I spent my morning cheering on the athletes at the NOVA CrossFit Open. Their workout today was a 20-minute AMRAP of 5 power cleans, 10 toes to bar and 15 wall balls. (I also spent my morning being thankful that I wasn’t competing.)
I’m aware that maybe 5 of you out there have any idea what this means, so here’s a little breakdown: AMRAP stands for “as many reps as possible” – meaning that the above workout is one-round, and you just keep going, round after round, until the clock hits 20-minutes. (and if you think that sounds easy, consider that the top male athletes were barely completing 13 rounds)
A 20-minute AMRAP is a long time. As in, take what you think a long time is and multiply it by ten. They are literally pushing themselves to their absolute physical limits for 20 insane minutes.
I watched each of them, anxiously checking the clock every few seconds, thinking about how I would have given up three-minutes into the workout.
I’m going to be honest – this wasn’t a fun workout to watch. In fact, it was quite painful… and I wasn’t the one picking up 100-pounds from the floor.
It felt almost weird watching the athletes go through that. Each of them was covered in sweat and clearly exhausted. I felt as though I’d been watching them for an hour. But then I’d check the clock and see that they still had ten-minutes to go.
It was as if each of them was going through their own personal hell – and I couldn’t believe they kept going.
Somewhere around this point I started thinking about my own workouts. There have been times (…okay, many times) when I’ve thought I couldn’t go on anymore – sorry, guys, but 45 pull-ups really is my limit.
When my coach notices that I’m quickly losing my enthusiasm over the workout, she usually walks up to me and says something really simple: “Just get back on the bar, Kat.”
This is probably the point in the workout where I give her a really dirty look. And then she says it again.
She’s not telling me anything incredibly profound. She’s not even telling me something I don’t already know. “You are stronger than you think, Kat – you will get through this. I will help you – just take the first step. Get back on the bar.”
Now, it’s usually not as quickly as she’d like, and sometimes they aren’t pretty… but inevitably, I do get back on the bar. And then I do 46 pull-ups. And then I do 47. And then I keep going until the workout is over.
I’ve been thinking recently about how closely CrossFit can, in a way, resembles my life. (Sadly, not the part about being inundated by incredibly attractive men.)
For the sake of honesty, I’ll go ahead and say that this month hasn’t been an easy one for me. In fact, I’d go as far as to say it’s been one of the harder ones in recent memory.
I think about when I’ve wanted to give up. When everything my life was throwing at me was just too hard and I didn’t think I could get going – sorry, guys, but this really is my limit.
It’s about this time, as I start to lose my enthusiasm, that I picture Jesus – I guess He’s the Ultimate Coach. He’s watching me as I stand there, convincing myself that I’ve reached my limit. He sees me covered in sweat and exhausted from what is the daily workout of life.
And then He approaches me. He doesn’t say anything too profound, just, “Get back on the bar, Kat.” And through His words, I hear this: “You are stronger than you think you are. You will get through this. I will help you – just take the first step. Get back on the bar”.
I looked around the CrossFit box this morning and watched the coaches encouraging the athletes. I saw the crowd yelling at them. I saw the clock counting down. And I saw the athletes keep going.
Every single one of them went for the entire hellish twenty-minutes. All of them kept going, pushing themselves past what they thought was their physical limit. All of them got back on the bar. And every single one of them made it to the end.
Sometimes low valleys can last for days, for months, maybe even years. Sometimes they legitimately do last for a long time – kind of like 20-minute AMRAPS.
But here’s the thing – those times always end. That clock always counts down. They never last forever.
And in the meantime, I’ll listen to the true Coach encouraging me to just get back on the bar.
The first step.
That’s all it takes.
Everything else will come.
And the clock will eventually hit zero.
