Ok so you’ve been a member at a gym for a long time. Your so ate up with working out, nutrition, getting stronger and all around fitness that your friends have called you a freak. You spend an hour a day reading articles and surfing bodybuilding forums and you eat around the clock. You also spend an hour or two in the gym lifting every day to meet strength or physique goals that you have set for yourself for no other reason than the fact that you hold yourself to a higher standard than most people. You do it not because you’re a pro or even amateur body builder, not because you’re a power lifter, or even an athlete of any sport and you probably get paid for working a desk job 8-5 Mon-Fri. Why do you do these things then? Because you like it! Your asking yourself “how the hell does this guy know so much about me?”. Well…I am one of you. The problem with being this way is that after several years of doing this you can catch yourself getting a little bored. Worse yet you can stop progressing…and this is where I was at a couple years ago.
Now I had heard allot of bodybuilders trash Crossfit saying, it’s not focused enough on any one certain aspect of fitness so it doesn’t make you REALLY good or stand out in any one specific area. I didn’t care about this, because like I said above I am not a body builder, power lifter or even an athlete of any sport. I had heard that it can strip muscle off a trainee and their strength may also dip. Will someone tell this to Jason Khalipa? This guy is one of the Nation’s best Crossfiters and he is a 220LBS muscle bound freak and he needs to quit this Crossfit stuff cause he’s making us look bad. I’m pretty sure he still has a good dead lift too.
I decided to make up my own mind about this Crossfit stuff and actually try it. No I did not abandon my normal weight routine, but I did take an extra day or two out of the week for it and gave it a shot. Here’s what I can say about Crossfit from my own experience. The shit is HARD, it might make you puke the first time….and the second…and if you do this a couple times a week in conjunction with what your already doing in the weight room you are going to like the changes in the mirror. It also improves your cardio system like nothing I have ever done. I also noticed that I felt better, my shoulders where stronger, I could run longer, bicycle faster and had more energy than before. It might be time for you to make up your own mind about this Crossfit stuff, in fact. I dare you to try it.
I started with this beginner routine I found on www.crossfit.com it was one of their “WOD’s” (Workout of the day). You see, once you get into it there are hundreds of routines to chose from and you could literally spend every day of the week doing a different routine and not do the same work out twice in months. I started out with the “Filthy 50”. I have no idea why it is called Filthy. I think the words sweaty, dead ass tired, vomit or cardiac arrest would be more fitting and to think this was a beginner routine.
The timed work out goes like this:
50 box jumps
50 *hanging knees to elbows
50 **push presses with 45LBS bar
50 lunges
50 kettle bell swings with 45LBS (sub a dumbbell if you have to)
50 ***wall balls with a 25LBS ball (if your ceiling is too low use a 45LBS plate and just give it a little air at the top)
50 Hyper extensions
50 jumping pull ups
50 burpees
50 double unders with a jump rope (if you can’t double under yet sub in 100 skips on a rope)
I’ll be the first one to admit, the first time I tried this I puked and thought it was the toughest thing I had done since wrestling in high school. My time was just under 45min., but in just a couple months I was under 30min and my very best time is 22min. I think that’s chump change compared to what I know some of you can put up with some effort. So get out there and form your OWN opinion of Crossfit, at the very least you’ll have a much better appreciation or respect for the individuals that do it daily.
CCS77
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