Gratitude for the Web...Bouncing Back
I’m thankful for the web of workout community in which I live, move, play, and sweat. I’ve been an avid CrossFitter since 2018, blessed by three different ‘boxes’ over the years. Each has been precisely what I needed for who and what I was becoming as an elder athlete. I don’t spend much time in the comparison/contrast, because I’ve been changing from 2018 to today and each was precisely the web to hold me then. I’m thankful for any web that holds a space for me when I need it.
Like today, for instance. Pre-2018 Lisa would have felt like she was supposed to stay in, given she twisted her ankle in substantial fashion in the Hocking Hills on Thursday night.
Instead, today was showing up at Centerville CrossFit for the 9:30 a.m. WOD I often sign up for, but instead of doing the WOD, I moved in the ways my body could with a bum-ankle. I completed two Tabatas of core work, hollow-body hold oriented and then posterior chain oriented. I did a third with dumbbells and arm strength lifts. I moved over to the ski erg to “ski” 1600m or 1 mile. I cooled down with 1600m on a bike erg. I ramped it up again a bit with 50 cals on an echo bike, with 2-3 calorie sprints at the end of each decade of calories. A good sweat. Heart-rate heightened a couple times. And smiles from folks who were actually doing the WOD or “workout of the day.” (Which looked ugly, I’ll admit; not sad to have missed burpee box jump-overs, overhead squats, front squats, and more). I felt more myself as I drove away, and my ankle was just fine with the brace-and-hobble I’m doing at the moment.
I also put together a plan for a seasonal pass at the local Rec Center pool, where I can now swim a couple times a week while my ankle heals. It’ll probably be 3-4 weeks before I’ll feel confident enough to move freely with my bodyweight upon it, right? So…try a new sport. I can’t remember the last time I went lap-swimming, though I have the cap, goggles, and swimsuit I can use. Alrighty then. Two-three times a week, CF WODs with scaled options for an athlete with a bum ankle...here we come.
This is the safety-net of being with people who are committed to their own health, to ‘being harder to kill’ in the vernacular of the head-coach/box-owner. Community here is not only enjoying their company, which I do. It’s not having folks to compete with, to push into greater achievements or heavier lifts (at least for me). It’s being a part of a community that is persistent in a culture that would prevent or refuse what the body can do at the moment. Just because I can’t run, jump, or squat (easily) right now doesn’t mean my body doesn’t want to move. I’m happiest when I am moving, after all.
The people have changed over my nearly eight years of learning in the practice-community of CrossFit. I miss folks I now see only on Facebook. I get to see those who come to my box today. All of that matters to me. But it is the web or safety net of surrounding yourself with folks who are similarly committed to health, well-being.
I used to feel really alone in my own body, which is a story for another day. I don't now, which means I can also make better decisions for myself. Finding myself on the gravel path, skinned knees and twisted ankle, sent me into a spiral of shock, pain, and not a little fear. I still don’t quite know how I landed so poorly, so heavily (though my husband said I fell expertly, in just the right way to minimize skeletal injury). While I let the adrenalin and fear ripple through my body these last several days, today was simply about returning to the safety net, moving how I could move, making plans for a new sport I’ve not done in ages (swimming) while showing up to do whatever I can do in the box that holds the space for me to do it.
I've been thinking and writing a lot about community in CrossFit, but this has been illuminating. I invite you to think less kum by ya and more the supple walls of a bouncy-house. We need these softened guardrails that insure those falling down inside can land on a soft surface…before being bounced right back up again.
Because I've invested in being a part of this web myself, I got bounced back up after a rather scary-for-me weekend injury. Gratitude.
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