I’m what you might call an everyday CrossFitter. I’m never going to compete, go to the CrossFit Games, or even come in first in the class. This is my truth, and I am just fine with it.

Not everyone who does CrossFit is interested in going to the Games.

Why I Love CrossFit

I love CrossFit anyway. I love walking into the box every morning and reading the WOD written on the large whiteboard. I love how a lot of the workouts are named after women: Elizabeth, Nancy, Annie, Jackie. They have yet to name one “Carrie,” but I think that’s because it would mostly include standing around and chatting or occasionally dancing to the music. None of this is very CrossFit-y.

“[I]f I beat my old time for Fran or Grace, I get a little gold star next to my name in Wodify.”

I love knowing all of the other jargon, like AMRAP, EMOM, PR, and RX. I especially love how timing is everything – the way CrossFit is ruled by the clock.

I love the way we all stand behind the bars or grip our jump ropes or sit up straight on the rowers at the start of the workout, and when the clock counts down from ten, we take off like racehorses without a jockey.

I love measuring how long it takes to finish my rounds in an AMRAP, or a 2,000-meter row, or 75 power snatches with an RX of 55 pounds. And if I beat my old time for Fran or Grace, I get a little gold star next to my name in Wodify.

Life Beyond CrossFit

My other truth is this: I have five kids, and my second son, Jack, has autism. He is eleven. I struggle every day to make sense of this boy, his diagnosis, and his slippery spectrum disorder.

See, with autism, there is no RX. I don’t know how to set a personal record, and I wish someone would use a dry-erase marker to write some instructions on a whiteboard for me because many times, I am very, very lost.

Being mom to my five kids is my other reality.

Like when we were in the grocery store last week and Jack demanded we buy sixteen Renuzit air fresheners because all of a sudden he is obsessed with air fresheners. I said no and he screamed yes, and before I knew it, he was piling all these air fresheners into the cart and screeching that he had to have them. I just stood there, watching, while he frantically snatched a blue one and a green one and then another blue one from the shelf, cradling them in his arms like small babies.

“[W]ith autism, there is no RX. I don’t know how to set a personal record, and I wish someone would use a dry-erase marker to write some instructions on a whiteboard for me because many times, I am very, very lost.”

You could say I have the same relationship with autism that I have with CrossFit. I love it and I hate it and I work hard at it, but sometimes I have no idea what I’m doing. It makes my heart race and my stomach clench and, if we’re in the grocery store and Jack is piling up air fresheners, it makes me sweat.

But I show up, and I give it all I have. And at the end of some days – the days where the tantrums are really loud and he’s obsessing about what time he has to take a shower and it’s all I can do not to scream in his face that he doesn’t have to take it at exactly 7:00 he can take it at 7:02 – well, on those days, I just want someone to put a little gold star next to my name. 

Meet Matt

I usually go to the gym for the 6:30am class, and for a while now I’ve been working out with a guy named Matt. Matt is very quiet. He’s serious. He rarely cheers or claps, and I have never seen him dance, not even once. He is soft-spoken, and if you don’t pay attention, you’ll miss his quick comments.

Over the past few months, this is what I’ve learned:

• His wife is a Yankees fan.
• He is terrible at sit ups.
• He has a four-year-old son named Sebastian.
• Sebastian has cerebral palsy (his Easter Seals page is here). He doesn’t walk or talk. But he giggles. He laughs and smiles and he loves to lick the salt off of tortilla chips.

Matt’s four-year-old son, Sebastian.

Every evening after work, Matt lifts Sebastian from his wheelchair. He puts him in a walker and coaxes him to step forward, one foot at a time, until his son takes two hundred steps.

Last week in the gym, we had to do the “Cindy” WOD – a twenty-minute AMRAP of five pull ups, ten push ups, and fifteen air squats. When I got to the gym, the 5:30am class was filtering out. They looked sweaty and disheveled, and everyone was comparing how many rounds they got. The chatter turned to Matt, who is a master at Cindy.

