A year of Crossfit

I've been doing Crossfit for a little more than a year now. It's time to post my experiences.

I found the program in late 2005. I searched blogger for "fitness" and found a mention of the Crossfit site. I checked it out, and found some great pictures of pit bulls. I looked around to find more pictures of the dogs (Fudgie and Athena), and noted that everybody shown was incredibly fit, and able to do some really cool things like handstand pushups. The videos showed some truly amazing athletics. It piqued my interest.

My background up to that point had involved some strength training and a fair bit of (long, slow) running. I thought I was fit when I could run 20 miles and not be completely destroyed. I'd never managed to break the 10 minute pace on a marathon (though I did pull off a 1:52 half marathon as a total fluke once.) I just didn't seem to be able to get any faster.

In fall of 2005, we had a flag football tournament at work It was humbling. While our team won, I found myself in serious pain in all sorts of places that I didn't know I had muscles. My core, particularly the obliques, got so sore that I had trouble sleeping. Every time I rolled over, I woke up in pain due to the soreness.

So you could say I was well primed when I stumbled upon Crossfit for the first time. I'll leave the bulk of the explanation to the Crossfit site itself (just check out the FAQ and read the postings on the message board.) In short, the program is 3 days on, one day off, including holidays. It's free, it's posted to the site at night, and it changes every day. There is a variety that you don't find in any other fitness program. You never just go through the motions- everything is for time, number of reps, or some score. There is running, olympic weightlifting, gymnastics... you name it. The one thing you won't find is "go spend 40 minutes on a treadmill, pace doesn't matter, just make sure you're reading People magazine or talking on a cell phone." Every exercise is functional. There are no "isolate the third head of the medial so-and-so." There are also very few machines involved.

At first, just doing the workouts was incredibly difficult. I had to scale severely just to be able to complete things, and even then my time was ridiculously slow. One of the benchmark workouts (workouts that are repeated periodically so you can gauge your improvement) is called Cindy:

"Cindy"
Complete as many rounds in 20 minutes as you can of:
5 Pull-ups
10 Push-ups
15 Squats

I first did this workout in December of 2005. I managed 6 rounds, and I had to use the assist machine with 28 pounds of assist to help me with the pullups. It wiped me out.

We kept doing "Cindy" every month or two, and my score gradually improved. I even managed to wean myself off the assisted pullups after about 8 months on the program. I finally stalled out at 12 rounds about 2 months ago. I hadn't improved much recently (10, 11, 11-1/2, 12), and was actually a little down on the whole thing. Crossfit teaches you to expect massive gains in a short amount of time. You just...well, you just do the workouts and the gains happen. It's hard, but it's rewarding.

Last night, I attacked "Cindy" for all I was worth. At the halfway point, I had finished 9-1/2 rounds, and I could tell I still had gas in my tank. On previous occasions, I'd done 8 rounds in the first 10 minutes, but completely blown up and been unable to go much further. This time felt different. I just kept going. "Could I reach 15? That would be great!" I thought to myself as I started on round eleven.

40 seconds later, as I'm catching my 5 between-rounds breaths, I think to myself... "well, I'm not done yet, and I've got time to get to 15 rounds by the 16 minute mark..."

It went on like that till the end, doing math in a severely winded state, trying to figure out how to keep pace. I launched into round 18 with a minute to go and finished with 10 seconds to spare.

That was 90 pullups, 180 pushups, and 270 squats in 20 minutes. A year ago, that would have taken me 20 hours, and I would have been sore for a week. I just made a 50 percent performance improvement in slightly less than 2 months.

I've dropped about 10 pounds in weight, but gained at least 10 in muscle. I'm closing in on being able to deadlift twice my bodyweight. I haven't been running outside Crossfit, but I'm about to kick off training for next year's Grandma's marathon. I'll post more about how that goes later.

There's a joke among the Crossfit following about "drinking the kool-aid." One affiliate sells a t-shirt that proclaims "it's not a cult, I swear." Crossfit has been condemned as dangerous, wrong, etc. The philosophy and approach of the program make total sense once you try things and see what they can do for you.

I'm hooked.