5 Important Lessons to Learn From a CrossFit Injury

An injury can be a huge setback to training, but what positives can be drawn from these frustrating experiences?

CrossFitters are a special breed. We willingly show up everyday to get our asses handed to us every single WOD. In my 3 years of doing CrossFit, I have yet to meet anyone who after a WOD hasn’t felt as though they’ve come very close to meeting whatever higher power they believe in.  We learn to push through discomfort and we put our bodies through a lot. It is therefore not a unique phenomenon that as we push our bodies and train our minds to be as strong (if not stronger) than our bodies, that we will eventually accumulate a few casualties. If not properly taken care of, little niggles can eventually become serious injuries that can keep us away from the box for a considerable amount of time.

Source: CrossFit Inc

I’ve been in that corner before where I’ve ignored every single niggle or uncomfortable tinge of pain during a wod, in the hope that it would miraculously disappear without any effort from my side. I refused to rest because resting meant that I would have to stop, and stopping is something that many a CrossFitter struggles to do. What will happen is that eventually you will be forced to stop and pay attention to your injury, and while I am on this journey of rehabilitation, here are 5 things that I’ve learnt from being injured.

1. TO MOVE IS A PRIVILEGE

We’ve all been there before, you look up at the clock and you’re not even half-way through that 90 minute AMRAP (…ok maybe not 90 minutes, coaches aren’t that crazy,) and you start to calculate how many more rounds/reps you can get in without your body giving up on you.

If you were, or are currently suffering with an injury that means you have to limit or scale your range of movement, you’ll understand how much of a privilege it is to have, as an option, the possibility to load more weight onto your bar and to not be limited to certain movements. For the first three weeks of my rehabilitation, I could not even bring myself to go to the box.

Neglecting the warning signs that my body was giving me, had led to me being unable to touch a bar for 2 months. During this time, I became acutely aware of how much I took my body for granted, simple movements like air squats left me reeling in pain.

Being able to move is a privilege and awareness of this fact can become a game changer; anytime you’re tempted to get down on yourself for not being able to move/perform the way you did pre-injury, you’ll have in your mind the picture of how post-injury, you’re now able to perform those very same movements pain free.

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