All the single ladies

On Christmas Day, after brunch had been eaten and presents had been opened, my family was sitting amid the strewn wrapping paper with our third cups of coffee. As conversation started to wane, a relative turned to me and asked loudly, “So, do you have a boyfriend yet?”

The question felt so incredibly ‘out of touch’ that I had to quickly choose among a myriad of potential reactions. (Do I laugh, do I say something casually dismissive, do I show my irritation?) But I somehow found myself explaining — quite eloquently, actually! — why I feel lucky to be on my own right now, and how fortunate I am not to have to take anybody else into account in terms of my decisions.

Granted, this has been a long ‘single season’ for me, and I certainly have my share of moments where I resent that fact. But hearing myself respond positively to that unexpected question also made me realize that my singledom has been a large driver of my maturity. I’m certainly not saying that flying solo is the only way to learn life lessons; I can name a dozen friends who are happily coupled and whose self-reliance I greatly admire, and a dozen others who have undoubtedly matured more as a result of being with their phenomenal partners. But, in attempting to respond gracefully to that rather rude query, I realized that I personally am a more capable adult — AND a better athlete — by virtue of having spent this much time alone.

Many have talked about ‘functional fitness’ as an aid to everyday life. If you can deadlift, you can carry your own groceries. If you can press, you can put a box away on a top shelf. But that question made me see it from the opposite perspective: that our everyday lives as singletons can also be an aid to functional fitness — and to competitive athletics in general.

The most obvious lesson is that of self-sufficiency. In the harshest of terms: there is nobody else to turn to. When you have a carful of groceries to unload in the pouring rain, or have been driving for six hours and desperately want to let someone else take over, or get home from work at 8pm and still have to meal-prep if you want to eat for the rest of the week — it’s on YOU. There’s no use even casting a thought toward wishing it were different, because it isn’t, and those emotions are simply wasted energy.

I posted on Instagram about the first time I had this light bulb (when I first moved to the Netherlands, at age 19), and although I continue to face this dynamic on a regular basis, I don’t really think about it consciously anymore. It’s just the way things are. A couple of months ago, I came out of work to find that I had a flat tire. And after the requisite expletives, my brain almost immediately clicked into the mode that my mother calls ‘Pollyanna’. I started having realizations one after the next. You don’t have anywhere to be right now. This parking lot is safe. It isn’t raining or snowing or freezing outside. There’s nobody parked right next to you. You’re here at work, where you can get help if you need it. This is a skill that you need to practice, and maybe this isn’t the day that you would have picked to do it, but the opportunity is here, so take it.

29 minutes later, I had successfully put the spare tire on my car and was on my way home. Feeling pretty pleased with myself.

One of my favorite podcasts is Ben Bergeron’s “Chasing Excellence,” not least because he often puts words to things that I’ve figured out on my own and just didn’t quite know how to articulate. Granted, I also sometimes react indignantly while listening to him, “I had to figure this shit out on my own, and you’re over there giving it away for free?!” But I can see that this long stretch of independent time has given me more PRACTICE at some of his favorite concepts — particularly stoicism. (Is it within your control? Great; then don’t complain about it. Conversely, is it OUTSIDE your control? Okay, then there’s ALSO no use complaining about it.) I’d never heard anyone explain that in ‘words’ before, but it’s something I internalized a long time ago: that I am my own first and best resource. That’s not to say I never need help, or that I never WANT help — but that I instinctively operate under the assumption that there IS no help. It would never occur to me to call AAA to change my tire, just as I would never consider using Instacart for groceries, and would very seldom take an Uber when I could walk or bike or take public transit. Why would I pay to ‘outsource’ something that I’m capable of completing under my own power?

This is true of athletics also. When the time comes to perform — whether it’s a weightlifting meet or a CrossFit competition or just another training metcon — nobody else can help you; you’re on your own. And while we all occasionally bump up against the threshold of wanting to quit a workout, I’ll venture to say that my personal threshold is higher than most. I don’t live my everyday life that way, therefore I don’t train or perform that way. I’ll scale and adapt and slow down, sure — but no matter how miserable I am, I always find a way to accomplish the task.

A second skill that’s honed by singledom is that of foresight. When you’re accustomed to relying on yourself, you start thinking several steps ahead, because there isn’t an easy way out if you paint yourself into a corner. Okay, I’m going to take a stab at changing this tire by myself, and I think I can do it, but if it doesn’t work out, what’s my backup plan? I am very good at preparation, and while I joke about being ‘OCD’ — relying on lists, keeping two different calendars, packing suitcases weeks in advance of a trip — the fact is that I am also very seldom caught with my pants down.

This, too, applies to athletics, especially CrossFit. We have to know our own capacity across different contexts, and have to be able to formulate a Plan A, a Plan B, and a Plan C. If I can’t sustain unbroken sets of wallballs past a certain point, how am I going to break them up? If I know I have a total of 100 toes-to-bar within a workout, how am I going to pace myself to maximize efficiency while minimizing grip fatigue? Mistakes are uncomfortable, and it doesn’t take many of them to start learning what an intelligent approach looks like.

And, really, the larger concept encompassing all of the above is the skill of self-awareness. People who don’t know better sometimes call it ‘selfishness’ — from the outside, it looks like total freedom: the ability to live your life on precisely your OWN terms. But, from the inside, what’s really happening is that when you have only yourself to worry about, it becomes easier to identify your own natural patterns. (For example, I know that I’m most productive early in the day, that I prefer 5-6 smaller meals over 3 large ones, that my best writing time is first thing in the morning, and that I’m not very good at being social after working a full clinic shift.) And beyond the logistical details, the next layer of self-discovery is that you learn how to gauge your emotional resources, because you (and you alone) have the luxury of controlling where you spend them. (Can I respond genuinely to that friend’s text message right now, or should I wait for a quieter moment when I can really be present? Am I feeling calm and confident enough to make that difficult phone call today, or should I sleep on it?) Saying that we ‘can do whatever we want’ isn’t quite accurate; it’s more that we’ve had the opportunity to learn how we function best, and subsequently develop the natural instinct for how to stay within that space.

From there, it’s a very short leap to sport-specific self-awareness. There’s a time to trust your training — but there’s also a time to trust your intuition. Sometimes, you’ve got light work programmed — but you go rogue, because you just KNOW that new one-rep max snatch is ‘there’ that day. Conversely, sometimes it’s peak week and your mind is ready to go claim a new PR — but your body is warning you against pushing the limits. Virtually all of athletics is a balancing act of learning when to trust your mind versus when to trust your body, and that learning curve is further honed via the mental skills we practice every day as single people.

I’ve spent a lot of time here talking about the positive aspects of singledom. There’s definitely a flip side to this topic — that of profound loneliness — which also carries over to athletics — and I’ll undoubtedly tackle that at some point when I’ve found better words. (It’s tough to articulate the negative aspects of high-level performance while also simultaneously acknowledging how incredibly lucky we are to have the time and resources to live this way.)

But for now, let’s appreciate the fact that not all of the family holiday comments were offensive. The aunt who posed the antiquated boyfriend question was MORE than countered by the cousin (a former Olympic swimmer) who circled me, approvingly touching my arms and shoulders, as she exclaimed to everyone within earshot, “Look at her MUSCLES!”