Benchmarking

Wow. So Friday marked the end of the CrossFit bootcamp that I was working through. As a way to see how much progress we made we were to repeat the benchmark workout we did on the first day with all of the same variables. My big issue was that after Wednesday’s workout my knees were in rough condition. The benchmark workout involved a lot of squats so I was concerned over whether I could do it. Then, coach revealed that we would be doing the benchmark three times that evening, though only the first one would count for the purposes of comparison. Man. So I told him about me knee issues. We decided that I’d do all of the squats for the first set, but switch over to kettle bell swings later on. OK, fine. So, we set everything up and I sat at the rowing machine ready to go. My fellow bootcamper and I were chomping at the bit to knock it out of the park. As soon as coach told us to go we pulled on the rower handle hard. I let out a big grunt: the first pull on the rower is always the hardest. Knowing that the first set mattered meant that I pushed harder than I might normally would. When the row ended I scrambled to unstrap my feet from the machine. I took a moment or two longer than I had wanted and I growled in frustration. No matter. I progressed through the exercises with a sense of focus and much intensity. Despite my sore knees I pushed through the squats because I didn’t want soreness to bring me down. My mind was blank apart from the act of counting the reps. I just wanted to get the movements done. When I finished the pull ups I yelled “TIME” like I really meant it. I wasn’t sure how fast I had gone, but I knew that my time was shorter. When the other person finished her round I gave her a high five, and in a moment of enthusiasm I hugged her. We did it! The first time I did the workout I covered it in 11:06. Time time I completed it in 5:34. That’s almost a 50% improvement! That’s insane! We couldn’t celebrate too long though because we still had two sets to get through.

We didn’t attack those other two sets with as much intensity, but they were tougher. During the second set I decided to do the squats one more time. On the third set I was told to switch. The kettle bells swings were brutal. No matter how much hip thrusting I did it still took so much out of me. When I finished all of my sets I was in a weird state. I was elated, for sure, but I was also wiped out. If I wasn’t careful I would have lost my lunch but I kept myself composed. As much as I was amazed with myself I knew that all of the hard work that I had put in over the past month would pay off. And now here I am. I’ve decided to continue with CrossFit for at least the next six months. I’m curious to see how much in terms of gains I can make if I continue with this much effort and intensity over the next while. All this effort is worth it.

No related posts.