for a WOD? How comfortable are participants with one another, so to engage in the embodied practice of the partner-WOD? What are the age ranges present? Are these individuals coming to workout as individuals paired, or is that remarkable communal-cohesion formed when a community works out with suffering and laughter? Do those who finish the WOD early cheer on those still working out? Do folks resist putting their equipment away until all are finished? Does that mysterious whole that is greater than the parts emerge viscerally, palpably?

Given it was the day after Christmas, I guessed that the workout would be a partner-WOD, which I have traditionally avoided at this box. It’d been two weeks since I’d been able to move in this fashion that I love, however, so I decided to chance it. The 8 a.m. WOD gathered well over 15 people…maybe 21? An odd number, anyway. Rowing, pull-ups, shoulder-to-overhead, and burpee-box-jumpovers. Three rounds. With a partner. I gathered all the pieces I knew I would need for a gentle re-introduction to “relative intensity” for me, my 56-year-old body. I had even thought to wear a Christmas present that would advertise a bit: Yoda, smiling, saying Old you are, Scale you must. As expected, I got the smiles, comments and shared laughter of those with a communal sense to them. Also as expected for this box, participants entered the “partner” discernments with insecurity, fear, and avoidance. One of the coaches even refused to partner with me when I invited her. Eight years ago, I would have felt ashamed and rejected, particularly when she agreed to partner with the buff young man who came in late. Eight years later, I smiled and simply observed, beginning to evaluate behaviors of this fairly young group of people, milling about nervously but setting up. The older participants paired with one another. Stand-bys of the gym were sure to partner with who they regularly partnered with. I was probably the oldest person in the gym, aware that my own Gen-X experience of belonging varies so very much from younger generations’ ways of connecting with one another, finding belonging. When I dropped into my energetic-leader-self, I felt what was probably an old communal wounding of some kind, perhaps with some aware in the room, others completely unaware of it…yet acting within its cautions all the same. 

So how did I as a communal-CrossFit-junky thrive in this WOD? For one, I knew why I was there for myself: I yearned to return to movement after two weeks’ away in travel and family celebrations. I was there primarily for the movement, so focused there. Partner WODs have built-in rest, so I built in rest to my own run-through of the WOD, appropriately scaled: 20 cals bike-erg, rest until one pair in the room moved to the next movement (60 sec?); 20 SOH (45# barbel), rest after 10 reps; black-banded pull-ups when the first pair in the room drew close to that movement, rest after 10; then 10 burpee BJO, rest until another pair began the cardio. I finished my version at 20:02, after a couple pairs had finished and long before other pairs finished. I know what I'm doing for my own body, in this kind of environment, so created precisely what I needed to experience. I then put my stuff away and made a beeline for the car, drinking my electrolyte water as I went. Because I knew no one would cheer those still working out, and no one there was much of the fist-bump character, I spoke to no one as I left the box. 

And then I noticed how I was different, leaving the box. I had a little anger in me after all. I could have led and cheered on those still working out. I could have waited to put my stuff away, bringing the communal wisdom that I do know into this group of young CrossFitters who don’t behave in the ways communally-cohesive boxes do. But I did not, probably for old-story-reasons within me. [My stuff, in other words, not anyone else's]. Then I felt some sadness in my belly, for what these young folks do not have access to, for whatever reason. The ease that comes after a shared workout, without fear and insecurity in the room. The self-satisfaction without any comparative energies of whether they were good enough at the workout. The smart-ass smack-talk that can come when the communal-trust undergirds it all. There does seem to be a lack of friendly rivalries, which suggests a painful competitive history more than a wise, seasoned, smart-ass one. I found myself wanting to be a part of healing in this beautiful group of people who have the seeds of such kindness in their midst. The normal times I work out I engage with the folks who are wisest in this way, which is why I can say I love my current box. 

But it takes a lot of internal fortitude to enter into the communal-competitive things this box does. Its focus on the performatives–that keeps the skill level high and the strongest athletes coming–is not why I continue to participate–which is longevity fitness and adult-chatter amidst my own embodied dedication in a rhythm of Peloton, yoga, and CrossFit. I don’t know that others have experienced what I did, but I’ll guess if they did, they would not come back much. What would it take to broaden appeal into other athletes’ skill-levels AND keep the standards/skill-level high for those who come for that? How might the more communally-wise create more communal space for the possibilities of healed-community to emerge once again? I wonder…

For today, for now…good food for thought, a body that feels good for having moved in multiple planes of motion, and a day with my beloved setting up some things in the house. Functional fitness I love.

* Note: “Receive community” is intentional.  No leader can “create community,” contradicting much popular leadership-wisdom that faults a leader for perceivably failing to “create community.” I stand with Parker Palmer here: “​​community is not a goal to be achieved but a gift to be received. When we treat community as a product that we must manufacture instead of a gift we have been given, it will elude us eternally. When we try to “make community happen,” driven by desire, design, and determination—places within us where the ego often lurks—we can make a good guess at the outcome: we will exhaust ourselves and alienate each other, snapping the connections we yearn for. Too many relationships have been diminished or destroyed by a drive toward “community-building” which evokes a grasping that is the opposite of what we need to do: relax into our created condition and receive the gift we have been given.”