Former Vegetarian Finding the Inner Caveman

I have been doing Crossfit for approximately 12ish weeks now? A few weeks into it, I began to make the Paleo diet modifications.  To eat Paleo aka caveman, you only need to eat meat, veggies (no potatoes or corn), fruit, nuts and seeds.  Nix the grains, sugar, dairy. I am somewhat good with this.  I eat lots of different salads, eggs, veggie/egg souffles, veggie soup, kale chips, nuts, pastrami turkey, etc.  I am always looking for something new in this area.  I do not eat 100% Paleo.  I eat soy sauce, and probably get certain sugars or dairy stuff from sauces or dressings, and I use stevia as a sweetener.  The thing I like about the Paleo philosophy is that it is not some kind of diet fad thing that is not maintainable in the long term.  You are not re-programming your body to use something unnatural as a source of energy, and it emphasizes total long term health.  I am lucky in the respect that I was essentially raised by vegetarian hippies, and any fast food, chocolate, caffeinated thing was like a four letter word in our household.  So this whole Paleo thing might be a little easier for me than some...however, I am trying to branch out in the "meat" direction.
When my husband and I got married, it was an unlikely match.
Meat Barbecue Man meets Veggie Girl....
I began eating chicken and seafood, and admittedly, I am a total food snob now.  Only the freshest fish from Whole Foods, and only organic chicken from the same place.  If I do delve into beef, it must be organic, and grass-fed.  Period.
A typical day's diet for me would be as follows:
Pre-workout at 5:45- Amazing green meal replacement, coffee, and chia seeds
Post-workout at 7:15- a protein shake
At work- an apple and a handful of raw almonds
Lunch-veggie souffle, turkey, green beans
Mid-afternoon- split pea soup, turkey, kale chips or almonds
Later on- Bananna Lara Bar
Dinner- Chinese takeout- Mongolian chicken, Mixed vegetables
Really, I feel like I can go pretty much anywhere and eat mostly Paleo-  Mexican= chicken fajitas, veggies, guacamole, sour cream, salsa.....  Indian= Hot tandoori fish, a veggie dish.... Chick-fil-A- nuggets and a salad.... see, it can be done for the most part.

Now, my #1 weakness is wine and such.  Presently, I am having a diry martini.  Even when I drink and cheat, I still try to eat well, ex- Japanese- grilled shrimp and salmon with mixed veggies.
I will lie and pretend that I didn't eat about 20 girl scout cookies last weekend.
Before I joine Iron Tribe, it was not uncommon for me to have a drink or two most days of the week.
Now, I MIGHT drink a little on Wednesday nights, but reserve most it for the weekend. And I am trying to cut down  on the weekend amounts.
I know this change has had an effect on my appearance.  Thank goodness, or I would just keep doing it! :)
But really, total health is a big part of it all, vanity aside!
I am so happy to be getting stronger as well.  In the WODs, these are my priorities: Proper form/technique/safety, RX weight, speed.  So looking forward to when I can easily combine all three elements!

Hell Yeah!

So for the past few weeks, I have been going to Iron Tribe on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, where I do the WOD.  Then on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I practice wall climbing into a good handstand hold, do L-sit progressions, and sometimes do double unders.  I usually do more of those on Sunday.  Then on Saturdays, I have been doing the AMRAP WOD (gone from 5 to 6.5 rounds with a barbell that is 10# heavier!), along with pullups, and some hip rehab work, and then on Wednesdays nights I teach Body Pump at the Alabaster Y, then head over to the Shades Valley Y to train deadlifts, pullups, and more hip rehab stuff. Yeah, I've been pretty busy. I think I need to rest more!
I have fallen on my head twice now, trying to kick up into the handstand hold, probably because I just am not focusing on locking my arms. Dumb.  Now I am even more scared to do it! But I know I am strong enough!
I have bruised the hell out of my shins with a barbell a few times a week now, so my legs look like crap, and I have repeatedly bruised my knuckles with my speed rope when I mess up the double unders.
Oh- did I mention, bruised collarbone from power cleans as well?
My husband does not like this.
Before it is over with I will look like a UFC competitor.

I'd finally begun to really gain some ground with unassisted overhand grip deadhang pullups, but of course, now my left forearm is injured.  Muscle strain or something.  It's no wonder....
Clearly I need to chill out. So I'm just gonna take a step class and run this weekend.

So here's where the Big Hell Yeah comes from-  This morning in class we had to do a partner WOD where you take turns doing 5 handstand pushups, 10 deadlifts, and 15 med ball cleans. As many rounds as possible in 20 minutes. Every five minutes, one of the coaches would blow a whistle, and you and your partner have to stop and do 30 burpees.  Jeez. Rx for deadlilfts was 125#, med ball was 14#.  And....I did it!! Still had to have my feet in the windowsill for the HSPU, but I am definitely making progress!  I am just happy to be improving.  At this point I would rather be slower and go for the Rx, rather than blow through the WOD quickly.  Wouldn't it be great to be able to do both.....

The Beginning of the Challenge

I happened to have Jan. 16th off of work, and I'm thinking, "Man, it sucks that I have to be at the gym (according to my online class schedule) at 6:00 a.m. for this initial testing." I went out to dinner and to a movie with a friend the night before, and did not get enough sleep at all.  So I walk into Iron Tribe all bleary-eyed, and notice something odd.  The 5:45 class is in progress, and no one else is there. Damn. Please don't tell me I came here this early on my day off for no reason. So I ask one of our coaches about it, and he's like, "Oh, yeah, you just do the testing in any class today throughout the day."  He's kind of laughing, and tells me I can just do the 6:30 class. 
Great.  I am obviously the only person in the whole constest who didn't know this. Typical.
So I do 6:30, and my results were as follows:
5 rounds in the AMRAP WOD with a 55# barbell (Yeah, whimpy, I know...)
20 pullups with the black rubber band (Lame. But at the time, I wasn't sure WHAT I should use....)
20 double unders ? I think? That seems like a lot, since I am so bad at them.
165 # max deadlift
NO handstand hold. Zero. Have no idea what I'm doing. Not strong enough to wall climb into valid position either.  (I am terrified of stunts of any kind, and have been dropped on my head in the past.)
1.7 seconds for the L-sit (It is so damned hard it is almost impossible!)
1:27 400 meter run (I am ok with this.)

