What I’ve Learned From Doing CrossFit With My Co-Founder
It happened so quickly: One moment I was pushing a loaded barbell off of my shoulders and up overhead and the next the barbell was falling to the ground as I doubled over in excruciating pain. You know that moment when you’re reloading the toilet paper roll and can’t get it to click back into place? Well replace toilet paper roll with my arm and the toilet paper holder with my left shoulder. The class came to a standstill, all eyes on me, as a mixture of nausea, blinding pain and embarrassment washed over me. I could hear my doctor-husband’s voice in my head: “I told you this would happen if you tried CrossFit.” This was the fourth time I’d dislocated my shoulder, but the first time I couldn’t get it to pop back in by myself. So I turned to the one person who could help me, “@carnet, I need you to get my shoulder back into its socket.”
Almost every morning, I wake up to a text message from my Spright co-founder. It isn’t about our team, our product, our traffic goals, or our upcoming meeting with our investor…it’s about CrossFit. Sprinkled in between our Slack messages and iMessages there’s the recurring “Are you going tomorrow?” and “How sore are your legs” and “Ugh, did you look at the WOD? It’s split jerks. I don’t even know what those are, but they sound painful.” While the trend these days is for startup co-founders to seek out therapy — there are even specialists — Carnet and I have been able to build trust and work through disagreements by lifting heavy weights and navigating a brave new fitness world together.
For the backstory, you have to rewind a few months. In June, I was looking for something to kick-start my routine. A non-exercising Molly is a testy Molly, but I was bored of my usual routine. Running had been replaced by SoulCycle, which had been replaced by complaining about SoulCycle. Yoga was a constant, but was aggravating an old shoulder injury to the point where I finally went and got an MRI, which confirmed what I suspected: there’s a tear and the fix is surgery. One morning, I hopped in a Lyft on the way to work and somehow got talking to the driver about exercise. He convinced me that CrossFit might be an alternative to going under the knife. It seemed unlikely, but I was pretty much wiling to try anything to avoid surgery and losing days of work (and working out) to recovery. So that very afternoon I walked down the stairs to a literally subterranean “box” to try this bizarre, mysterious thing.
One week later, curiosity got the best of him and Carnet decided to WOD with me. He’d been a very vocal CrossFit critic, so it took some prodding and a lot of “You can’t knock it til you tried it” and “But I swear it’s not what you expect” and “I think I’m getting stronger already” to get him in the door. Three months in, CrossFit is still super hard, and lifting heavy weights is still not my strong suit, but it has taught me a few things about being a co-founder and strengthened my most important work relationship. How, you might ask? Let me share:
We spend time together talking about things other than work…
Carnet and I had only known each other a few months before founding Spright, so we were thrust from 0–60 pretty fast. Working out together showed me how valuable it is to do something other than working — or, the favorite activity of co-founders everywhere: drinking while talking about work — together. Now we have a shared company and a shared hobby. Even the latter half of that is more than I have with many friends. Our mornings at CrossFit are not about work. If we were doing an activity that allowed for small talk, we would inevitably talk shop, but there’s no way to be discussing company business while in the middle of an AMRAP. It also means we have another topic to discuss if we ever need a time out from an intense Spright meeting.
We put other trust exercises to shame…
When it comes to co-founder bonding, I’ll see your trust falls and raise you one actual physical emergency.It was two weeks into our CrossFit experiment when Carnet had to pop my dislocated shoulder back into place. I was doing something I should have known to avoid — a squat into an overhead press from the back rack — and I got too confident with the weight and then suddenly, there I was, with a shoulder that wouldn’t go back into its socket. I tried to play it cool as I wandered around in searing pain thinking about how to ram it back into place and repeating “I do not have time to spend the day in the ER, we have so much to do” in my head. Carnet and our coach looked on in horror asking if I was okay.
Because he’d had a similar shoulder injury in the past, Carnet knew what to do when I asked for help. Without hesitation he grabbed my arm and gently, but with enough force, pushed it back into place. A wave of gratitude and relief washed over me. We left class with a real battle story to laugh about, but in all honesty, I appreciated his confidence so much at that moment. I now know exactly how he’ll respond to a crisis, and that’s very reassuring.
We keep each other accountable…
I’m a big proponent of the morning workout, but it’s a hard habit to start. I’ve found that it takes me a few weeks to get into an early-hours fitness groove, but only a couple of days to fall out of it. My competitive streak — and Carnet’s as well — has helped us stay on track. At 7 AM, I’m tired and it’s dark out, but damned if I’m going to not show up when I know he’s going to be there. An hour later, it’s 8 AM, we’re wide awake, invigorated, and both done with our workout for the day. We’re also ready to cook a quiet breakfast in the office and debrief before anyone else gets in.
We’re getting stronger(ish) together…
A big part of CrossFit is vocally cheering each other on and who better to cheer for then your work counterpart? I’m still on the fence about how much I’ll ever improve, but I’ve already seen Carnet get more powerful in his lifting. Having this routine keeps us more focused — if constantly sore and hobbling a little — on the job and helps us celebrate off the job wins together as well.
We tease and challenge each other…
We can also find things to rib one another about other than work, which can lead to underlying resentment over time. When I wince as I sit down to a meeting, he knows it’s the 200 front squats that I had to suffer through this morning. I think I speak for both of us when I say that we both try a little harder in those WODs knowing the other is by our side.
We (hopefully) set a good example for our team…
This one you’ll have to ask the team about, but I’d like to think that working out together shows the company that we’re a solid unit. We have our fair share of conversations about CrossFit — the first rule of being a CrossFitter is that you love to talk about CrossFit — which keeps us visibly on the same team.
Not only do we remain committed to our health, important to our Spright mission, but we’re committed to each other.
I plan to be there when Carnet gets to a place where he’s confidently crushing pull-ups, rope climbs, and power cleans. And hopefully he’ll be there as I continue to lift weight overhead — and keep my shoulder intact.
(Note: These images are not CrossFit. They’re from a TRX class, but squats are squats.)
Originally published at spright.com on October 10, 2015.
