thedrifter
01-13-09, 07:03 AM
Think you're in shape? Try this
CrossFit training works every muscle and keeps the body guessing
By Joe Miller, Staff Writer
Comment on this story
It's one of the latest fitness trends, yet its foundation can be traced to our very need to survive. Cavemen and women may have never swung a kettlebell or done air squats, but they were certainly familiar with the modern-day exercise's practical applications: from throwing your kill over your shoulder to haul back to camp to stooping to pick up the boulders that lay in your way.
Into the growing mix of functional fitness exercise regimens -- programs that emphasize a variety of exercises to help you excel at day-to-day tasks -- comes CrossFit, a full-body workout that promises to work every muscle in your body and prepare it for any conceivable -- or inconceivable -- physical task. It's a workout that incorporates a wide variety of exercises -- from basic pushups and squats to flipping of truck tires -- and is different every day.
"The beauty of CrossFit," says Greg Ryan, owner of the CrossFit gym in Durham, "is that you keep the body constantly guessing."
One day, for instance, the main workout may consist of running 400 meters, then doing 15 handstand push-ups followed by climbing a 15-foot rope two times -- and repeating four times in succession -- the next may see you do five pull-ups, 10 push-ups then 15 squats continuously, as quickly as possible, for 20 minutes.
"The CrossFit prescription," according to founder Greg Glassman, "is constantly varied, high-intensity, functional movement."
In short, movement that can prepare you for everything from running a triathlon (CrossFit is a popular training device with triathletes) to hand-to-hand combat (the Marines have adopted it as their workout of choice).
CrossFit's disciples portray it as the fitness panacea everyone searches for this time of year.
"It's the best workout I've ever done," says 28-year-old Sarah Dunsmore of Durham. That from a woman who taught wilderness survival courses in Leadville, Colo., for two years.
"It prepares you for real life," says Michael Towne of Durham. That from a Marine whose real life is frequently more real than our own.
"It's a great program," says Ryan Hipp. "I can do a workout in about 30 minutes." That from personal trainer who teaches classes at the UNC Wellness Center at Meadowmont.
Just one hitch to this miracle workout: It's hard as heck.
20 grueling minutes
Greg Ryan is a lifelong athlete, playing ice hockey through college, drifting into triathlons from there and eventually gravitating to ultra-distance runs, in his case anywhere from 50 to 152 miles. He loved the races, hated the training.
"I started getting bored with the running," recalls Ryan, who is 37. "I got tired of performing one movement over and over."
He was living in San Diego at the time and walked into a gym promoting CrossFit. "I thought I was in pretty good condition," he says. "I left 30 minutes later feeling I wasn't in as good of condition as I thought I was."
He began incorporating CrossFit into his workout routine and immediately cut back his miles. "I was running probably 70 miles a week. I cut back to maybe 30, 35 for the Grindstone," he says of the race he was training for, 100 miles through Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains.
"That's unheard of in the ultra-distance community," he says.
Yet he finished the race -- his goal in ultras is simply that, to finish -- in 33 hours and 30 minutes, felt strong and was injury free.
"It ultimately made me more of a well-rounded athlete," he says.
Ryan was hooked. So much so that he opened CrossFit of Durham in August. His Spartan gym off Main Street near Brightleaf Square shares space with a mixed martial arts studio and holds what few pieces of equipment are required for CrossFit: pull-up bars, Olympic free weights, Kettlebells (ball-like weights with handles), mats, medicine balls, climbing ropes, a big truck tire.
It doesn't look like a torture chamber, but for 20 minutes on the Tuesday before New Year's Day, it filled the role for five people in Ryan's 5 p.m. class. To warm up, he had them do 50 "double-unders" -- skipping rope 50 times, letting the rope rotate twice between feet touching the ground. A brief skills session followed, this one on proper use of the kettlebells.
"We pride ourselves on the mechanics," Ryan says. "We focus on getting you to do it right first. Then we get you to do it faster, then longer."
