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!

No, I do not want to write you a check for $1,000,000

I don't care if you're somebody's grandma; I don't care if you've never been able to hold a job that paid more than $20K a year; I don't care what your health problems are. I don't want to pay for your Social Security and your Medicare. As John Cogan puts it in today's Wall Street Journal, Medicare and Social Security are like handing a million-dollar check to every elderly couple -- except your name and mine are on the payer line.

Cogan rightly points out that there's going to be some pain involved in cutting back entitlements. (He doesn't seem to advocate eliminating them altogether, which is what we really should be doing -- but scaling back would be a start.) Yes, some seniors who've already paid into the system are not going to get everything they paid for. That's unavoidable because, as Cogan says, the money's already been spent; the Ponzi scheme can't go on forever, nor even for very much longer.

I know that if Social Security and Medicare are eliminated, as they should be, I myself will have paid tens of thousands of dollars, probably well over six-figure sums by the time such a thing should happen, into the system, not a cent of which I will recover. This pisses me off, but I would rather that, than that we continue to violate the right of every individual to keep and dispose of his own property, and than that I get soaked for even bigger sums that I won't get back.

To answer Mr. Cogan's question -- no, I don't want my children to be the ones backing that million-dollar check. I don't even want to be the one backing that check. Instead, we should be allowed to keep what we earn, so we can all plan and save for our own retirement.

Doing healthcare reform right: Safeway

THIS is how you ACTUALLY lower healthcare costs: by tying them to people's choice! Safeway CEO Steven Burd writes in the Wall Street Journal that his company's policy of financially rewarding workers who don't smoke, maintain a healthy weight, and otherwise cost less to insure has paid off in terms of lowering healthcare costs for the company. In fact, Burd would like to offer more behavioral incentives to his employees -- the $312 he is allowed by law to pay each worker for not smoking is far less than the $1,400 extra it costs to insure a smoker vs a nonsmoker, so he'd like to make that incentive even bigger to get more employees on the wagon.

As Burd says, Safeway's ideas are not new; they're borrowed from the auto insurance industry, which does not require good drivers to pay more to subsidize payouts for bad drivers. As with driving a car, one's health is in large part under one's direct control. Why shouldn't the market reflect that by rewarding those who take responsibility for their health and punishing those who don't?

It's ironic that the same liberals who want to force "predatory lenders" to have more "skin in the game" -- that is, more of their own money at risk -- don't think the same way about health. It certainly doesn't seem to bother many Americans that their literal skin (and internal organs, and teeth, and eyes, etc.) is in the game when it comes to taking care of their health. Why shouldn't each of us have some financial skin in the game as well? And why wouldn't insuring everybody at the same price, regardless of health conditions, encourage self-destructive behavior?