To my dear fellow, female crossfitters, with the greatest love and respect,
If the ideal you are seeking - the physique, the performance - is such that it requires you to injure yourself, hurt yourself, to end up with exhaustion, or starve yourself, or any other effort that is so taxing it is impossible to maintain without injury - then it is TOO EXTREME and ideal.
And to try and attain an ideal that is impossible for you, unrealistic, not reasonable given your current means, to hurt yourself trying - this has nothing to do with health, strength, fitness, or community love, it is just another campaign to make women feel that their bodies are not okay. DO NOT SUBSCRIBE.
Crossfit has offered something new and revolutionary to women. This is one of two main reasons I fell so in love with Crossfit. Crossfit said: we do not think that seeing women starving and skinny is attractive because it denies the inherent strength and ability of women, we love women who are physical, who take up space, who don't shy from challenges, who are strong, fit and who use their bodies to get out and do great things.
This is totally revolutionary, when for the past fifty (probably thousands) of years we have been squeezed, starved, sprayed, dyed, plucked, bleached, straightened, hoisted, ironed, restrained, corsetted, high heeled (etc etc) into having a body that is not our own, and expected to loathe our bodies when they misbehave (too fat, too hairy, to white...).
So here is crossfit freeing us from those shackles. No longer do you have to be considered a freak or a dyke if you like the feeling of lifting heavy things, of being able to lift your own boxes, of out running your male friends. GREAT.
But then this happens. Crossfit becomes about appearances. All this hard work gives us all some muscles! Great. But then, it starts to become more and more ABOUT the muscles, the biceps and ripped abs and slowly but surely, about the correct coloured clothing and right shoes. And an extremely fit, muscular physique. And fitter, faster, stronger becomes so ingrained that women are willing to injure themselves, starve themselves, and exhaust their body, in attaining this new 'healthy' ideal.
I really want all women who do crossfit, the beautiful women that I know, who I love, for trying so damn hard and supporting each other (women are typically not that supportive of each other) to stop and think about this.
If completing those 21 pull ups ruptures the capsule in your shoulder joint, or if having your obliques showing requires you to faint from fasting, or if at the end of two months you can hardly lift your arms from genuine exhaustion... then how is this different to making yourself vomit after meals to maintain a size 8 waist?
It's not. And what is really WRONG about it is that it carries the same inherent message as every other bullshit thing society has told us to do to be acceptable: it tells us that our bodies are not okay.
And I think it's a crying shame.
And I sit here typing this with my arm in a cast from a wrist sprain and my shoulder out of action and in pain for over a year. For many reasons, partly because I need exercise like a fish needs water and I didn't rest when I should have. And partly because I found crossfit, or crossfit found me, and I found that I was good at crossfit and got a whole lot of positive feedback, from my peers and coaches and from other people, for my achievements.
It was no good to me not to 'Rx'.... that would never do. I had to be Rx.... that's where the pride was for me. Nothing else would do.
I should have slowed down, but I couldn't because I was addicted to the feedback from my peers, my crossfit community, of performing at crazy hard levels.
If I'd have asked a single person, a friend from the gym, should I rest? They'd say yes!! Rest!! people did. My great coach did. he told me off for training through my injury!
But... alas... like everyone... we get swept away in the masses....we want the reward, we don't see the big picture.
Likewise, I have gotten pretty ripped in the past, mainly through starving. Training and starving. I don't like starving. and i'll tell you why, because in order to starve a little voice inside me has to say, you're not okay, you're body fat is not okay, so you are not allowed to eat something.
Sound like an eating disorder? Does to me.
In order to stop crossfit being another method of rejecting your body, I really want all those beautiful crossfit women to ask themselves: is doing this WOD, at this weight, in this way, is this diet, is this food choice .... a perfect example of how much I LOVE ME?
When the answer is yes, proceed.
With love
Clare
