Asses 'n' elbows, or, why I love CrossFit.

Today in my CrossFit class, we worked handstand pushups. I, of course, do not have the ability to do a handstand pushup yet. Among other things, a handstand pushup takes a certain amount of core and upper-body strength, as well as a certain amount of balance, that I don't yet have.

CrossFit being scalable to various levels of ability, I did not sit out this workout. Instead, the instructor had me work on kicking up into a handstand position (with assistance) and then seeing if I could try at least a few inches' worth of pushup. Didn't happen. Afterward, when the instructor encouraged me to at least try and hold a handstand for a few seconds, I had trouble with even that much. It was a day when I felt like, as another instructor at my gym puts it, "asses 'n' elbows."

"Asses 'n' elbows" is not a new feeling to me. I've never been particularly coordinated. My athletic and highly coordinated husband marvels at how many times I can drop something -- a book, a fork, an iPod -- in the course of a normal day. I was picked last for every team in every gym class, from elementary school all the way through high school. And I'll never forget the first time I took a tango class with my husband. The course claimed to be a "crash course for beginners," but I was sub-beginner; I was so terrible at it that even though there were fewer women than men in the class, one man actually declined to dance with me when his turn came, preferring to go without a partner. OUCH.

So, yeah, I've felt clumsy and inept many times. What I've noticed I do differently since starting CrossFit, though, is how I handle those "asses 'n' elbows" moments.

In school, it stung to be chosen last every. single. time. I'm pretty sure I cried about it at least a few times after school. After that horrible dance experience, it took years of coaxing on my husband's part to get me back into another tango class. (Yes, my husband, not I, is the one who always wanted to learn to tango.) Hell, even in the first few weeks of CrossFit I found myself feeling ashamed for doing light weights compared with the other girls, or having trouble mastering a movement (snatch, anyone?).

But the great thing about CrossFit is that you get better, and you can measure how much better you're getting. My gym likes to do what they call "strength cycles," in which we'll focus on the same set of movements for four weeks, getting a little stronger and better at those movements each time. The strength cycle before this one, we focused on the clean. I stank at it the first time I tried it. The clean has quite a few moving parts; every time I remembered to keep the bar close to my body, I'd let my feet drift too wide in the squat, or I wouldn't get my elbows far enough forward, or something. Yup, asses 'n' elbows again.

I kept trying to clean, though, and by my third exposure to the movement, I was able to start adding weight, even though I wasn't exactly nailing every aspect of it. And on the fourth and final exposure, something crazy happened: I stopped feeling like a klutz. The clean came smoothly that day. I still have a long way to go -- you won't be mistaking me for an Olympic lifter any time soon -- but for the most part, I was getting it right and feeling good about it.

That was, I think, a defining moment in my CrossFit experience. Now, when I feel all klutzy, I can think back to that day and remember that, as much as it sucks to feel like asses 'n' elbows, it's just a step on the way to mastery and confidence. And that's why today's experience, which might have made me cry just a few months ago, felt so different. No, I was not coordinated or good at this movement in the least -- but that didn't bother me. (And it didn't hurt that my gym is full of encouraging people who are not at all like the schmuck who wouldn't dance with me in that tango class.)

Here's to embracing the process of getting fitter and stronger, even the awkward bits!