Bottom Of The Totem Pole

So I attended my first "real" Crossfit class night last. After 6 essentially private sessions with just Nalani and the (female) instructor, I was confident I'd be fine.

But then I showed up to the class and now instead of just being with my really good friend, I was with 8 strangers, mostly tattooed (& ripped) men, who all seemed to know exactly what they were doing. The instructor, also a man I'd never seen before, looked like a bad ass. Holy crap. What did I get myself into?

I briefly introduced myself to the instructor and mentioned it was my first class, but apparently at Crossfit they don't baby you just because you're new. He might as well have said, Put your big girl pants on Michelle.

After a short jog we warmed up with jumprope... singles first then he instructed double unders, which I wasn't even going to attempt until he said "Even if you don't have double unders, try." So, um, Ok. I tried. And guess what?? I did one! OK only one but still. I did one! Then I kept whacking myself in the shins with that jumprope. But still. I did a double under. And I would not have even made the attempt had the instructor babied me like I thought I wanted him to. So that made me feel accomplished.

Then we moved on to box jumps and the goal of the day was "max height". Hmmm. Ok while I like box jumps at ~16", and did tons of those last week, I've never attempted anything higher than that. But we got out all the taller boxes and the other two girls in the class started hopping up onto them so I did too. It was like, just shut up and do what they do, even if you're a little scared.

Then the instructor started stacking weight plates on top of the tallest box. And we jumped onto them. Then another plate, and another plate. I was trying to not freak out and it was so interesting to me to watch these gals just go jump up that high. Inside I was having a little meltdown though every time he added another plate like OMG can I do that?? But every time the other girls did... and the peer pressure worked for me so I jumped too. Landing on top of that box with 5 plates stacked on top was one of the most empowering things I've done in a long time. Mostly b/c it's been a while since I've attempted to do something that scared me like that. I wanted to take a picture of it but felt silly b/c the other girls didn't seem to think it was quite the accomplishment I did... I didn't want to be a complete dork.

Obviously this is not me (were you confused!? lol) but I stole this pic off our gym's FB- gives an idea of the set-up at our gym and what we were jumping onto... There was a guy in our class who must have stacked 25 plates up (no exaggeration) and I watched him hop right up onto the top of the pile. I was like, Is he a cat??

I feel like I kinda wimped out on the WOD... I stuck with my game plan of trying to leave class without being completely disabled for the next few days, which meant I didn't lift super heavy weights for the Power Cleans, and I used bands for the push-ups... but give me a break we did 90 of them. Whatever I did at that class yesterday was clearly enough b/c I had noodle arms this morning and couldn't swim worth shit.

Anyway, I'm pretty stoked about this new challenge. I left that class knowing that I'd accomplished some things I never would have even attempted had I not been pushed to do so. It's been a while since I've been in a situation where I felt so... how do I put this?? Bottom of the totem pole might be a good description. It was humbling. In a really great way. I'm looking forward to going again tomorrow.