crossfit

I’ve been a wannabe crossfitter since 2012 when I read Inside the Box by TJ Murphy. I’m embarrassed to say that nerves and convenience have delayed my initiation until this week, almost 4 years later.

This week though, I entered the Box.

I’ve been to crossfit 3 times now and although it seems to be a remarkably friendly place, I’m still rather nervous. We started with 2 foundation sessions, the first was barbell work which falls right into my comfort zone, the second, pithily titled Gymnastics, did not.

On gymnastics day I entered the Box (as part of the in-crowd I will now forever more refer to the crossfit gym as the Box) and found myself pinned in the doorway as a backflipping session was underway, stretching the full length of the gym.

Feeling uncomfortably like a voyeur I watched as folk rolled backwards and up into a handstand and then flip. There were a lot of fails, some more painful than others. Watching one chap face plant into the rubber matting and pop back up with immediate burn marks to his face was not an entirely comforting start to our beginners session. It’s rather like arriving early for your dental appointment only to sit listening to the screams of the ones that went before.

Anyway, the beginners session was fine, it just required an awful lot of scaling to get my body off the ground. Scaling just means altering the workout to make it easier while still generating the benefits of the prescribed movement. So for the handstand, I ended up walking backwards up a wall. For the ring dips, I used a sturdy elastic band between the rings so that I could use my knees and reduce the weight enough to allow full motion. For pullups I would crouch under a racked barbell and focus on keeping my feet light on the floor while going through the pullup motion.

No backward flips or rubber burns required for Day 1 of Gymnastics.

My third session was an actual wod = workout of the day.

It was a hot day and I had the misfortune of starting with a running wod. I knew it was going to be bad when we were instructed to run 600m round the block for a warmup. As I didn’t know the route I was forced to run quite a lot faster than I would like, just to keep the others in view. I arrived back considerably hotter than warm and concerningly wheezy. Throughout the next round of kettlebell swings, rows and planks I was coughing fluid from my lungs. The main workout was ground to overhead with plates (an imitation of the barbell snatch) and box jumps, cycled for 4 sets and then finished of with a re-run of the 600m run.

The main crossfit set only took 8 minutes but it nearly finished me off for the afternoon. I cycled home and had to have a bit of a rest as I felt like I’d given myself heatstroke.

Let’s see what next week brings, I’m hoping for less running and no backflips please.