Clearing Boxes

I decided to take last week off from training to give myself some much needed rest. When I returned from Rio, I did not really take any time off so I was overdue for a break.

Although sleeping later was a nice treat, I have to admit that I had an undercurrent of anxiety over my return from the Thanksgiving break. My physical trainer(s) always provide me with challenging workouts, and I never know what the workouts will consist of from day to day.

When I walked in the door on Tuesday, the plyometric boxes, ladder and hurdles were already arranged. I warmed up for a few minutes on the bike, and then we got started. Once my training session began, it was fast. We moved quickly between the two rooms and I started to feel like I had too much fun over the holiday week.

As a result, my trainer began heckling me with "What did you eat Qiana? Too much turkey! Too much Blue Bell ice cream! Too much cake!" I replied, "Pumpkin pie" after restarting a botched drill on the ladder.

We moved back to the other room so that I could do my next set of box jumps. The box jumps are my least favorite. I think this is due to the fact that these boxes are wooden and I have seen many a strong athlete and trainer misjudge the height or timing of their jumps and take an L (i.e. Loss).

Now since my time at the gym, I have only scraped the front of my leg on the tallest box. However, we were not jumping the tallest box, but the other three, so I was pretty confident that once I moved past the taller box I could breeze through the other two. The drill was a continual jumping from the box to the ground up to the next box and squatting to pick up a bowl and the end, turning around to jump the boxes back to the other end to squat and place the bowl on the floor.

I had about 6 to 8 bowls to jump the boxes to retrieve and return to the other end so I had about 36-48 jumps to do for each set. Keep in mind that I had to jump the boxes facing forward, jumping sideways from the left and jumping sideways from the right. I had lots of box jumps on my agenda to say the least.

My legs were feeling heavy, and I was in the midst of my 2 second set of box jumps. Facing to the left, I jumped on the tallest box and leapt off to the ground so that I could jump the second box. Well, my mind was on auto-pilot and my legs were hanging low so when I tried to clear the box, it didn't go as planned to say the least. The foot clip, the lower body box collision and my tumble to the floor were all a blur.

I sat for about 5 seconds in bewilderment. The box was unmoved, but I had to experience a different fate. Well, I got back up and restarted the jump series with a new concentration to say the least.

Unfortunately, I have been added as the latest victim in the Box Clearing series....