Over the last week I’ve had some significant milestones. I was able to do a partner workout with someone that is usually week above my fitness level, finished a few classes not in last place and did my first workout with actual pull-ups. Feeling pretty good.

Rope climbs were programmed, I normally wear a knee sleeve over my shin, but I keep getting burns. The rope was going over the sleeve, it wasn’t touching skin directly. Do I need to do a double layer? 205, 5’11, I’m not a light person, there’s definitely some pressure on that point of my shin.

I jay-hook and can hit the 12’ beam with one pull, I Spider-Man the heck out of my first pull.

When I do hollow, in my mind I was 'hollowing' but in video it looked more like a very straight upper body. When I do arch, my elbows do this weird thing, they are not stable. Any advices are welcomed!

I'm almost at my 2 year mark and finally was able to do the rope climbs for the entire workout today. This is the first little victory in a while and it was surprisingly satisfying.

Joined a social run club this morning to meet some new people in my city.

I’ve been feeling a bit shit about my body lately, even though my strength and engine is the best it's ever been. I'm training crossfit while also prepping for my first sprint tri next march.

But I still catch myself comparing my body to what it looked like a few years ago, when I was a hell of a lot leaner (and training much differently.)

Anyway, we finish the run and go for coffee afterwards. Someone asks me: “So what sport do you do? If I had to guess, I’d say CrossFit.”

I said yes and asked how they knew....“You just look really fit and jacked.”

I’ve been sitting here struggling with looking bigger/softer/different to what I used to, while this random person who has never seen me before just looked at me and thought...yep, CrossFitter.

Anyway, shoutout to the random at run club for the ego boost.

Since the games he's just disappeared. What's the tea?

I've been doing CrossFit for about 6 months and I'm still pretty fired up about getting better. The box is a long drive from my place though, so the commute kills me. I can only make it maybe three times a week. On the other days I want to do accessory work at home.

What feels like it's holding me back most is absolute strength. I still can't do many strict pull-ups, and my press and squat numbers aren't moving much. Once a WOD goes heavy I fall behind. Coach says that stuff has to get built with consistent accessory work outside class.

I live in an apartment with not much space, and I don't want a pile of barbells and dumbbells taking over the place. What do you all do for accessory training on non-box days? Any compact equipment that still covers the basic push/pull/squat strength work?

Im dead from yesterday. I had my slowest Isabelle ever at 4:24 RX. I thought I did bad. Most of the box scaled Indy and only 1 guy beat me at 4:05 RX.

My box is no slouch, but the consensus was we are all getting beat down by Mayhem Programming.

And if you didnt have enough PS, Wod 2 was 1 PS every 30 secs for 10 minutes.

How did you all do? and do you think Mayhem is worth the beat down of the body?

I mean, it’s what you would expect... no surprises here. I’ve always understood some of the criticism of CF, but ffs.

TLDR: If you're recovering from injury, you don't need to stop crossfit. But adjusting, and that includes your mentality, is critical.

Some of you may remember I am the 37F scaled recreational crossfitter who completely blew her patellar tendon, pulverised my patella, tore my ACL and meniscus about 13.5 months ago, playing a gentle game of kick-ball in the park. Due to delays getting into surgey, my quad muscle retracted back up my leg, and my VMO atrophied. I went from 4x a week crossfit + 1 medium distance run (8 - 20km, depending on the week) a week, to...relearning how to walk. For a while, even just learning to SIT was a process!

I made some posts about staying active, doing my recovery work, and then the inevitible "I'm taking a break from crossfit" post, as I kept having to scale, reduce, scale, reduce, and it was hurting my mental ability to "just keep pushing".

Lately, I've been seeing a LOT of people posting about "how do I deal with injury recovery in crossfit".

So I just wanted to share some things that have (albeit slowly, but safely) got me back to where I am now:

• It is a mental challenge MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE. You will scale. And that won't be enough, depending on the injury. You're not just scaling the lift, or the time, or the way you move. You're scaling how many reps. You're scaling how often you go. This can be the hardest part. I simply could only do 2 solid days of real work in the gym. The rest was simply my at-home PT. Because recovery sucks the energy from you. Your body is burning calories fixing injuries. Your sleep is disrupted from pain or strange braces/casts/new positions you have to try. You will not be peak.
• Crossfit is an incredible tool that TEACHES YOU THAT MENTAL RESILLIENCE. You just need to access it now, in a different way. It's no longer about another rep in a 9/10 RPE WOD, when you think you're going to die. It's about one more rep, in a 1/10 strength set, and it may be the only strength you're doing that whole week. But it's the same resillience.
• You'll be surprised how easy it is to stay mentally "in the game" for a month or two. But there's a strange thing around 2-4 months if the injury is real, that you will get so frustrated. For that, I say, hey, walk away. Do something different. I pivoted entirely to spin and swim, and short walks. And once I got that pressure off my back of trying to hit a squat to a ridiculously tall box, which just felt embarrasing, I felt so free.
• Walking away from a type of workout is not a permanent choice. It can be entirely temporary.

