CrossFit

Quin and I shared a Subway sub for dinner yesterday while Joan and Bailey were at the Rent show.  Still down to one car, Quin and I walked the short mile from Subway to home; but before we left the shopping center, we chanced upon a CrossFit gym facility that has opened where the Brick Oven pizza place used to be.  It was open air and there were a couple of patrons warming up inside, with a few buff dudes and gals hanging out near the counter by the front door.

I was intrigued by the interior, which was nothing like a typical gym.  It seemed more like a fighter's gym, mostly open space but with various items out, stacked or arranged along the walls.  The whole floor was covered, wall to wall, with a matting, and there were no mirrors on the walls as you might usually find in the weight rooms of most gyms.

One of the instructors (a young guy named Kevin) welcomed me and I chatted him up a bit about what CrossFit was all about.  It seemed mainly like a "Boot Camp" sort of all-over, functional fitness concept with scheduled group sessions or classes rather than individual programs.  Quin and I sat down and watched the routines, and I was fascinated.

The cost was quoted as $150/month for unlimited usage, which is really out of my luxury range, but I pretended like I was in the market.  Really, it seems to be pitched as something equivalent to what you'd pay for a personal trainer at a typical fitness club, like LA Fitness.

I went home and looked it up, reading the CrossFit's home site and also the neighborhood CrossfitPIA.com Web site, to get a better feel for the program.  I also found some background information on Wikipedia, which led me to read a very frank article about the goods and others of the approach.

So, on the strength of that research, and not sure what I was going to do for my weekend workout, I took advantage of the first of two free sessions they offer on Saturdays.  I jogged up to the shopping center, arriving just in time for the 8AM class.  There were 17 regulars there, mostly very fit athletic looking folks, but not everyone was Hulk or Bruce Lee.  More women than men, actually.  Kevin ran the show and broke us up into groups of 3.  After a series of warming up moves and stretches, he explained the session.  We'd be doing five rotations of 5 stations (plus one rest station), each of which would last 1 minute.  5 times 6 minutes equals 30 minutes.  Okay.

Station 1: Sprints...up and back along a 25m stretch of sidewalk outside the gym.
Station 2: Squats with a medicine ball with a chest throw to a point high on the wall...I used the 20 lbs ball and could barely hit the target on the wall.
Station 3: Clean lift and then overhead press of barbell (weight unknown)
Station 4: Something they called renegade push ups: push ups with feet in a wide stance, hands on dumbbells (25lbs for me) - one rep is a push up followed by right and left rowing lifts from the plank position.
Station 5: A giant tire flip.  I hated this one.  It was a big tractor tire with almost no grip.  The idea was to get the edge of the heavy tire up, slip a knee under and then reposition to press the tire vertical and topple it over.  Then go to the other side and, like Sisyphus, flip it back the other way.

Station 6 was a well received rest period where we'd mark our rep totals on a board before starting the round again.

Each rotation, my tally deteriorated until the final set I was unable to do a single tire flip.  I was drenched.  My shoulders were pumped and drained.  I liked it because it was different.  Health-wise, I'm undecided if I'd want to do that sort of workout 3-4 times a week.  I'm a little nervous now, a few hours later, now that my lower back is feeling pretty stiff.  I'm hoping it's just typical stiffness from taxing little used muscles, and not strain from doing lifting with poor technique.  That tire and the clean lifts are new moves for me and they can injure if you rely on your back too much.  I'm not sure if I did.

We did a cool down routine and the hour was up.  I can't realistically afford to join, but I did like it.  I do better with a coach, just like with the boot camp thing I did a month or so ago. And while I'm trying to keep my running to a minimum, what to do on weekends is a dilemma without a gym membership I can use when not at my work complex.   I get one more free Saturday visit, so I'll go again next weekend.  After that, I might go the ala carte' drop-in route, once in awhile.  $20 is pretty steep, but doing that once or twice a month is doable and could be an occasional option.  Better than trying to sneak my way into LA Fitness on Joan's pass.

I jogged home, and that was tough after the workout.  Fortunately, it's net downhill.  Tomorrow, I'm going to do an easy 3 mile loop through the neighborhood.  I'll consider it a rest day.

Yard work.  Must do yard work.