Crossfit! (May 13, 2013)

The very best Mother's Day gift of all that I completely forgot to mention was from Grey. That weekend, he started to sleep through the night. Lucy started to sleep through the night at 6 weeks and as Grey hit 6 weeks, I kept my fingers crossed but he was still waking up around twice a night. By 7 weeks, he was only waking up once a night and it started stretching out for longer periods of time so I wasn't waking up until around 4:00 am. By that weekend, right before he turned 8 weeks, he was sleeping through the night. And when I say sleeping through the night, I mean he sleeps from when I go to sleep (anywhere between 10pm-midnight but sometimes earlier) until at least 5:00 or 6:00 am so I was getting anywhere from 6-8 hours of continuous sleep.

This happened just in time for me to begin Crossfit. Even though I have a year-long pre-paid membership to 24 Hour Fitness, you can't bring babies to daycare until they are 6 months old (at Gold's gym it is 6 weeks!). I actually let my 24 Hour membership lapse last December, anticipating that I wouldn't be able to use it for a while after having Grey but then caved in and bought another year membership in January because I was dying not working out and doing yoga for those last few months of my pregnancy. But it was probably a mistake since I didn't work out 6 weeks postpartum and barely make it on weekends now when Brandon can watch Grey. It's also not very close to my house so it's not convenient to go to unless I am running other errands. My membership was convenient when I just had Lucy and I would go work out and then go out food shopping or take her out on some excursion straight from leaving the gym.

My sister, Emily, had started Crossfit the beginning of the year and I was curious to try it out and to kick start my post-baby fitness. My husband is also a little obsessed with it even though he has never experienced it before. Since I still had money left over from my AmeriCorps educations award that I had used for my yoga certification, with the encouragement of Brandon and Emily, I decided to do Crossfit through the U's Continuing Education Program as an academic non-credit class. I was a little apprehensive at first because I wasn't sure what to expect. But I found out that another girl from my church ward did Crossfit through the U (since she works there and gets an employee discount). She explained to me that the Crossfit class was basically a membership to a local Crossfit gym so that I could go anytime. Since there was no daycare at the gym at all, the only time I would be able to go would be a morning class before Brandon went to work. There was a 5:00 am and 6:00 am class so I opted for the 6:00 am class which happened to be the class that the girl from my ward went to as well (which was helpful to have a friend to help motivate me to get there). I could have just gone to the 5:45 am class at 24 Hour Fitness but it was earlier and further away and I just wasn't motivated. My rule for Crossfit was that I would only go on the mornings that Grey slept through the night because the classes are physically demanding enough as it is and not getting adequate sleep would just be torture.

So on Monday, May 13th, I went to my first Crossfit class at 6:00 am at Brickwall Crossfit.

I. almost. died.

No...it wasn't that bad. But it was definitely hard. It happened to be a harder work-out than normal and for someone who hadn't worked out at all for 8 weeks postpartum and just did yoga through my entire pregnancy and not much else, it was pretty intense. But I made it the next day. And then for one more day that week because Grey still wasn't consistent about sleeping through the night. For the next month, I was able to make it to Crossfit 1-3 times a week when Grey slept through the night. On the mornings that I made it, my day was always better. Even though it sucked to wake up at 5:20 am and pump for 20 minutes, it was pretty awesome to start my day with a work out and then be showered and ready for the day by 8:00 am. You feel like you have already accomplished so much in a day.

I only signed up for the first session of the summer to try it out and towards the end of the session, I wasn't going at all because Grey got a little sick and wasn't sleeping through the night at all. When I went to sign up for the second session on-line in mid-June, the class wasn't there. When I asked my friend what the issue was, she told me that I had to go in person to sign a liability form at the U and then go in person to another office to sign up for the class. That may sound pretty easy but the person who had the liability forms that I needed to sign was not easy to work with and we couldn't get our schedules worked out to meet so I just never signed up at all.

Looking back on it, I'm a little sad that I only did it for a month. It's pretty expensive compared to a regular gym membership but I would be interested in trying it again, maybe with Brandon next time. I wasn't super crazy about the Olympic power lifting but it was fun to be able learn correct form and lift really heavy weight (I think that dead lift max was 130lb the one class we worked exclusively on dead lifts). I would have liked to see the improvements on my work-outs but didn't participate long enough to do the work-outs more than once. I also never got to climb the rope or learn how to do kipping pull-ups or muscle ups (which I was excited to learn how to do). I never took any pictures either but next time, I will be sure to do some before and after pictures.

I'm definitely feeling some work-out withdrawal. I used to joke with my Crossfit friend from church that I should just wake up early and do yard work because my yard is so neglected and it's actually a really good work out. So when I couldn't sign up for the second session of Crossfit, I figured that I could finally focus on making my yard look nice. But after Grey got sick, he cut two teeth, then we went on vacation, then we recovered from vacation and on the nights that he did sleep through the night, Lucy would wake up for one reason or another. So I haven't been able to get anything productive done these days, it seems.

In just two weeks, Lucy will start Pre-K four days and a week and Grey will be 6 months on September 17th so you can bet that I will be at 24 Hour Fitness on that day to work out at a more reasonable time. Then someday, I'll do Crossfit again.