I’ve gotten a number of emails from friends and visitors asking me for a little more detail about crossfit. Basically Crossfit is my current weapon of choice on the war against my fat ass. From the Crossfit main site:
Our program delivers a fitness that is, by design, broad, general, and inclusive. Our specialty is not specializing. Combat, survival, many sports, and life reward this kind of fitness and, on average, punish the specialist.
The CrossFit program is designed for universal scalability making it the perfect application for any committed individual regardless of experience. We’ve used our same routines for elderly individuals with heart disease and cage fighters one month out from televised bouts. We scale load and intensity; we don’t change programs.
So what does that really mean? My experience so far, in the past 4 weeks of fundamental training, is that Crossfit is an extremely challenging, yet adaptable, workout routine, that forces you out of your normal comfort zone to push yourself to your fitness limits, thus producing incredible results.
I had been looking for a new workout routine after months of my own personal routine were starting to get dry, I was recovering from holiday binge madness, and all my results were diminishing. This is a common problem for people and usually why people seek out personal trainers.
If the boring routine issue is not a problem for you, it probably means one of two things; either you are changing your workout continually to make sure you are still pushing yourself and doing new things or you don’t realize that your current routine stopped benefiting you weeks or maybe months ago.
The amazing thing about the human body is that it is incredibly adaptable to its environment. It only takes a couple weeks for your body to figure out your workout routine and give you only as much energy and strength as you need to complete it. If you are not changing routines and pushing yourself, your body sort of turns into that good, but not excelling employee who does what’s expected, but nothing more.
So I started my search in January for a new workout. I first came across a number of websites detailing “bodyweight” workouts – mostly guys getting fit and strong by working out at parks and on jungle gyms, or even in backyards by dragging tires and heaving sand bags around. I live in an apartment building and my gym is tiny so a lot of this would have been impossible at home, but I really liked the idea of these people learning to workout with everyday objects and environments. They were learning “functional” movements – those you could use in everyday life – running, jumping, pulling, pushing, but not in isolated type movements. After some research, and by googling various exercises I came upon some Crossfit sites and was basically instantly convinced it was the next workout for me.
My Crossfit fundamentals class has been learning the basics of a variety of forms and exercises that will be used to build full workouts from – things like squats (front, overhead, etc), cleans, pushups, pullups, jumping rope, rowing, etc. Once in a while there is a strength and form day, where workouts are what you might find in a typical gym, slow steady squats for normal prescribed reps and sets for instance. On most other days, what goes on inside is probably nothing you’ve ever seen; people swinging sledge hammers at tractor tires, people jumping up onto three foot high boxes, etc.
Typical Gym:
Crossfit Gym:
I haven’t exactly seen this going on at my Crossfit gym but it should give you the sense of how people are pushing themselves.
Many of the workouts we do are timed and used as benchmarks for improvement as you progress through your own development. I’ve done some smaller workouts that have lasted only 4 or 5 mintues as well as a recent one that was near 20 minutes. They’re all over the place and that’s why they work.
Sample Crossfit Tabata Workout:
Tabata Training is 20 seconds of max effort, 10 sec rest, repeated for 4 minutes.
- 1 set tabata bodyweight squats, rest 1 minute
- 1 set tabata push-ups, rest 1 minute
- 1 set tabata pull-ups
The above workout can be quite tough, but can be scaled to individual ability. For instance, pullups can be done assisted with a band or jumping pullups can be subbed.
The main Crossfit site posts workouts of the day which affiliates all over the country (world?) look to for their own WODs. The site offers a ton of great information but is a bit overwhelming to navigate at first if you’re not sure what this Crossfit stuff is all about.
Check the site for local affiliates – all Crossfit gyms are affiliated and trainers must be certified so Crossfit.com is a great place to start if you’re interested. All testimonials I’ve read have been astoundingly positive. You may find some negative reviews of the program here and there. I’ve read it’s not uncommon for crossfitters to throw up during some difficult workouts. Some people push themselves so hard that their muscle breaks down during the workout and can poison their blood which is called rhabdomyolysis, which from what I can tell is a pretty serious issue. To be quite honest, I’m sure this happens and is possible, though my gym seems to take care to make sure people are working within their abilities and not getting hurt. I’m hoping most people are smart enough to know when to back off.
So there it is. If you’re interested, check it out. To sum it up, I sort of dread all my workouts when I’m on my way to the Crossfit gym, but once it’s over I feel incredible and can’t wait to go back. And the best part? I’m feeling stronger than ever and dropping fat fast. Click on the ‘crossfit’ tag right below this post to see some of the recent training and workouts.
