CrossFit Athletic Group

She strutted up to the pair of 45-lb. plates stacked up on the blue mat, bobbing and weaving to the tune of Patsy Cline in her head; gray, white and yellow sketchers carefully tied in the bunny-ears fashion (loop-swoop-and-pull wasn't invented when she learned); white polo shirt drenched in sweat from her walk up to the gym. She jumped, leaving all 948 months behind her on the floor.

Or that was the plan at least. Problem was, she missed the plates.

Mrs. Gloria landed face-down on the blue mat. Aaron and Cecilia both saw it happen. When Mr. Carey, Meghan Murley, Alyssa Jabara, or anyone else had a missed box jump episode, I was worried they wouldn't be able to finish the workout. When Mrs. freaking Gloria had a missed box jump episode, I was worried about things I never thought I would worry about. I'm from calm suburbs of Madison Heights (same suburb as Mrs. Gloria, Jay/Josie, the Benni, and Nevarez clan) and have never seen someone die in front of my eyes. I wouldn't know what to do. Cec and Aaron are from Sterling Heights and Troy, respectively, and I don't think they would have known what to do either. All I know is I knew exactly where the AED was.

But in a matter of seconds Mrs. Gloria was off the ground with a smile on her face, a scrape on her low left shin, and a small cut on her nose.

On the outside I was playing it off, making sure she would mentally move on to the next exercise station as soon as possible. Internally I was flipping out about not progressing her up slowly in height, while simultaneously wondering if she had any idea how irregular it is to smile after a missed box jump episode.

The workout was 10 strict presses and 2 box jumps. She called her first round done, went back to her 15-lb bar for strict press, and knocked those out, minus the glasses. I asked what she wanted to do for box jumps.

"You can take your box jumps and shove them up your..."

Yeah, she didn't say that. That would've been sweet, though. Nope, she just simply said to keep both plates on and that she wanted to keep going until she got the jump. For the next two rounds we messed around with half-jumps (one foot on, one foot off), jumps to one plate, and step-up jumps. By the end of the workout, Mrs. Gloria, on her own accord, completed 4 full jumps to the same 2 45-lb. plates she bit it on 8 minutes earlier.

...........

One of the things I learned from Mr. Martin at Marygrove was that good writers are supposed to show and not tell - meaning instead of writing "I was really happy," it is better to write about the things I did that make it obvious that I was really happy. So I haven't really wrote that much on how I'm holding you guys to a higher standard than usual this Summer because I've tried to show it instead. But it's worth noting here in case the message doesn't come across in Mrs. Gloria's story.

Getting Over Our Fears is an intangible thing that needs to happen in order for us to have long-term success in CrossFit. When we operate within our comfort zone, we stay the way we are. When we operate outside of what we are capable of, bad stuff happens. But there is that sweet spot right on the threshold of "Whoa boy, not sure I can do this" that we need to get familiar with. Forward rolls and handstands tend to be the two movements that put us at that place best, and short benchmark workouts like Fran or Helen do as well. Mrs. Gloria has a lot more to lose than you guys, and yet she just raised the standard for the entire gym. Time to step up!