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I fairly recently changed up my workout routine and have been doing Crossfit. For those of you unfamiliar with Crossfit, here’s the definition per the official website.
CrossFit is the principal strength and conditioning program for many police academies and tactical operations teams, military special operations units, champion martial artists, and hundreds of other elite and professional athletes worldwide.
Our program delivers a fitness that is, by design, broad, general, and inclusive. Our specialty is not specializing. Combat, survival, many sports, and life reward this kind of fitness and, on average, punish the specialist.
The CrossFit program is designed for universal scalability making it the perfect application for any committed individual regardless of experience. We’ve used our same routines for elderly individuals with heart disease and cage fighters one month out from televised bouts. We scale load and intensity; we don’t change programs.
The needs of Olympic athletes and our grandparents differ by degree not kind. Our terrorist hunters, skiers, mountain bike riders and housewives have found their best fitness from the same regimen.
Thousands of athletes worldwide have followed our workouts posted daily on this site and distinguished themselves in combat, the streets, the ring, stadiums, gyms and homes.
By the description, I know it sounds really intimidating and I’m not going to lie, it’s not an easy program. In fact, I waltzed into the “intro” class figuring it would be a cakewalk due to working out regularly and being a fixture at my gym. Boy was I wrong. The intro class knocked me on my ass. Though I near wanted to vomit, I was instantly hooked and signed up for the On-Ramp program.
On-Ramp is a mandatory beginner program you have to take before you start the standard classes. In On-Ramp, they review all the highly technical Olympic weightlifting moves as well as proper form for standard calisthenics like push ups and squats. I started in October and my On-Ramp finished up the end of that month. Ever since, I’ve been going to the standard classes three to four times a week.
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My favorite part of the program by far is the olympic style lifting. I love how highly technical it is. There’s also something extremely satisfying about being able to lift weight that’s heavier than what you believe you can.
So far, the results have been nothing short of amazing. initially, I didn’t lose weight. I gained close to 10 pounds which I believe was all muscle. Issue though was suddenly none of my clothes fit (hence, no outfit posts recently). So although I was getting crazy strong and fit, I was living in leggings and anything stretchy being nothing, even my dresses fit. I was in near tears this past New Years after the realization only one of my dresses fit appropriately enough to wear out in public.
On January 2nd my box (Crossfit lingo for “gym”) launched a 6 week Paleo challenge. Paleo and vegan usually do not mix, but all in all my box is really supportive of it’s vegan community so for that aspect I’m really lucky. I’m not going to get too into Paleo or the challenge right now being I have enough to say about it to warrant its own post, but let’s just say participating in the Paleo challenge has taken my Crossfit performance to another level. I’ve increased most of my lifts anywhere between 15-20 pounds and my fitness levels have sored. I’ve also started to get really lean. Remember those 10 pounds I put on? They’re now gone plus some more as well as inches. And it’s been less than 6 weeks! So vegans, don’t dismiss Paleo! There are ways to do it and stay vegan, which I’ll share later in another post.
So the box’s Paleo challenge included eating foods approved on the program along with doing the popular Angie workout at the start of the challenge and then again after. This is to test to see how much your fitness has progressed. You also have to commit to having before and after photos taken. The challenge ends for me this Wednesday, so stay tuned for another post on my results along with easy ways to eat Paleo and vegan.
Needless to say, I’m now somewhat obsessed with Crossfit. Expect to see it as a regular feature on the blog as I progress with my training. I need another outlet besides boring Jim to death talking about it all the time!
Do you Crossfit? If so, I’d love to hear about it! I’d also love to hear any feedback my readers may have on posts you’d like to see on Crossfit as well, so if you have any suggestions hit me up.
Brooklyn Bliss 