It's all in the mind.

Back in May I pulled a muscle in my back. It was honestly the most painful thing I've ever experienced. Seriously, that shit was painful. I cried just trying to get off of the floor.

I did it during CrossFit, while doing deadlifts for the second night in a row. I love deadlifts liek woah. They are my favorite lift. Sadly, my lower back has always had some issues, mostly due to old snowboarding injuries I never took care of.  I was also pretty sore because the first night we did our 1 rep max. I SO stoked- I lifted 155lbs. Way more than I had thought I'd be able to do. I think I went into the lift not being cautious enough, and I honestly didn't even know how much weight was on the bar when I went for it (A DUMB MOVE!) and I ended up crying on the floor for 45 minutes. No joke.

My back is feeling way better now thanks to my AMAZING massage therapist, she is seriously a miracle worker. I've still been taking it easy though. I kept my deadlifts pretty light. I did 85lbs in a WOD a week or two ago and was pretty excited that it didn't hurt.

Last night we were supposed to do our 1RM again. I did a few reps at 55, a few at 85, 105... but when I got to 125 I got scared. I'd start the lift and just think about my back and how scared I was to hurt it again. It felt so heavy! The coach kept telling me that I needed to just do it, I know I can lift it. So finally, I did.

Was it hard? Not really. What held me back? My own damn brain.

So much of physical performance has to do with what's going on in your own head. We did a WOD a few weeks ago which was 100 burpees for time. After doing it I realized that I stopped and rested way more than I needed to. Why? Because it's how much I would have needed to rest about 6 months ago. My brain just hadn't caught up to where I should be at now.

So last night after my sort of disappointing/ sort of exciting deadlift experience (it was nice to know that I could lift 125 with no back pain, but I was sad to not up my 1RM) we did a reverse Annie. Double unders and abmat sit ups, sets of 10-20-30-40-50. The coaches are trying to get us to move up to double unders so now they are making us do 4x singles. I really focused on just pushing through and not stopping to rest like I normally would. If I stopped I would take 2 or 3 deep breaths and keep on truckin. I finished in 12:53, not long after everyone else. No significant resting.

It felt awesome.  Even though the knuckles on my left hand are all bruised from smacking on the floor when I did situps haha. Battle wounds!