CrossFit (On Ramp) - Day 1

I thought a person reading this could benefit from getting an idea about the set up of a 'box' which is where CrossFit workouts are held. 

This one is not the one I go to, but I know the 2 folks that own this one.  I didn't really want to announce exactly which 'box' I go to for obvious reasons.  Our local ABC affliate news station did a story on CrossFit featuring CrossFit Houston.  After watching the segment I thought it gave a good representation overall.

CrossFit Houston

I am going to get some of the basic stuff out of the way, because I don't want to have to explain things every single blog post during this fitness 'experiment'.  I don't want to drown this blog with CrossFit stuff, but a lot of people are interested and curious, and for me, I'd like to be able to come back to this at some point (especially if I choose to continue with CF after this).

So for those that aren't interested in it, its just 8 days of it, so my apologies!  Hope you stick around!

Let's get on to then shall we?

So after my hill workout, I did in fact go home, changed into something comfortable (and not sweaty) and laid around until 7:30 before heading to the 'box' for my 1st night of CrossFit.

Before leaving I drank 16oz of water and had a 1/2 PB sandwich on wheat.

I was a bit nervous.  I had watched enough videos and heard enough about CrossFit to know that it wasn't going to be easy. 

I knew it wouldn't be as bad as if I had come into it with no strength training whatsoever (best advice I can give a person is to have SOME sort of base on strength training beforehand) otherwise a) no way I would have made it through without puking and b) no way I could have gotten out of bed this morning.

You fill out the waiver, and you wait until its time to start.

I was just kinda checking the place out, watching a few people that obviously were finishing up from the class before and waiting on A to show up.

I thought for certain since it was an On Ramp class (prerequisite for almost all CrossFit boxes) that it would be slightly scaled back and not too hard.

Wrong.

There was very little fodder about CrossFit itself, just a get down to it, get it done attitude.

One of the 3 trainers (1 being the owner) would show the move to be done (this is the warm up portion which lasted about 45 min), then we had sounded off in 1's and 2's and we would alternate the moves across the warehouse floor as directed.

There were lunges, backwards lunges, crawls, crawl then pushup, then crawl again.  High knees, butt kicks, and when they yelled out "HIT!" you hit the floor and performed a burpee, then right back at either the high knees, or butt kicks.  There were karokes.  There were so many things that I can't even remember them all.  All I remember is how bad my arms were hurting.  And how bad my quads were hurting as well.

Once we finished that (+more) up, he yelled 'outside' and you take off on a run.  This one was a short one (400m or so).  I was so so so happy when this part came!  Pleeeeease can we just keep running????  :O)

Once everyone had made it back, we had like a minute rest before they began telling us about the WOD (workout of the day).

The WOD is posted on every 'boxes' website each day so even if you don't go to a 'box' you still know what the workout is and can do at home or modify at home as well.

So here is a snapshot of our WOD for last night:

I have put some videos at the bottom that show what these moves are all about.

In addition to the WOD being posted, there is also a chart where every students name from that class is listed and the workouts.  As you are going through a workout, you either are doing it for time, reps or distance.  In our case last night it was for reps, so each person was responsible for keeping track of their reps (which was not easy to do when you are dying).

They encourage each person to take a snapshot of the board so that you can track your progress on down the line, or they actually usually take a photo of it and post it on the calendar of their site as well, so that you have access to it there.

I will say that I can see how CF can become extremely competitive.  I am not going to lie that since my friend A was in the 2's and I was in the 1's that when I saw how many KB's she swung that it pushed me to try and at least catch her.  But hey A is 20 yrs younger than me :O)

It was an intense 1.5 hours that is FOR SURE.  I was certain that I was going to have trouble getting up this morning, but I didn't.  Sure I am sore (and its worse now than it was at 5:30 this morning, but like I mentioned above, I think its veeeeeeeerrry important that you have a pretty good strength base before doing this.  Otherwise, day 2 might not happen and well, if you miss a night of On Ramp, you're out.  Or you pay an additional fee to make it up.

Just the way it is.

NO CRYBABIES.

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So here are some YouTube videos that show you the specific exercises that were in today's WOD which was a 'tabata' session. 

Tabata is 20sec exercise/10sec rest x 8.  So that is 4 minutes.  On each workout station:  Air Squats, Push Ups, Butterfly Sit Ups and then Kettlebell Swings (girls 25lbs/boys 35lbs)

We were going for number of reps after 8 rounds which is what is notated in the list above.  I am pretty disappointed in my push ups, but I am thinking some of those people lied :O)

Air Squats

Butterfly Situps

Push ups.  We do 'scaling' which means you do as many as you can regular push ups (with PROPER FORM) OR you drop to 'girl' pushups, but still PROPER form is required or they don't count

We actually did 'Russian' swings last night which don't quite go over the head, but just before that, but this is a great video of the swings we were doing.  A lot of workouts with heavier bells are only lifted to the torso.

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Stay tuned....