Happy Anniversary to Us!

Today marks  1 week for Crossfit DGA and I (me? myself?). Should I buy it flowers? Chocolates? One week ago I decided to do something good for myself and I went to my very first class. One week ago today my butt didn't hurt, my abs weren't sore and I didn't have sunburn on my face and chest. I also had significantly less energy and 10 less friends than I do today. One week ago today I had yet to experience the humiliation that is Sunny doing upper body anything. Push ups, pull ups, shoulder presses, if you can name it I am terrible at it. One of Papa's favorite games it to try to get me to do a push up. He thinks that it is just hilarious that I'm completely incapable of doing one! I am stacked on the bottom so I can do a reasonable amount with my lower body even though I haven't been consistently exercising, but I really am a weakling up top. I've come to accept it. Major Pain is hell bent and determined to change it.

As luck would have it, we did upper body last night. All of my least favorite things rolled into one action packed hour. During the shoulder presses, everyone kept telling me to squeeze my butt cheeks together to help me lift the weight but all I could think was that if I did that, my pants would get sucked into my crack and my cellulite would show through the spandex. Everyone knows that when you tighten the cheeks, the cellulite plays peek-a-boo. It is unfortunate but it's a fact of life. I made it through the shoulder presses somehow, butt cheeks un-squeezed, only to be faced with "thrusters".

Thrusters are a combo shoulder press and squat. You hold the bar in rack position (dangerously close to your clavicle with ELBOWS UP!!!) and squat. On your way up you squeeze those cheeks together and "thrust" the bar upward over your head. (I probably screwed up the description so MP or Mrs. MP will have to correct me in the comments below.) I got to the point where I didn't care who was behind or around me because I was squeezing my glues like there was no tomorrow. I did NOT want that bar coming down on my head! After what seemed like a million billion reps, we were allowed to move on to the next segment: pull ups. I could have done worse but I have lots of room for improvement. To finish up we did planks with sprints in between.

The plank position = DEATH. And, there were mosquitos biting me adding heat to the fire that was my core.

 My sprints were more like a slow jog but after holding the plank for 30 seconds my arms and abs were unhappy and uncooperative. I vaguely remember having to hold my arms in t-Rex position during a few of the runs because I couldn't move them without searing pain shooting through them. I may have looked like an idiot but my arms didn't hurt!

In all seriousness, the workouts are intense. They are exhausting and grueling but that's what they're supposed to be! After only one week I have found that I am more focused at work, I have more energy to when I get home in the evenings and I'm more motivated to eat well because I don't want to undo all of my hard work. An added bonus is that it is easier to wake up in the morning because there is usually something that hurts and the pain will wake you up! This morning it was my quads that did the waking. Yesterday it was my abs.

Back to the grind I go,
Sunny