Spring is here and with that comes more motivation. In general, I feel good about taking on projects and keeping busy, even though it’s a little stressful sometimes and I’m actually behind on my main comics project, Year One. I started going to my gym again after a four month break and it feels so good to be back. My body, though sore, feels like it should again – put to use! Active, stretched out, mobile, ready to go. I hate the feeling that comes with inactivity, achy limbs, tight muscles and general malaise, and I had been feeling that for four months too long.
During my absence, my gym moved into a new, much larger space! It’s really exciting to get back and see all the changes. It’s also exciting that my lifts don’t really seem to have suffered much and I’m still lifting close to all of my old one rep max’s. Phew. Thursday’s workout was 100 single leg squats. These are not fun for anyone, but luckily squats don’t kill me. I was sore the next day but not nearly as sore as I expected. During your squats, if you lost balance, but a foot down, or needed to take a rest, you had to do five toes to bars as a penalty (where you hang from the pull up bar and then swing your toes up in front of you to touch the bar. requires a lot of core strength! luckily i just powered through the squats and didn’t have to do any toes to bars.
Asher was pretty fun last week. 50 hours of the little dude can be a lot, especially when he’s in transitional phases like he is right now. He’s just getting the idea that making sounds is a way to communicate, but doesn’t have words yet. This means lots of reaching and pointing and yellllllling. 10 hour days of this is mentally exhausting and I’ve picked up working on signs with him more than ever! We’re working really hard to learn the asl sign for ‘please.’
He’s also minutes away from knowing how to walk. He’ll walk if he’s holding my hand but doesn’t have the confidence to let go yet. He’s constantly on the move and trying new things. He’s recently gotten really interested in climbing. I follow him up and down the stairs over and over all day.
Occasionally, I take photos of events for my gym. I do this as trade for membership since I can’t really afford crossfit. Every crossfit gym I’ve been to has been willing to work with me on price. If this is a deterring factor for you starting crossfit, my suggestion is to just get into a crossfit gym, try it out, and then ask if there’s any sort of plan you can work out to make it affordable for you. On Sunday morning, our gym had a rope climbing workshop in Rittenhouse park. It was pretty fun to watch and a nice way to spend a Sunday morning.
Mattox, our head coach’s dog, meeting a tiny dog at the park.
Sammy running the workshop. Sammy is so strong. She can climb the rope with no legs. She was teaching everyone not to do that because it exhausts your muscles really fast. When I think about rope climbing in gym class when I was young, it makes me mad. Boys had to learn to climb the rope for real, girls got to a climb a rope with nots in it. What does this teach us….
Sammy demonstrating how to pinch the rope with your feet. Climbing a rope is mostly a leg workout, which most people don’t realize!
whooops
Then I headed over to the South Philly Rumble, a crossfit competition that was happening at a South Philly crossfit gym. Lots of people from my gym were participating. It was 30 teams of 4 people.
In this workout, 4 people on a team were working to finish 40 clean and jerks, 60 burpee pullups, 80 medball slams, and 400 double unders. They could split it up however they wanted.
It looked exhausting.
One of my coaches, Tim, jumping up for the pull up portion of a burpee pullup.
Another workout was overhead squats and muscle ups. Here’s Anna trying to swing into a muscle up.
Resting, before getting ready to climb back up.
It was a fun day and made me feel like I had jumped right back in to being an active member of my gym. Afterward, I rode over to Grindcore House to put in a few hours of work on drawing stuff. New friend Stephen was there. He just moved to Philly a month or so ago. I also ran into lots of other folks, Mary and Meg, Ambrose and his roommate Andrew (?), Aaron and Steph. Typical weekend at Grindcore House, which is why I make the bike ride down there instead of just going to a coffeeshop by my house.