Then it was time for the main event, called the WOD -- workout of the day --in CrossFit parlance. Today's WOD: five pull-ups followed by 10 push-ups, followed by 15 air squats (without weights). Repeat without stopping for 20 minutes.
Every day the CrossFit Web site posts a WOD. With the minimal equipment required, you can do the workouts at home, for free.
But part of what makes CrossFit attractive to its target demographic -- males and females in their 20s and 30s who want to stay in peak shape -- is the competitive element that emerges in such 20-minute sprints.
Immediately after Ryan punches his stop watch, there's little pacing apparent among the five. After five minutes, they're still going strong. At 10 minutes, there's some slowing; at 15 minutes, furtive glances to Ryan and his stopwatch become more frequent and the CrossFit credo that it's OK to slow down, but it's not OK to stop becomes a breathtaking challenge.
After 20 minutes, Ryan calls out, "OK. What did we get?" Dunsmore emerges the victor, with 20 repetitions. After brief congratulations, it's time for the so-called "warm-down": a 30-second L-sit, or holding your legs straight out for half a minute while perched on a pair of improvised PCV parallel bars.
"That was good," says Towne, the Marine, with hands on hips.
Variety wards off boredom
CrossFit is basically a more extreme version of the functional fitness trend that's been gathering steam the past five years.
"It's one of ACE's big trends for 2008," according to Laurel Gilbert, with the San Diego-based American Council on Exercise, which represents 40,000 certified personal trainers worldwide.
Curiously, the functional fitness movement began at the opposite end of the fitness spectrum. According to ACE, functional fitness programs arose out of concerns that an aging population -- 40 million Americans are expected to be age 65 or older come 2010 -- was becoming increasingly incapable of performing the basic functions of day-to-day life: putting away dishes, bringing in groceries, getting up from a chair.
The movement has since widened. Today, you're hard-pressed to find a gym or workout facility that doesn't offer some kind of boot camp or circuit training class aimed at a broad audience.
"Our programs are geared toward complete body movement," says Hipp, the trainer at Meadowmont. "We feel you're making bigger strides if you're getting strength and endurance. You may not be getting beach muscles, but they're functional."
Hipp, for instance, teaches an Ultimate Conditioning class at Meadowmont that emphasizes quick -- one minute -- bursts of varied activities: jumping rope, push-ups, air squats and dumbbells.
"We encourage our people to do cross training, to expose their muscles to different kinds of stress," says Gerald Endress, fitness director at the Duke Diet and Fitness Center in Durham. "If you're only walking a treadmill, for instance, your body will adapt to that sort of exercise over time."
In addition to providing for better overall fitness, Endress says these varied exercise programs combat the biggest bugaboo of staying fit: boredom.
With a varied workout, he says, you're less likely to lose interest. "Your motivation is up. You're more consistent with your exercise. That should be the goal of any gym, to make sure the client is doing their exercise more consistently."
Whether you're doing seated leg extensions and stretching exercises at the senior center or windmilling cast-iron kettlebells and flipping tires at the CrossFit gym, "that," says Endress, "is where results come from."
joe.miller@newsobserver.com or 919-812-8450.
Get $150+ in coupons in every Sunday N&O. Click here for convenient home delivery.
Want to know more?
For more information on CrossFit, go to www.crossfit.com
Here's the contact information for CrossFit gyms in the Triangle:
Chapel Hill: www.paragoncrossfit.com
Durham: 314-7655, www.crossfitdurham.com
Fuquay-Varina: www.trianglecrossfit.com, info@TriangleCrossFit.com
Hillsborough: 201-6388 or 732-5353; www.crossfitorange.com
Mebane: 336-255-4498; www.cjetsfitness.com
Raleigh: 877-7448; www.crossfitnc.com
For a mortal's first-hand account of a CrossFit session, check out the Get Out! Get Fit! blog at blogs.newsobserver.com/joemiller.
