Not Yet

By: Coach Trice Sweet

“I still don’t have my muscle-up” is usually the phrase I’m repeating over and over in my head during a regular training day. It’s frustrating to wonder how I’m three years into this CrossFit thing and still can’t get myself to the top of the rings. In my imagination I’m stringing sets of them together because I can explain to you almost every detail of the movement.

I should have a 240-pound back squat, I should be able to row consistently under a 2:00 minute/500-meter pace, and I should easily have butterfly pull-ups by now.
I don’t have a magic solution for all of the “shoulds” of my CrossFit journey (or yours), but what has helped me to reframe my frame of thought behind where I think I should be and where I actually am, is to instead note that I am not there yet. All of the movements I can’t complete and weight I can’t lift, will eventually happen if I keep doing the work.

It’s fun to imagine completing a workout with muscle-ups, but a lot less fun to do strict false grip pull-ups with a three second tempo on the way down. It’s rewarding to think about actually maintaining a 1:50 rowing pace, but probably my worst nightmare sitting down to do rowing intervals on days I don’t want to.

But honestly, that’s where the magic happens. That’s where I get to find out where exactly my weaknesses are and turn all those pesky “shoulds” into “yets.”