Drum roll please!!! I am back.  After a few weeks away on vacation I am back at it.  My trip was definitively not kind to my midsection and I think I recovered part of what I had lost through CrossFit.  Again, probably the hardest part is getting back to it after having fallen off the wagon for a few days. This past Tuesday I was able to get through 6 of the circuits in the 20 minutes of the class (plus warm up and heavy weights of course).  I frankly thought I was going to do far worse than that, but I think I pulled it off.  Perhaps the exercise I struggled with the most was the chin-up (no surprises there), but I felt pretty good on all the other ones.  It is not going to be easy to work off all those accumulated beers and hotdogs that vacation seem to always be tied to, but I took the first step. I wanted to bring up a topic that should be taken seriously.  On my last class one of the guys suffered a small cut on his shin while we were doing the box jumps.  Fortunately it wasn’t serious but it could have been worse.  I have seen people who try to push themselves too hard and forget about form and safety.  You are far better off using less weight or jumping to a smaller box but doing it with proper form, than you are by testing the limits of your abilities.  There is a good balance between working hard and staying safe.  If adding an additional 10 lbs to your workout puts you at risk, you are better off using weight you are more comfortable with in order to avoid injuries. Talk soon