Using both hands, I raise a kettlebell from the floor, bring it back through my legs, and then, with elbows locked, swing it in front of me to shoulder level, snapping my hips forward as I do. I hear my sternum pop with the effort. With a broken tail bone and coming off of a rather undisciplined year, I feel a mix of satisfaction and pain as I round out the set of two-armed kettlebell swings.
My brother’s words come back to me, “You know that CrossFit is hard, don’t you?”
Of course! I just had the luxury of not thinking about it until I was in a frosty garage gym with an ex-military drill CrossFit instructor and felt the cold resistance of cast iron in my hands.
The workout isn’t complicated – usually just a handful of exercises performed in a 15-20 minute time period. It’s the part about doing each exercise or set over and over, often to the point of muscle fatigue, that had escaped me when I enthusiastically signed up.
The Russian body-builder in my head brings it back to me loud and clear as I swing the kettlebell forward: “Davai, Estormy – eshyio odna!” Come on, Stormy, do one more! The voice is gruff, firm, unrelenting – the kind of imaginary voice I needed to conjure up to get me through the routine.
And how does one acquire such voices? By spending time in a dank gym in the backlands of Northern Russia with large men who wonder what the hell you’re doing on their turf.
Lifting weights and doing calisthenic exercises have been some of my favorite athletic activities since I was first introduced to them in a girl’s phys ed class at the age of 14. I wasn’t coordinated – still am not – and was not the type of person to get involved in team sports, choreographed routines, or anything with a ball. But, working out at the gym was something I seemed to be able to do well, and enjoyed.
Later in high school and college, my favored exercises were a source of amusement to friends here who laughed at my supposed “Schwarzenegger neck” and to my foreign hosts, particularly in South American and former Soviet countries where women did little exercise outside of aerobic dance. Things have certainly changed over the years, but at the time when I lived in these countries, there were simply very few women – outside of those engaged in state and school-run athletics programs – participating in higher-impact physical activity.
So, seeing a girl with biceps was an oddity. Seeing two girls in a cold gym in Northern Russia was even more odd, it seemed, from the looks my friend and I got from the gym’s natural inhabitants when we went there. But we persisted, and made friends that soon encouraged our “unfeminine” behavior.
Since then, I’ve been less diligent about my gym routine, spending more time running and occasionally biking without making great improvements in speed or endurance. This year, I decided to change that. CrossFit popped up on the radar and, after the gym owner convinced me it would improve my running and make the crazy trail running event I was training for more manageable, I decided to give it a try.
After the first week of CrossFit, I had to deal with the realization that I’ve slipped. Getting back into a routine, improving my form, and increasing my ability to do the workouts is hard, but it seems to be challenging me more mentally than physically. Sometimes, I get so drained during the workouts that I want to quit. And sometimes, I get so frustrated when I can’t complete an exercise well that I wonder what I’m doing there.
Which brings me back to the voice in my head. The Russian gets me through the squats and push-ups. He pushes me on the kettlebell swings. And, he keeps me from collapsing flat on the ground when I am struggling through my third set of a dozen burpees.
“Horosho. Molodetz, Estormy!” Good job, Storm!
Am I crazy? Maybe. But, hey, whether you think it’s the voices or the workouts that make me seem nuts, at least I’ve made it through and feel better off for having done it.
*Photo Credit: Kettlebells by Travis Wise | Flikr CC2.0