With all the craziness of the past few months, my workout schedule has been erratic at best. Yet, despite that, I’ve continued to teach a couple of CrossFit classes each week.

There’s a CrossFit saying that ‘men will die for points’ – meaning that, given a bit of competition, people push themselves far, far harder than they would alone. I find that’s doubly true when leading a class, weighed down with the vague idea that whatever instructor street-cred I possess stems entirely from my ability to demonstrate exercises and blaze through workouts well enough to inspire the rest of the class.

Fortunately, years of competition with my younger brother instilled in me the ability to push myself far harder than wise, for the sake of shaming others. So, in class, regardless of my current overall fitness level, I put up more than my body weight in the Snatch or Clean & Jerk, do twenty-rep sets of handstand pushups or clapping pullups. (Yes, clapping pullups.)

When I’m working out regularly outside of class, that’s fine; the instructor days don’t really make a dent. But, at times like this, when lax workout schedules leave me sustaining in-class effort with nothing but grit and curse words, the day after, I’m inevitably a mess.

Today, for example, I could barely lift myself out of bed, started the day unable to squat down sufficiently to pick things up off the floor, unable to raise my arms above shoulder level.

But, perversely enough, that pain got me to the gym. First because, contrary to conventional wisdom, pushing through a workout when sore inevitably leaves me feeling far better by the end than when I started.

Second because, unless I get back onto a regular workout schedule, I’m going to feel like this after every class I teach. And I’m pretty sure I don’t have the Advil budget to make that work.