on patience

Let’s talk about handstands shall we?  There are many things I could write about but at the moment it is handstands that are on my mind.

I have a bucket list of things I want to achieve by the end of the year at CrossFit, perhaps the subject of another post.  A handstand was on that list.  It isn’t anymore.  Why?  There are too many things all conspiring against my handstand:  strength, mobility, and confidence (they just bloody scare me).

Of all the other things on my list, body-weight back squat for example, although I can see that I may not achieve my end of year objective, I can see that one day it will happen.  There is a technique that I understand and can, to a certain extent, execute.  With handstands, no, there is just too much in the way.  So I thought, maybe handstands, let alone handstand push ups, just aren’t my thing.   Just give up.  If they appear in a WOD, well I’ll scale it, and just get it done and moan about how much I hate HSPUs.

If I have learnt one thing this year since I started doing CrossFit it is that I am capable of doing things that I never thought I could do.  But the most important thing I have taken to the bank from these achievements, no matter how small, is that they didn’t just materialise out of thin air.  A perfect storm of: impending middle age fear, an awesome wife, excellent coaching and an awful lot of really really sweaty t-shirts, helped me on my way.

Back to the handstands.  What I’m boiling all this stuff down to is about patience.  I’ve always been fucking terrible at giving things up because I’ve not got good at it straight away.  I know I’m not alone in this!  But, I’m not giving this one up, not CrossFit and certainly not fucking handstands.  You will be mine.  Oh yes.

Chris,

p.s.

After my last post about how hard it can be for me to go to the gym sometimes when faced with a fairly poor self image, I got some really great and interesting responses, especially from Armando here.  I hope he won’t mind me saying that, I found his response quite inspiring.   It really made me realise that I’m not unique and that I need to just buckle down and ‘get on with it’.  Obviously, I’m not a sports psychologist, there are many many layers to all this and I don’t want to get bogged down in it too much.  Suffice to say that it seems I had underestimated the mental challenge of getting fit!