Everyone started comparing notes and guessing how he would do. Twenty rounds? 25? Just as we were about to start, a guy named Andrew poked his head back in the door and said, “Good luck, Matt!”

“His sinewy limbs blurred as he transitioned from the bar to the floor and up again – pull ups, push ups, squats. Over and over, he passed me with another round, and another.”

All of a sudden, there was a quiet static to the air. Carefully, Matt laid his poker chips that we use to keep track of our rounds in a grid on the floor. The clock counted down and we jumped to the pull-up bars.

I watched him out of the corner of my eye. His sinewy limbs blurred as he transitioned from the bar to the floor and up again – pull ups, push ups, squats. Over and over, he passed me with another round, and another. 

Timing Is Everything

A few seconds might get you another pull up or enough time for one more squat. Two minutes can earn you another round and another chance to add a poker chip. Five extra minutes in the grocery store can turn into a huge meltdown over air fresheners.

In the space of a single moment, the littlest baby can feel as though the air around him has disappeared. And as he fights to fill his tiny lungs, the landscape of a family is forever changed.

A few minutes into the workout, I stopped thinking about rounds and pull ups and push ups and squats. With the music pounding in my ears, I thought about salty tortilla chips piled high in a bowl.

I thought about tenacity, fear, love, determination, truth, and hope. I thought about a dark-haired boy taking two hundred wobbly steps across the room, slowly propelling himself toward his father’s outstretched arms.

“I stopped thinking about rounds and pull ups and push ups and squats. With the music pounding in my ears, I thought about salty tortilla chips piled high in a bowl.”

I let Jack get three air fresheners in the grocery store that day. When we got home, he unpacked them from the bag one at a time. Then he marched upstairs into my closet with the green one in his hands. He put it down on the floor next to my sneakers.

“Here. I wanted you to have these. For near your shoes. So they smell good after the gym.”

(33. Matt got 33 rounds of Cindy that day.)

More Like This:

• I Will CrossFit Every Day
• When the Wheels Fall Off: Coaching Clients With Autism
• 4 Lessons Everyday Athletes Can Learn From Professional Athletes
• New on Breaking Muscle Today

Photo 1 courtesy of CrossFit Impulse.

Photos 2 and 3 courtesy of Carrie Cariello.

Photo 4 courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post Timing Is Everything – In CrossFit and Life appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

For about six months I’d had a nagging pain in my left shoulder. After a few visits to the orthopedic surgeon and one cortisone shot without a lot of relief, I finally dragged my claustrophobic self to an MRI.

RELATED: Mental and Physical Rehab for Injured Shoulders

The doctor called me the next day while I was shopping for fall decorations in Pier One. He said, “I have good news overall, but some bad news, too.”

The Diagnosis

Surrounded by candles and lamps and dishes shaped like ghosts, I listened intently as he explained I have something called os acromiale in my shoulder. The bones didn’t fuse quite enough when I was a kid, so now they’re rubbing and moving against the bursa, causing a severe case of tendonitis.

“I recommend you stop all activity that involves your shoulder and deltoid.”

“Where is the deltoid muscle again?” I asked, tracing my finger around the stem of a glass pumpkin. “In my calf? Because I can totally skip all those calf exercises.”

“Carrie,” he said. “You need to take a break and let the inflammation settle down.”

My stomach sank. I thanked him and hung up.

Just Show Up

For the most part benign, this developmental irregularity normally goes undetected. Unless, of course, you go to CrossFit and do things like overhead squats and power snatches and double unders. Then, your os acromiale starts to talk back to you like a sassy teenager.

“I will never be the strongest or the fastest person in our box. But still, I show up.”

Do you know how long it took me to learn how to do a double under? A year. It took me an entire year to figure out how to make that rope travel twice under my feet without tripping on it. I wish I was making this up, because it doesn’t exactly paint me in the most athletic light.

But one Saturday morning, after everyone had left the box and the music was quiet, I took out my rope and I began to jump. The only sound I heard was my heart thumping in my ears as I jumped and tripped over it again and again. And then all once, it passed once, twice under my feet and I shrieked for joy.

