Getting better at life takes time

At my last Foundations session for CrossFit, the coach wound me down after the workout of the day (known by CrossFitters as the "WOD") by talking to me about the trajectory of a new CrossFit athlete. The idea is not to kill yourself to get into a bikini by Memorial Day, then let yourself go once swimsuit season is over. You're working, as he put it, to "get better at life." Which means you have the rest of your life to do it...and that means take your time and get it right. You're not supposed to jump in full-force right away, because that can lead to injury.

What I'm finding this means is that, with the advice of the coaches, I err on the side of caution a lot. Sometimes this turns out to be a good thing, in that I'm not as strong in one area as I thought I was and a light weight or a low number of reps does, in fact, turn out to be a very challenging workout. But sometimes it means I have a workout that's considerably easier than I hoped it would be. That happened today; the prescribed WOD was as many rounds as possible in 10 minutes of 5 deadlifts at 155 pounds and 20 double-unders (jump rope so that the rope passes under your feet twice with each jump). When scaling the weight for the deadlift, I only had one prior workout to go on when asking the coach for advice; I don't have lots of data like one-rep maximum or how I feel at a weight of X pounds, the way other CrossFitters do. So we set my deadlift weight at 75 pounds.

This turned out to be wussy. The workout didn't feel nearly as intense as I knew it should, especially given that I had to do my rope jumping as single-unders (I haven't yet mastered doubles, so I would have spent the whole ten minutes trying to do 20 of them). I felt frustrated that I didn't work as hard as I now know I could have.

But you know what? That's okay. I now know some important information about my capabilities that I didn't before. And the next time deadlifts show up in a WOD, I sure as hell won't be doing them at 75. I just need to keep in mind Coach Fox's motto that I am doing this, not with some hard time goal in mind, but to get better at life. I will not get better at life if I err in the opposite direction, throw too many plates on my barbell, and injure myself. I will get better at life if I take this slowly and learn by experience how much I can do.