City Fitness Workout Focus - CrossFit

Some of you have seen the workouts some of the staff and members of City Fitness Gym have been doing and asked "What is that for?" This really intense full-body movement workout style is called CrossFit. Manager Tom Brose wrote the following description for anyone interested in learning more and click on the above title bar for the CrossFit website...or make an appointment with Tom or Alex to try the workout yourself!

What the heck is this CrossFit stuff I keep hearing about? Its in Men’s Journal, Muscle and Fitness, even the New York Times. Well, having been involved in CrossFit for more than 3 years, I can tell you about it in more detail than you probably want, but I’ll try to keep it simple. CrossFit is known for two things: really hard workouts, and really fit people. Although lots of people will try to deny it, I tend to think the two may be connected. The approach originated in California, and went online with a free daily workout in 2003. The City Fitness connection came in April 2005, when I traveled to Santa Cruz CA to attend a 3 day certification. Last December Alex also was certified as a CrossFit trainer.

The methodology of CrossFit is built on 3 principles: it is highly varied; meaning workouts are different day to day. Movements are functional, and replicate activities natural to our body’s movement. Workouts are done at high intensity, which is what illicits the powerful response and causes adaptation to physical stress. One of the things that first drew me to CrossFit was its starting point, an actual definition of the fitness it promised. Lacking in any one of the components detracted from overall fitness. This approach keeps us from specializing in one realm at the expense of all others. Lets look at how this actually takes place.

CrossFit workouts choose from a huge pool of training modalities. Running, rowing, jumping, lifting, throwing and climbing all are tools to be used. Often workouts are “couplets” or “triplets” a mix of two or three movements. Intensity is determined often by the time it takes to complete a specific set up tasks. A workout may consists of doing 3 rounds of running 400 meters, 21 kettlebell swings and 12 pullups, to be done as quickly as possible. The participants are “scored” by the time from start to finish. Part of the motivation of CrossFit is friendly competition, so the workouts work well for groups.

CrossFit training is hard, and participants take pride in their ability to push themselves past their comfort level. Just as important is the concept of “scaling” workouts to be appropriate for all levels. This begins by teaching the fundamental basic movements, working at a safe pace, only adding intensity as capability merits. The amount of work, the weights and even the range of motion can be modified to accommodate the individual. This is what makes CrossFit accessible to everyone!

Here are more links to specific web pages:

www.crossfit.com

www.mensjournal.com/healthFitness/0602/workout_20minutes.html

www.muscleandfitness.com/feature/189

http://www.crossfit.com/cf-download/CFJ-trial.pdf