CrossFitting
I learned about CrossFit from the My Fat Ass challenge that I did with some friends of mine (we hope to be restarting it soon). I'd had mixed results from doing P90X (mostly involving knees feeling like they were going to tear), and so the opportunity to do things under professional supervision was appealing.
So I joined up at CrossFit Virtuosity and started on their Foundations classes. Once I've got the basic form down I hope to move up to the “regular” classes. But I got a taste of that yesterday when we had a joint Labor Day class.
Warmup was tossing a medicine ball back and forth between partners. Then we split off into teams of 6, leaders selected by jumping onto a platform. Keith had a gleeful smile as he scribbled the task on the board:
Team workout
Sandbag sprints (each member)
100 pullups (per team; each member must do at least one)
100 wheelbarrow pushups (per team; each member must do at least one)
Overhead kettlebell carry (each member; 16kg, one roundtrip per arm)
3000m row (per team; each member must participate)
I did surprisingly-well on the sprints (surprising to me, anyway), did some pullups (not very many), more pushups, and I hung in there with the kettlebell (my left arm doesn't like doing that).
The last part was the row, and we all did 500m (except for one team member who did 250m). I had 2250–2750 and it winded me. I powered through it, kept excellent pace, and just about collapsed after. Spent 5 minutes just breathing through the pain. Then when I didn't feel like gasping any more, every muscle in my body just hurt. So I laid down for a while longer. Eventually I got up and started walking and talking. We'd lost by 24s, but had made a major comeback.
One thing I realized was that CrossFit is essentially all nerds. I never thought I'd be talking about web browsers and coding and hacking with gym mates, but I was pleasantly surprised.
And I'm finding myself eerily looking forward to the next time. Strange, huh?