If The Shoe Fits…
“You’re walking almost entirely on the outside of your right foot,”observed the physio as I was walking up and down the rehab room, desperately trying to resist the urge to break into a patented Monty Python silly walk. I guess my walk was silly enough, because she told me to stop so she could read me the riot act.“How old are those gym shoes? They give no support whatsoever! No wonder you’re having trouble with your knee!”
Aha. But I’ve got nifty insoles since the heelspur debacle of 2007. She advises me to wear the insoles in my gym shoes. I tell her I am wearing the insoles. She tells me it is time to spring for some new gymshoes.
No one has ever had to tell me twice to go shoe shopping.
After that session with the physio I had a look around online for shoes recommended for Crossfit. I found this comparison table to be helpful: http://www.tribefittest.com/best-crossfit-shoes/ This website seems to be big on “barefoot experience’. I’m pro-barefoot; for the beach, tickling my adorably pedicured toes on a finely manicured lawn, dangling my tootsies in a running stream…in the gym not so much.
These babies, apparently give a good barefoot experience:
I don’t care how wonderful a Vibram “barefoot experience” is. I wouldn’t be caught dead in a ditch wearing anything this ugly. They make Crocs look good.
I’m more a hooker shoe kind of person than a gymshoe person, but you can’t Crossfit wearing these
So I continued reading. According to this article, a normal running shoe (with orthotics in my case) is not a bad shoe choice for a Crossfit newbie.
I ordered the shoes from one of my favorite online shops and the arrived last Thursday. You hear all kinds of stories about online shopping, but honestly, the only trouble I’ve ever had with online shopping is with the parcel post guy: he has a morbid fear of Mighty Mack.
Mighty Mack, who is really just a hunka hunka burnin’ love
Mack is more likely to drool somebody to death than bite them, but the parcel post guy is taking no chances. He always just rings the front doorbell, tosses the package onto the step and runs like hell back to the truck. Usain Bolt has nothing my parcel post guy.
All text and photos except for the image of the Vibram shoes and Usain Bolt are my own. The images of the shoes and Mr. Bolt were downloaded from a royalty free website.
The Bees Knees
So most mornings I’m the oldest tart in the bakery at Crossfit. It was nice the day our trainer’s 69 year-old dad joined us. Well,nice until I noticed he can do better and faster situps than I can.
One thing I really like about Crossfit is that you’re only competing against yourself, not against anyone else in the box. I should have been worrying about my own technique rather than checking out how I was doing compared to the older guy. Lesson learned.
The fitness level of the kids (and really, they’re young enough, most of them to be my sons and daughters) is amazing. They jump onto and off of 24 inch wooden boxes 25 times like nobody’s business. I keep it real and step up and off the 20 incher; I’m not in any hurry for knee-replacement surgery. The kids do handstand pushups, which I could do when I was 17 (es war einmaal…)but now I just lay in on my belly with my feet on the wall and crawl upward as it were, sans pushup. I’m pleased to say I’ve improved my fitness level to the point where I can do a respectable burpee.
Two weeks ago we did the “Deck of Death”workout. Each one of the 4 suits of playing cards represents an exercise. The number of reps is the number value of the card. Taking turns, each Crossfitter draws a card from the deck and everybody does the exercise. When everyone’s finished, the next Crossfitter runs to the deck and draws a new card. This continues until you’re through the deck. I was psyched! It was going so well! It was going so well until I drew a 10 of clubs which meant 10 lateral jumps over a medicine ball. 6 jumps and I was golden. No. 7 found me sprawled on the floor, unable to straighten my right leg or to speak except to say “ow!ow!ow!”. After about half a minute I could hobble to a bench and I stayed to cheer the others on, because that’s what you do at Crossfit. I phoned Judith, the physio when I got home. It was Friday and she could see me on Monday morning. “In the meantime,” she said, “you have to pay the PRICE.”
PRICE stands for Protect. Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation
I spent the weekend on the porch with a sack of frozen peas on my knee and read 3 novels. In between reading I worried about my knee: Did I tear a tendon? Did I blow it out completely? Will it require surgery? At one point I had a good ol’ fashioned bawl session. Not because of the pain but because I’ve been working so hard and I was certain I’d be benched for months and all my work will have gone for nought.
(Crap) (TKO!!)
(Very Good!)
Monday morning while in the waiting room at the physio, I prepared myself for the worst case scenario: knee surgery. No one I know who’s had a knee operation has come away better for it. I’d rather walk around like Herr Flick for the rest of my life than let anyone near my knee with surgical instruments. If I heard the words “knee surgery”, I was going to hobble on out of there as fast as I could.
My turn came and Judith, the physio wanted to know how I’d injured my knee.
“Crossfit injury,”I told her.
“What’s Crossfit?”she asked.
We googled and I showed her some Crossfit videos.
“Oh,”she said, “Are you crazy? Why would anyone do that?”
“Because it makes you stronger,” I said.
Judith poked and prodded and twisted my knee, finishing up with a not unpleasant knee massage and diagnosed:
I had water on the knee and I’d strained it by “training too hard”. I’d be out on the bench for at least a week. I was allowed to bike, to walk short distances, but not to run. I had to promise to cut down to training 2 days a week and be back on Thursday for her to check how things were going.
I Promise Not to Be a Bore…
When I started this Crossfit adventure, I promised my nearest and dearest and everybody else that I wouldn’t become a colossal bore on the subject. I was so close-lipped about it, people started asking me of their own accord, “What exactly do you do there?”
So I’d briefly outline the workout:
Warmup
Stretching
Skill/Strength
Workout of the Day (WOD)
“But what do you do there?” they’d ask. So I’d mumur something about burpees, deadlifts, wall-balls, what have you and their reaction was almost always:
“YOU MUST BE NUCKIN’ FUTZ!”
Unlike the Crossfit evangelists you may have run into, I don’t think that Crossfit is for everybody. The physical aspects are daunting but can be overcome with practice and/or modifications to the exercises, but the mental aspect,the inner struggle with yourself isn’t for the fainthearted. I guess it might help if you’re a little nuts.
I’m the same old me that I always was except that I’m getting stronger with training 3 times a week. I’ve given up drinking during the week and junkfood most of the time (what happens in the weekend stays in the weekend) but I refuse to go Paleo. Those Paleo people! They’re nuckin’ futz.
Nuckin' Futz 
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