Now that Iron Tribe has an official record of my lameness, I set out to make a training plan that will mold me into a LESS lame athlete over the next six weeks.  I am an AFAA certified personal trainer, but I do not train anyone. Why not?  Because I am selfish about my own limited workout time, and up to this point, the certification course has just served to feed my own geeky obsession with exercise science. So here is what I came up with.....

The Transformation Challenge

In early January, I noticed on Iron Tribe's website that they were having a contest called the Transformation Challenge.  One division was for weight loss, and the other was for performance.  I watched a video describing what was involved in the performance division. A few of the things totally scared me. On January 16th they would record your initial numbers in the following categories:  An AMRAP WOD (5 burpees, 5 power cleans, 10 full situps, 10 20" box jumps- do as many rounds of this as you can in 10 minutes.), your max number of pullups, max number of double unders (you jump rope and the rope has to pass under your feet twice in one jump) in 2 minutes, max deadlift, max wall handstand hold, max L-sit hold, and best 400 meter run time.  Then you would be tested on the same things six weeks later, and whoever made the biggest improvements would win first, second, or third place. Whew! So....I can't even DO some of those things to begin with, and I'm like, "Maybe next year...."  Then, a few days later I was drinking some wine and looking at the website again.  You know how some things seem like a really great idea when you're half-drunk?  So yeah, I registered for it.  The initial testing started off with a bang, let me tell you.....

Who the hell are you, and why is this important??

Part of our human experience ought to involve us wanting to be and striving to be better versions of ourselves, right?  We try to educate ourselves, find our strengths, conquer our weaknesses, learn to compromise, learn not to judge, become compassionate, and try to grow alongside the other people in our lives. Or we should.  I could go on and on....but you get the point. We try to answer those questions, "Who am I? and Who do I want to become?" Easy answer for some, not so much for others.  I fall into the latter category.  Without delving into the regrettable details of my unfortunate life experience, I will say that for my entire life, I have been unable to answer either of those questions.  Only in the last year, did I truly realize who I am, and what I am capable of.  I am now finished with living life in the murky darkness of feeling like some pathetic shadow creature. And now, I am in the process of discovering who, and what I want to become.
So, is Crossfit the center of my existence?  No. This whole Crossfit thing is just a part of the bigger picture here, and everything that I feel is an achievement, each thing I am able to do and be proud of, contributes to that newfound identity that I am finally trying to build.  Granted, I am by no means doing great things- I am not setting any records, or making amazing progress with anything.  But I am learning new skills that I hope one day to master, and I am stepping far outside my comfort zone in many ways.  And I am really proud of that fact.
I have never really thought of myself as a someone who would turn into a blogger, but one day I just got really sick of keeping all of my thoughts to myself.  I guess it was after the umpteenth time my husband and I got into a fight because I mentioned something that I did in a Crossfit WOD.  He tries to be really supportive of what I want to do, and helps me in so many ways, and I am really grateful for that.  But he has made it clear that he doesn't want to hear about any of it.  I was really excited the other day, because I finally Rx'd the weight in a WOD, and I made the mistake of telling him about it. Oops. He is admittedly trying to be better about this, but I have decided to make it easy for both of us and not bring it up anymore. Who the hell else am I supposed to talk to?  One of my close friends, who is most definitely a workout junkie, has also made it clear that she generally doesn't want to hear about it either.  Forget about the fact that we should be able to share what is going on in our lives, and what we are excited about with the people who are close to us. (Bitterness....Hello!) And don't think for a minute that I am bragging to them or going on incessantly about things.  Quite the contrary. But does it matter?  Nope. Subject is off limits with everyone. Got it. So here I am.....

I joined IronTribe Fitness in November of 2011, and went through a month of Crossfit 101, beginning on November 28th.  Good thing it took place right after Thanksgiving, because I am pretty sure I came close to eating a whole pecan pie at some point.
 So if you know anything about Crossfit, you know that it is a somewhat controversial exercise program.  High intensity, constantly varied, functional training. Your workouts are short, but super intense.

Newbies have to go through the Crossfit 101 class for a few different reasons.  Firstly, the body has to get somewhat acclimated to this new method of exercising, not to mention, the average adult probably does not incorporate things like overhead squats, ring dips, or handstand pushups into their weekly routines!  There is a lot to learn.  The workouts are usually done for time, seeing who can complete the work the fastest, or who can do  the most rounds of a sequence in a given time frame.
Now, the night of my first 101 class, I really had no idea what to expect.  My husband made a dinner of shrimp dumplings and rice before I went, and man was eating that a mistake!  It was great, but on my last 200 meter run of our baseline WOD (workout of the day) I really thought I might throw up. Note to self: consume only a small amount of food in liquid form before going to this class again...

101 was great, though. I wasn't in terrible shape to begin with, but I dropped four pounds, so that was cool.  The thing I like most about Crossfit is that I have some new goals that I am trying to reach, and better fitness and appearance are the by-products.  For me, I would rather be in the mindset of, "I am going to practice these handstand progressions until I can do it", rather than "I am going to do three sets of 10 shoulder presses with these dumbells." Anyway, this is enough of an introduction for now.  Next up: The Transformation Challenge!