This post has been sitting in my drafts for a few weeks. So, um, here.
I write this with SORE EVERYTHING. Sore hamstrings. Sore shoulders. Sore palms because I had to hoist my fat ass off the ground using a rope prior to 7:00 am, but we’ll get to that shortly. So far, no photographic evidence that I attended Crossfit classes seems to exist, but I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before we’ve got some pictures to play with — because if there’s one thing I know, it is this: people love to take pictures at Crossfit.
I have found this to be a key difference between gritty Crossfit and my beloved posh Woodside: at Crossfit, you show up wearing whatevs and are photographed a lot. At Woodside, you spend $120 on a Lululemon outfit and cameras are strictly forbidden everywhere. Should you be considering Crossfit, I urge you to consider this.
Aside from the risk of being photographed at less-than-elegant moments, recall that my primary hesitation was the potential for injury. I am not yet in a mental place where I feel like I can live an exercise-free lifestyle without ballooning back to before picture-status (a whole level of crazy that we shan’t address here), so sustaining an injury would be physically painful and psychologically CATASTROPHIC. Though I felt like I’d been working with weights and such long enough that I thought I could just jump right in, I chose to go through a 2-week Elements of Crossfit training program before I started the real workouts. And by ‘chose to,’ I mean ‘had to’ because the coach requires almost everyone to go through it before getting started. Which, it turns out, was something I REALLY needed. ‘Olympic’ (I guess?) style weightlifting and Body Pump-style weightlifting are not one in the same.
During the Elements sessions, we went through form & technique (mine is…not ideal), injury prevention, general Crossfit philosophies, how to use the various apparatuses around the gym — you know, basically, we got a sense of what we were in for. Our coach also spent a lot of time showing us how to get out from under the bar if you’re about to lose it; a skill that is imperative to not hurting yourself or anyone around you, it turns out.
You know those people who are just genetically predisposed to athletic things? I am the opposite of that. So as someone who has never been good at anything athletic ever, it was really helpful for me to have someone walking me through things like split jerks or whatever. I just am not a coordinated person. I have never been able to mirror peoples’ movements accurately. Which is why I spent my youth eating meatballs and reading Fear Street.
I thought the coaching would end as soon as I started the workouts — but not at all. My gym (box?) keeps the classes to around 12 people or less, and the coach is always, well, coaching. Like, always. He seems to know his ‘athletes’ (that’s what they call them! Athletes! I have never been called an athlete!) really well, and watches everyone really closely as they’re completing the WOD, correcting and encouraging as necessary. And the people are so nice. I will preface this by saying I showed up my first day with pink shoes, a Lululemon top and a headband with pink martinis on it. And people were STILL nice to me. The community aspect of Crossfit is what hooks a lot of folks — but it can also be what makes Crossfit socially intimidating at first. It’s like walking into your first day at a new high school. To be honest, I haven’t felt that whole magical motivating ‘group support’ thing that everyone raves about. I mean, people are nice and whatever, and I suspect that my 6 am workout time may have something to do with the lack of enthusiasm and love between peeps there — but people are fine & friendly. I really do think the coach makes all the difference, though, and mine is fantastic.
So here’s how it goes: you walk in and there is a warmup on the whiteboard. Lately, ours have been an 800m hilly run, a bunch of dynamic stretches and buttkicks and things, and then we circle up and do a few yoga poses and talk a bit. Then, we’ll spend a few minutes working on a skill — one day it was deadlifts, today it was pullups, the other day it was handstand pushups (you kick your legs up into a handstand up against a wall and do a pushup upside down. This is difficult.) Then, we usually go through a quick warmup with a bar (35 lbs in my case) and move to the workout of the day. AKA a WOD. And you hear lots about these. So I’ll stop here. The whole event lasts about an hour, and the WOD is usually 20 minutes or less and goes by pretty quickly.
Am I in the cult? No. I like it fine, but I’m not all fanatical about it. I think the thing that’s difficult for me to get past is not being able to do all the shit right now. Like, I can’t do a handstand pushup without assistance. And even kicking myself up into a handstand has happened exactly once. I don’t like having to modify stuff, to struggle during double-unders and to have a small box for box jumps. I’m used to having one of the heaviest loads in Body Pump, to kicking ass in Jump Core and, I dunno, it just hurts my ego a bit to not be able to do the prescribed weight. But then, you know, all the peeps in these classes are SuperUltraFit, and that’s a testament to what Crossfit has done for them, right?
Also? I definitely don’t think I could have done Crossfit a year ago. Everyone’s different and I’m sure plenty of just-getting-into-fitness peeps do just fine, but I do think you have to possess a basic fitness level to do it.
I’ve been at it for about a month now (just going twice a week as a supplement to half marathon training and my other classes), and I can’t say I’ve seen huge results, but I’m going to stick with it for a few more months to see how it goes.
If you’re thinking about doing Crossfit, don’t think you need to go balls-to-the-wall, all-out, Paleo Princess crazytimes just because some of the people you know who do Crossfit are obnoxious about it. You can dabble in it and see how you feel. But I would steer clear of gyms that don’t require you to take a fundamentals class before throwing you right in. And make sure your coach, you know, actually watches out for his people and doesn’t let them bust their asses.
And don’t wear your favorite expensive workout top because it will get chalk and crap all over it. That is all.