Look Up

It’s been a while since my last update here. To be honest, I have been waiting for something remarkable to happen. A benchmark, a milestone. Just waiting…and admittedly, not really doing that much. 

For the past few weeks I have felt like I am on a long, scorching hot, Texas plateau. I have been doing the WODs, but have not seen a lot of progress; and I have sandbagged a lot more than usual.

I have no excuses to offer…there are plenty of areas that I could really be working on. Double unders, jerk, snatch…the list goes on.

Of all of the skills that I really suck at, however, there was one that I always really, really wanted to be able to do…the muscle up.

Before hitting my "2011 Summer Plateau", I had often gone to the box on my rest days to work on the rings to prep for my 1^st muscle up. I was optimistic. I had been given advice from every coach at CFDC and several members. For over two years I chased this goal pretty consistently always believing that “today is gonna be the day”.

And then I gave up. Several months ago I stopped even trying…I figured I was too weak or too old or too something…it just seemed like no matter what I tried, it never worked.

And then finally, last Thursday night….
I had just gone into the box to hang out. My buddy, Chris had said that he would be there and it’s pretty rare that we seem at the box these days so I thought I would at least stop by to say HEY. When I got there, some of the guys had been working with the rings so they were all set up and ready to go. Thursday is our official “rest day” at CFDC. But there were lots of people practicing and making up WODs around me, so I decided to just jump up on the rings for a bit so that I didn’t feel like such a slacker amid all of the work that was getting done.

I jumped up and grabbed the rings with ZERO expectations. I found my “false grip” which I had already determined to be totally pointless. I locked out my arms and half-heartedly faked a kip.
Somehow, I landed with my shoulders on top of the rings. I was totally unprepared for this to happen and my elbows started to turn out. It hurt like hell so I jumped off and landed not-so-gracefully on the ground. My shoulders ached. WTF was that?

One of the CFDC coaches, Chase, was watching the whole thing. He told me that if I had held the position and stabilized myself on the rings a little better, I could have pressed up. Huh? He was talking like I almost did a muscle up.
Chase took me over to some rings that were lower to the ground, and just let me sit there at the bottom of the dip and practice pressing into the muscle up. I was still kinda freaked out… Chase had no idea that this was the Holy Grail of Crossfit exercises for me…that I had tried and failed this move a thousand times. He was talking like I was gonna do a muscle up. Today.

After practicing the drill with Chase, we went back over to the high rings. I went through my usual routine, found my false grip, kipped and BOOM. I was up there.
Suddenly a group formed to watch. The pressure was on. Was it a fluke? Nope, I did it again.

At my age, it’s very rare that I get to “knock one out of the park”. In fact, I have never kicked a goal or hit a homerun. I don’t know what it feels like to score the winning point in anything. But my first muscle up was like nothing I had ever experienced before. It’s been three days and I still feel it.

It may sound over-the-top, but there is nothing in recent memory that was harder than getting on top of those rings for me. It requires strength, but that wasn’t the hard part. I have seen guys who are not as strong as me achieve a muscle up on their first attempt. The hardest part of the muscle up is the athleticism that some people are gifted with…and others, not-so-much. I am convinced that some people just have a natural physical awareness and know how to control their movements efficiently. Clearly, I am not one of these people. But through this experience I have learned that over time and a lot of good coaching and support, pretty much anything is possible.

Here it is....I tried to get greedy and failed on the 2nd muscle up, but I think the first one is legit. Big thanks to Noah for capturing video evidence of my big day.