taking things too seriously

[forgotten_aria]

The way you do the CrossFit Open is you pay $20 to be on a global score board. My gym then does this big shindig, though I don't know if paying the $20 is required to be part of the shindig. I've never asked. There are three workouts that everyone participates in if you've entered. There are three levels of difficulty, with the bottom level intended to be very inclusive of people of all fitness levels.

Last year was the first year I "competed" and had a little bit of fun until the last workout, which was intentionally supposed to separate the field. I was more annoyed that the lowest level, fundamentals, didn't even have an opening move that everyone could do. This year they seem to have allowed a lot more flexibility in Fundamentals, which is good.

The scoring system is broken, however. If you do a full workout at the second level, scaled, you get less ranking than if you do one rep of the top level, Rx. So I had my plan, during the shindig I was going to do the version that would give me the best workout and then I would come in and do 1 rep of rx, if I could, and enter THAT as my score.

As luck would have it the first workout the Rx and scaled started with the same exact movement, 60 calories on the rower, so I asked, "Can I do it as scaled, but get scored as Rx?" I got a lot of push back about how our gym's internal teams get points and how this is supposed to be a fitness test and if I gamed the system I couldn't see how I improved. I was told I could enter the score however I wanted, but at that point my competition anxiety was in full force.

I am a loser. I don't mean that in a self-deprecating, self-wallowing way. I am SO fortunate and so lucky in ways that matter. But when it comes to competing, there is nothing I'm good enough at to even have a chance. The only way I win is if no one else shows up. (This is actually how I got to go to the junior Olympics.) (I also have bad luck at random drawings too, but I have no issue with that.) During the conversation about the points I even said, "I don't have the skills, so gaming the system is all I have."

I am bad at competing for fun I think because of a life time of feeling I have to prove myself (sometimes to myself.) It's always felt that for physical things I put in the same work and get 1/4 the results, so I have to take things seriously because I have no wiggle room. If I'm being scored or measured, I have to give it all my focus. Especially because society LOVES to believe we live in a meritocracy, and that hard work == results and that's the furthest thing from being true. People are quick to tell you you didn't work hard enough when you don't get the same result they did.

I decided because it was causing me so much anxiety I would treat entering the score as a "I participated" and not stress about the fact that the difference between those two ways of entering the score is the difference between being 22935ish and 39819, 1779 vs 3280 in my age group. Ok, it sounds really stupid when I say it that way.

People in the gym claims the Open pushes them to be better; that a lot of people get their first pull up or other hard movement during the open. I don't think that will ever be me. I think I push pretty hard all the time and I have to actively pull myself back to make things sustainable, to let me recover and to give any injuries I have time to heal.

I am taking this as a chance to work on some of my issues, but there is a lot of history, a lot of baggage.

I will say I was able to be casually social last night with only one of the conversations being replayed over and over by my social anxiety. That's a big win.

I was also a little disappointed in how I did in the workout. I got to the cleans and I should have been able to blaze through them, but I felt like I was going to puke, so I stared at the bar longer than I would have liked. I'm betting I had overheated from wearing the extra shirt to fit with the theme. I think I could have done better, but I think I should also celebrate the fact that since I still have COVID voice, I did that well at all.

I just read that some CrossFit affiliates made all their athletes do RX because of the points thing, and that just feels really wrong. I think that tells me a lot about my own obsession with the points.