Ellie
CrossFit training works every muscle and keeps the body guessing
By Joe Miller, Staff Writer
Comment on this story
It's one of the latest fitness trends, yet its foundation can be traced to our very need to survive. Cavemen and women may have never swung a kettlebell or done air squats, but they were certainly familiar with the modern-day exercise's practical applications: from throwing your kill over your shoulder to haul back to camp to stooping to pick up the boulders that lay in your way.
Into the growing mix of functional fitness exercise regimens -- programs that emphasize a variety of exercises to help you excel at day-to-day tasks -- comes CrossFit, a full-body workout that promises to work every muscle in your body and prepare it for any conceivable -- or inconceivable -- physical task. It's a workout that incorporates a wide variety of exercises -- from basic pushups and squats to flipping of truck tires -- and is different every day.
"The beauty of CrossFit," says Greg Ryan, owner of the CrossFit gym in Durham, "is that you keep the body constantly guessing."
One day, for instance, the main workout may consist of running 400 meters, then doing 15 handstand push-ups followed by climbing a 15-foot rope two times -- and repeating four times in succession -- the next may see you do five pull-ups, 10 push-ups then 15 squats continuously, as quickly as possible, for 20 minutes.
"The CrossFit prescription," according to founder Greg Glassman, "is constantly varied, high-intensity, functional movement."
In short, movement that can prepare you for everything from running a triathlon (CrossFit is a popular training device with triathletes) to hand-to-hand combat (the Marines have adopted it as their workout of choice).
CrossFit's disciples portray it as the fitness panacea everyone searches for this time of year.
"It's the best workout I've ever done," says 28-year-old Sarah Dunsmore of Durham. That from a woman who taught wilderness survival courses in Leadville, Colo., for two years.
"It prepares you for real life," says Michael Towne of Durham. That from a Marine whose real life is frequently more real than our own.
"It's a great program," says Ryan Hipp. "I can do a workout in about 30 minutes." That from personal trainer who teaches classes at the UNC Wellness Center at Meadowmont.
Just one hitch to this miracle workout: It's hard as heck.
20 grueling minutes
Greg Ryan is a lifelong athlete, playing ice hockey through college, drifting into triathlons from there and eventually gravitating to ultra-distance runs, in his case anywhere from 50 to 152 miles. He loved the races, hated the training.
"I started getting bored with the running," recalls Ryan, who is 37. "I got tired of performing one movement over and over."
He was living in San Diego at the time and walked into a gym promoting CrossFit. "I thought I was in pretty good condition," he says. "I left 30 minutes later feeling I wasn't in as good of condition as I thought I was."
He began incorporating CrossFit into his workout routine and immediately cut back his miles. "I was running probably 70 miles a week. I cut back to maybe 30, 35 for the Grindstone," he says of the race he was training for, 100 miles through Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains.
"That's unheard of in the ultra-distance community," he says.
Yet he finished the race -- his goal in ultras is simply that, to finish -- in 33 hours and 30 minutes, felt strong and was injury free.
"It ultimately made me more of a well-rounded athlete," he says.
Ryan was hooked. So much so that he opened CrossFit of Durham in August. His Spartan gym off Main Street near Brightleaf Square shares space with a mixed martial arts studio and holds what few pieces of equipment are required for CrossFit: pull-up bars, Olympic free weights, Kettlebells (ball-like weights with handles), mats, medicine balls, climbing ropes, a big truck tire.
It doesn't look like a torture chamber, but for 20 minutes on the Tuesday before New Year's Day, it filled the role for five people in Ryan's 5 p.m. class. To warm up, he had them do 50 "double-unders" -- skipping rope 50 times, letting the rope rotate twice between feet touching the ground. A brief skills session followed, this one on proper use of the kettlebells.
"We pride ourselves on the mechanics," Ryan says. "We focus on getting you to do it right first. Then we get you to do it faster, then longer."
