Tuesday 21 October 2014

Off-Season Mini-post: Crossfit (part 1)

Now that race season is pretty much over, I want to try to expand my exercise library and work some different aspects than the usual endurance stuff that I'm used to. So, after doing some searching on Groupon, I found a deal at Crossfit KOA, a box that's pretty close-by to home.

A nice touch about KOA is that they have new members do a 3 day "Foundations" program, where you and up to 9 others get some time to learn the basics of proper technique for the different moves that Crossfit uses.

I'll be giving a quick summary of my thoughts here during the Foundations period, and later once I've been doing it for a month or so.

Foundation ; Day 1

I showed up to sign up for the program and found the staff at KOA to be really friendly. Multiple trainers (coaches?) came up to me while I was waiting for the program to start and introduced themselves. The facilities is pretty much what I expected. I has plenty of ropes, cages, weights, and is generally appropriately rugged looking. A class was in progress and I got to watch a handful of participants with what looked like widely varying fitness levels doing barbell squats. No meatheads, no steroid junkies, just a bunch of every-type athletes trying to be healthier.

My class started and I met my trainer and the other 2 participants (small class). For the first 45 minutes or so, he showed and has us practice doing some squats, various barbell squats, and box jumping techniques to maintain proper form. Because we were such a small group, we finished pretty quickly and so he gave us a workout. On a whiteboard he wrote;






14 mins
10 WB
10 Burpees
200m run

So, 14 minutes, 10 wall-balls (squat with heavy ball that gets thrown up as you rise, 10 burpees, and 200 m dash outside.
Wall-Balls. They suck almost as much as Burpees

I thought 14 minutes was a tonne of time to get this done, so when it came to my run, I gave it all I had. Trotting back in and out of breath, I heard the coach say "Great job Eddie, only 10 minutes left". At which point I realized that we had to do sets of the workout for 14 minutes. Crap.

The next 10 minutes were painful, tiring, nearly vomit-inducing. By the end, my lungs were burning and I was done.

So...overall the first class was pretty fun.

Check back tomorrow to see how Day 2 goes.

Thanks for reading and keep Tri-ing!

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