Worth of CrossFit

Back home I had a personal trainer. He was awesome. We’d do some circuit moves and some fight-style boxing. The gym membership was only 20$ a month at one of those Stuff-As-Many-Smelly-Teenagers-Who-Grunt-And-Stare-At-Themselves cheap gyms. But it had decent equipment and best of all, it had my trainer.

I didn’t even need to use the gym if I had him there. And truth be told, as long as my bill was paid no one cared whether I was there or not, much like the many other gyms I had ever belonged to – from the cheap ones to the all-women ones to the big fancy ones.

But for me – and I get that not everyone is like this – having a trainer is an integral part of any fitness routine I plan on keeping. I love to walk and bike and play outside. But I suck at holding myself accountable on pushing myself through additional training. Workout videos such as P90 or 30-Day Shred work for some people who 1) can’t afford a trainer and 2) can get the motivation and maintain the discipline needed to stay focused.

I can’t.

And I stopped trying to force myself to try and stuck with what worked – my trainer. I got a pretty sweet deal on a package deal around the holidays and bought 25 sessions up front for an average price of 30$ a session. I met with him 2-3 times a week and he kept me on track, kept me pushing my body harder than I would have pushed it myself and made the workouts fun and less boring.

And then we moved from NJ to Iowa in May. I wasn’t able to find a gym here I liked and since we have a pretty decent one in our apartment complex, I hated the thought of spending more on a different gym to try out trainer that might suck for a ton of money.

I tried kickboxing and had a pretty crappy experience.

And then reading through the Primal Blueprint forums and hearing good things from a lot of people, I decided to see if there was a CrossFit affiliate in my area. There was! Three lights away! I called and scheduled an intro session for yesterday morning.

For those of you who don’t know what CrossFit is, here’s the quick and dirty explanation becasue quite frankly, their explanation is scary: “CrossFit is a strength and conditioning fitness methodology that promotes broad and general overall physical fitness. CrossFit combines weightlifting, sprinting, and gymnastics” (from Wikipedia)

It’s basically a circuit of intense strength training that takes only 15-25 minutes (not including the warmup and the stretching afterward). It’s hard, I ain’t gonna lie. But it’s the best bang for your buck timewise and they do help you cater your training to your fitness level in the beginning. At least they should. And if they don’t, they’re jerks and find another affiliate.

I walked in yesterday and this chirpy cute little thing with a pixie haircut came up and introduced herself and immediately after that said, “Okay, this is what we’re gonna do. Run 400m. Then body rows, pushups, and deep squats in 3 circuits of declining reps 21/15/9, and then another 400m run. Take a break if you need but you can do this. Ready, Go!”

There was no sitting down and me explaining “why I wanted to be fit.” There was no judgement on my size or my inability to do any task I was given. There were no sales pictches. No fancy packets. There was just about 8 other people in their doing theird Workout of the Day (WOD) cheering for each other, high-fiving.

So I ran my 400 m. Then I died. Then I did the body rows. Then I died. Then I did the Pushups. And died. You get the point. I died a lot. And I took a lot of short breaks to catch my breath or get some water. And all the while Tinkerbell was there with me cheering me on. But I did it. In 19:08.

There are eight more “elemental” sessions, where I will do each one to learn all of the correct moves and workouts directly with one-on-one help. Then at the end of those elements classes, I repeat Day 1 to note my progress and improved time. After I “graduate” from those, I move onto regular WODs with the people who have signed up for that time slot. There are typically 8-10 people in each “class” and around 2-3 trainers walking around, helping, spotting, encouraging, correcting.

I handed over my credit card and signed up left because I know this is what I need. Short, intense training with people who will motivate me. People who will help me hold myself accountable and fit into my life with little time involvement rather than the 2 hours a day I used to spend in the gym 8 years ago.

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