I must have been box jumping for fitness for at least 14 years, assuming I started in college during plyometric workouts for basketball. And yet while I tore the side of my knee open once by not clearing a hurdle during plyos and trying to straddle it once I knew I wasn’t going to clear it (terrible strategy as it turns out), I managed to successfully and mercifully avoid the ole shin-to-the-wooden-box injury that is so prevalent amongst CrossFitters for my entire history of athletic pursuits which include jumping on objects for training.
Until Tuesday. At 7:30am. When on my thirtysomethingth rep of 30″ box jumps (which isn’t too shabby, humblebrag), I lost focus (friend! hot guy! squirrel! what is that guy doing over there?!) and missed the top of the box, raking my shin down the side and really, really un-gracefully falling onto the ground. Off of a 30-inch box. (and in front of aforementioned hot guy but that is neither here nor there)
Shins, see, they don’t have a lot of skin. But what they lack in dermis they make up for in damage: not much hurts more than bruises and scrapes to the shin.
I left a ball of skin on that box.
TMI?
I cleaned the wound and wrapped it up, iced it, and went on my merry way for the rest of the day until I got on the google.
This was almost a fatal mistake. Not much of a hypochondriac, the CrossFit message boards had me convinced I was going to need somewhere between 8 and 41 stitches, would be out of commission for weeks, and was obviously going to develop a terrible infection based on not having gone to get the aforementioned stitches sooner. Luckily, a friend of a friend received a gory text message and proclaimed that some butterflies and a band-aid were going to be JUST. FINE.
A fresh Target first-aid kit, a chugged glass of wine, and some butterfly bandages later, I will probably live.
And I am thankful for my resilient shin. And my other one, too.