I will never be the strongest or the fastest person in our box. But still, I show up. Nearly every day I show up with my favorite green sneakers, and I run the sprints and jump the box. I push the press and slam the ball.

One day we did “The Chief” WOD – five rounds of three power cleans, six hand-release push-ups and nine air squats. Now, I’m pretty okay at power cleans but this was 95lb as prescribed, which is heavy for me. By the second round, I didn’t think I could do it anymore. I started to panic and I thought about taking weight off. Maybe going down to a comfortable 85lb bar.

But for some reason I didn’t. For some reason I kept walking back to that bar and picking it up – one rep, two reps, three – until the clock ran out.

Every Day Is Different

I have five kiddos – four boys and one girl. (No, the girl is not our fifth child. She is the fourth, and we have a busy urologist to thank for that.)

My ten-year-old son, Jack, has autism. He’s considered high-functioning in that he talks and he can hold a conversation, but he needs a full-time aide in his fifth-grade classroom and the first thing he’ll ask you is what kind of toilet you prefer: Kohler or American Standard. He has trouble regulating his body, so he spends much of the day jumping and hopping and grunting throughout the house.

Some days are hard and other days are amazing, but every day is different.

Jack struggles. He struggles academically and has a hard time connecting with people. He is rigid and inflexible, controlling and bossy. He simply cannot understand why everyone in the entire world doesn’t love Nicki Minaj like he does, and he shrieks like crazy if there’s static on the radio for just one second.

“Over the years, I’ve started to realize I can’t necessarily teach Jack to love math, I can’t promise there will be no static on the radio when we’re in the car, and I can’t force other kids to invite him for play dates or to throw the ball his way on the playground.”

But he loves music, and he remembers the last time he ate a chocolate chip pancake from IHOP was in June of 2012. He sees the days of the week in color – brilliant yellow Tuesday and a deep, dark purple Friday.

Over the years, I’ve started to realize I can’t necessarily teach Jack to love math, I can’t promise there will be no static on the radio when we’re in the car, and I can’t force other kids to invite him for play dates or to throw the ball his way on the playground.

RELATED: When the Wheels Fall Off: Coaching Clients With Autism

But I can teach him to stretch and finish one more last multiplication problem, do one more spelling sentence, and say one more, “Hello, my name is Jack. How are you?” I can teach him to flex and bend around the confines of his spectrum disorder.

I can teach him that some days, all you need to do is show up.

Every Day I Will CrossFit

I’ve always felt as though I’m not athletic, and while it’s true I’ll never compete at the CrossFit Games, win an endurance race, or have my name scattered all over the leader board, I’m beginning to think I may be an athlete in my own right. Athletes know how to dig deeper for one last rep, how to push their bodies further and harder and faster. They know how to stop and when to pull back. How to bend without breaking.

Athletes know how to do this with both their bodies and their minds.

For now, I won’t PR or complete AMRAPs AHAP. I won’t push press or split jerk or snatch. I won’t kip. I’ll concentrate instead on endurance and flexibility, running and yoga and mobility. And when the time is right, I will return to the box.

Meanwhile, I will continue to CrossFit. In fact, every day I will CrossFit.

It just won’t look like typical CrossFit. I won’t lace up my bright green sneakers or load a bar with weights. I won’t flip upside down on the wall for a handstand push up or hold a plank until I collapse to the ground, my arms trembling and wobbly.

I will simply sit quietly next to a ten-year-old boy at our kitchen counter every afternoon. And as the shadows around us grow long and deep, I will bend close to his ear and murmur softly. “Jack-a-boo, just one more sentence. One sentence, I know you can do it.”

Photo 1 by By RSatUSZ (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Photos 2 and 4 courtesy of Jorge Huerta Photography.

Photo 3 courtesy of Carrie Cariello.

The post I Will CrossFit Every Day appeared first on Breaking Muscle.