Keep Coming Back

What I remembered while trying to do a crab walk

I cried while taking a strength and endurance workout class this week. The inciting event: The inverted crawl, also known as the crab walk. I can barely crawl across the floor on my hands and knees, never mind upside down and backwards. And yet, here I was, a red-faced 49-year-old woman trying to look composed while imitating a crab at a gym in Inwood.

As I tried to make my way across the floor, the unrelenting voice inside pounded, “just quit, get out of the way for everyone else, just give up. You don’t belong here.”

I stood up in humiliation and walked to the corner, wiping away sweat and tears with my sweaty shirt, and catching my breath. I knew I had two choices: leave or get back on the floor. I got back on the floor.

It’s been about three weeks since I started working out again post-lay off. What I have learned: 

1. My knee jerk reaction to cut costs around my physical fitness while stopping weight lifting and cardio was a poor, poor choice, albeit understandable. I should have doubled down on my commitment to my fitness. 

2. It takes a long time to build muscle mass and fitness and a very tiny amount of time to lose it. 

3. Crying at the gym is actually a really amazing sign of potential growth. 

In psychology, the four stages of “conscious competence" lay out the psychological progression from “incompetence to competence” in a skill. The model asserts that initially, we are unaware of our incompetence, so we go along merrily not knowing what we don’t know. But as we continue learning something we start realizing just how hard it is to acquire and apply the skill, thus becoming conscious of our incompetence. Over time, with any luck, we become proficient in the skill and reach a state of unconscious competence and then conscious competence.

Guess what stage I’m in now? Conscious incompetence. And thus, the tears. 

Home Alone, and also, the bully in my brain.

The wise founder of my gym explained this concept when I returned to class determined to relearn some of the foundations of kettlebell workouts my dear friend and trainer Katie Soares taught me over the years. He explained that these stages of learning can show up for newcomers as a challenge that derails. We join and are excited to learn something new and hard, but everything is new and hard, so it’s OK. As the novelty wears off, we become more focused on how little we know. We feel discouraged, we feel like we will never improve, we will never master the level. It’s at that time that we can persevere or go off to chase some new shiny piece of string—a new workout, a new diet, a new fill-in-the-blank. Feel familiar? It did to me.

As he explained this, I realized that getting back on the floor after my crying jag and returning to class on Saturday was a way of persevering and a sign that growth is coming. That growth is already here. And that felt really good, even if my triceps and back are still sore from last week’s crustacean breakdown.

For those keeping up, this is the second time I have quoted Guru Rumsfeld on this Substack. Even a broken clock can be right twice a day.

When I got back in line last week, a woman in my class touched my elbow and quietly asked if I was OK.

I smiled and tapped my temple, “It’s all up here.”

“We are all up here, and also here with you,” she said pointing at the mats. “Keep coming back.”

I smiled thinking of the profound meaning. “Keep coming back,” a saying repeated to me at countless 12 Step meetings over close to three decades. A saying that most of the battle is in just showing up. “Keep coming back, it works if you work it.”

And so I will.