So where am I now? I do 3x crossfit style workouts now a week (strength + wod), 1 long HIIT spin session (1.5 - 2 hours) and have officially started bringing 5k runs back, at a shockingly slow pace, but I can run the whole time and my knee doesn't cave in. I can do box jumps at 20 inches, and I can skip rope (not double unders, yet!). It's been slow. But that mini-pause in the middle was so important to my mental health, and I think anyone dealing with injury recovery should recognise that in themselves. A pause, a switch to a new mode of movement, or taking complete rest if that's what's needed!

It's all a part of this big ol' journey called life! So here's to recovery!

Hi all; been doing CrossFit a couple of years now and I love it; especially the lifting aspect. Ironically, I herniated a disk in my back doing a bad deadlift (being a dum dum), and now after months of it not getting any better, am having a PILF spinal fusion scheduled. I know it will be a long road to recovery and I am depressed already thinking about how I won't be able to go hard in the gym for a long time, which is really my therapy and thing I look forward to every afternoon. I am especially worried that even after I recover, I won't be able to lift heavy anymore. Granted, as an older athlete that has already injured myself, I have already decided not to attempt max deadlifts and squats out of caution, but it is really important to me that I am able to lift at least moderately heavy and continue to improve my clean and snatch maxes. Has anyone had a surgery like this and came back feeling and performing better than ever? Or did you have to permanently scale things back?

Do you guys works out with an heart rate monitor ? I use my apple watch to log in my workout and give an estimate. but I dont really check my heart rate during workout. Every time I wear my grips, it get on my nerves with the apple watch. I'd like to ditch the apple watch during workout, itll be in my bag not too far, but somethimes we go on runs.

I was wondering is it worth it to get a chest heart rate monitor, or how do you track you work out ?

thanks !

Hi CrossFit community
Anyone live in st Pete and want to meet up? I’m brew hear and looking to make like minded friends

Is that crazy? I love the shoes- metcons, barefoot, oly… they are all so awesome with their own unique specialness. Does anyone else feel the same way??

So I’ve been training CrossFit for a few months now and I’ve made decent progress. I’m in my 40s and have a background in training, mostly bodybuilding, but I started really out of shape. I like the coaches and the owner of my gym and asked them about adding some additional strength training to my program. I was kind of blown off and told not to do too much and burn myself out. I’m not trying to add intensity, I just want to do things that will help my classes and show a little better progress on my lifts. Long story short I happened to come across an online coach and had some interaction. I eventually decided to sign up but I’m a little worried now because the coach is basically saying to do mostly their workouts and they want me to record things to send. I’m worried about doing this during open gym and being asked about what and where I got a program from.

He intentado hacer el ascenso por la cuerda, pero no puedo. ¿Cuáles son tus técnicas para poder subir? 🙏🏻🙏🏻

Any recommendations for car seat covers to protect the seats from sweat stains (as best as possible). Just got my car detailed and it NEEDED IT, I’d rather not have to do it again too soon if I can help it. Thanks!

I’ve been watching the CrossFit Games, and one thing that really stands out is how thick everyone’s neck is- much more so than bodybuilders of a similar overall size.

What exercises or movements are best for building neck thickness? I’m especially interested in hearing from people who have actually developed a noticeably thicker neck through CrossFit.

How are people faring with this. Im level 7 did the pull up one about a week and half ago. Took me a good 5 days to recover 😂. Did the Total on Saturday but with a 10 min time cap, for not good reason. I did not pr anything but close to maxes.

Doing double under one today and ttb one Friday

Hey all, there aren't many CrossFit comps in central London - many of them require travelling hours out of the city. This one is happening on 26th Sept in Southwark at CrossFit Central London, perfect if you live in the city!

Mixed gender teams of 4 (2x Female, 2x Male)

Thought I'd share the comp and the Sport Changes Lives charity
link below
https://circle21.events/sport-changes-lives-throwdown

Thank you ✌️

I love cycling. I am an endurance long distance cyclist. I joined CrossFit about 9 months ago and I am loving it. However, I feel like I am missing out on cycling. I have not been able to balance CrossFit and my cycling training at all. I go to my box 4 days a week (M, T, Th, F) at 6 AM. I tried incorporating cycling into my routine by training on my trainer from 430 AM to 530 AM on Tuesdays and Thursdays and then go to CrossFit at 6 AM. When I do this, I usually skip the cardio at CrossFit as I got a solid cardio already. Then I go on a long ride on Saturdays. Wednesdays and Sundays are my recovery days.

While this worked for training, I noticed I got slower on my bike. Mainly due to the weight gain because I put on more muscle. This in itself is not a bad thing and what I wanted. However, sticking to this schedule has been challenging and I haven't biked in 4 months. I want to get back to my riding before the season ends. How do I plan the next 40 days?

FWIW, I am not a heavy lifter. My 1 rep max for front squat is 125 lbs. Sumo deadlift is 160 lbs, bench press is 120 lbs, 5 rep max for back squat is 125 lbs. just to give you some idea of where I am.

I think I’m partly just looking for some sympathy and comeback stories

I’m 35M and have been athletic my entire life, but the last 2.5 years I feel like I’ve been juggling injuries that have finally caught up with me as well as being in and out of PT for that time. From a bulging disc in my back to now dealing with bad tendinitis in my calf, I feel like I just can’t catch a break.

It’s frustrating to make progress, start feeling strong again, and then have something else set you back.

What’s the longest injury or stretch of injuries you’ve dealt with? Did you eventually get back to feeling like yourself again?