Then it was time for the main event, called the WOD -- workout of the day --in CrossFit parlance. Today's WOD: five pull-ups followed by 10 push-ups, followed by 15 air squats (without weights). Repeat without stopping for 20 minutes.
Every day the CrossFit Web site posts a WOD. With the minimal equipment required, you can do the workouts at home, for free.
But part of what makes CrossFit attractive to its target demographic -- males and females in their 20s and 30s who want to stay in peak shape -- is the competitive element that emerges in such 20-minute sprints.
Immediately after Ryan punches his stop watch, there's little pacing apparent among the five. After five minutes, they're still going strong. At 10 minutes, there's some slowing; at 15 minutes, furtive glances to Ryan and his stopwatch become more frequent and the CrossFit credo that it's OK to slow down, but it's not OK to stop becomes a breathtaking challenge.
After 20 minutes, Ryan calls out, "OK. What did we get?" Dunsmore emerges the victor, with 20 repetitions. After brief congratulations, it's time for the so-called "warm-down": a 30-second L-sit, or holding your legs straight out for half a minute while perched on a pair of improvised PCV parallel bars.
"That was good," says Towne, the Marine, with hands on hips.
Variety wards off boredom
CrossFit is basically a more extreme version of the functional fitness trend that's been gathering steam the past five years.
"It's one of ACE's big trends for 2008," according to Laurel Gilbert, with the San Diego-based American Council on Exercise, which represents 40,000 certified personal trainers worldwide.
Curiously, the functional fitness movement began at the opposite end of the fitness spectrum. According to ACE, functional fitness programs arose out of concerns that an aging population -- 40 million Americans are expected to be age 65 or older come 2010 -- was becoming increasingly incapable of performing the basic functions of day-to-day life: putting away dishes, bringing in groceries, getting up from a chair.
The movement has since widened. Today, you're hard-pressed to find a gym or workout facility that doesn't offer some kind of boot camp or circuit training class aimed at a broad audience.
"Our programs are geared toward complete body movement," says Hipp, the trainer at Meadowmont. "We feel you're making bigger strides if you're getting strength and endurance. You may not be getting beach muscles, but they're functional."
Hipp, for instance, teaches an Ultimate Conditioning class at Meadowmont that emphasizes quick -- one minute -- bursts of varied activities: jumping rope, push-ups, air squats and dumbbells.
"We encourage our people to do cross training, to expose their muscles to different kinds of stress," says Gerald Endress, fitness director at the Duke Diet and Fitness Center in Durham. "If you're only walking a treadmill, for instance, your body will adapt to that sort of exercise over time."
In addition to providing for better overall fitness, Endress says these varied exercise programs combat the biggest bugaboo of staying fit: boredom.
With a varied workout, he says, you're less likely to lose interest. "Your motivation is up. You're more consistent with your exercise. That should be the goal of any gym, to make sure the client is doing their exercise more consistently."
Whether you're doing seated leg extensions and stretching exercises at the senior center or windmilling cast-iron kettlebells and flipping tires at the CrossFit gym, "that," says Endress, "is where results come from."
joe.miller@newsobserver.com or 919-812-8450.
Get $150+ in coupons in every Sunday N&O. Click here for convenient home delivery.
Want to know more?
For more information on CrossFit, go to www.crossfit.com
Here's the contact information for CrossFit gyms in the Triangle:
Chapel Hill: www.paragoncrossfit.com
Durham: 314-7655, www.crossfitdurham.com
Fuquay-Varina: www.trianglecrossfit.com, info@TriangleCrossFit.com
Hillsborough: 201-6388 or 732-5353; www.crossfitorange.com
Mebane: 336-255-4498; www.cjetsfitness.com
Raleigh: 877-7448; www.crossfitnc.com
For a mortal's first-hand account of a CrossFit session, check out the Get Out! Get Fit! blog at blogs.newsobserver.com/joemiller.
Ellie