Wikipedia succinctly tells the parable of the prodigal son.
I felt like the story’s extravagant and wasteful younger son this morning as I returned to Warrior Crossfit Muscatine — one of my favorite hangouts, but a place in which I had not set foot for at least a month.
Sarah Garvin, who owns the gym with her husband, Jacob, was there to welcome me back and then kick my butt — in a nice way. I’ll get to the workout in more detail in just a minute.
For some reason, the parable of the prodigal son has always resonated with me. And I’m not sure why since, if anything, I’ve always been more like the story’s dutiful oldest son. In general, I’ve always worked hard to do what was expected of me by my parents, teachers, coaches, bosses, etc.
But it’s easy to emulate the prodigal son when it comes to things that are good for me — exercise and eating well, or, for that matter, going to church. Working out at WCFM was something I did two or three or four times a week for three or four months. And then, a month or so ago, I missed a few workouts.
It snowballed. Two or three workouts became two or three weeks and then a month. It reached a point where not returning became an option because I knew that first workout would really hurt.
That brings me to this morning. It was raining in Muscatine when my alarm started to buzz. It would have been so easy to sleep in and put off my return for another day. But I told myself I had to get my butt out of bed and go.
So I did.
The only highlight was the 20 pounds I added to the maximum I could squat once with the barbell on my shoulders. My previous max in the back squat was 225 pounds.
The real work began after we maxed on the back squat. The workout consisted of sumo deadlift high pulls with a 53-pound kettle bell, burpees and push jerks done with 65 pounds. We started out doing 12 repetitions of these three exercises and worked our way down: 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1.
It’s an understatement to say the 30 minutes and 23 seconds of pain it took me to finish this workout really made me regret my prodigal ways of the past month.
I’m just hoping I can move my arms on Thursday.
Brome Hill 