Crossfit!

I did my first crossfit workout today. My friend, and fellow triathlete, Betsy, introduced Crossfit to me. She loves it and has the bug. She's going to get certified this month! I also discovered that my Trakkers teammate Mike is into CF as well. They both sang it's praises and I've been feeling kinda stale lately so I decided to rock the CF!

I did my introductory class at Crossfit Danbury. I was definitely nervous. Betsy had forwarded me some videos and of course I had googled the crap out of it and watched plenty of bad asses doing their bad ass stuff.

I tried a few things at home.

Like hand stand push ups.

Um, I couldn't even do one.

I know pull ups are a big deal too and I can do, um, ONE w/o assistance and I'm sure it ain't pretty!

So as I'm headed over I'm PRAYING I'm not the only girl and it would certainly be a bonus if I wasn't the only first timer! I envisioned me looking like a complete and total LOSER while these dudes (all muscled and what not) banged out the WOD (workout of the day) w/ me huffing and panting and dying in the background.

So I roll up and Austin and (shoot can't remember the other guy's name) are very welcoming and nice. "Other guy" and a member are finishing up a workout and I have 10 minutes to just stooge around so I look at some pictures of clean and jerk and what not. Thinking OH SHIT what have I gotten myself into.

Another lady shows up... clearly her first time as she has the 'where do I go.. what do I do?" look on her face. She's small... and fit. (she later busts out EIGHT unassisted pull ups.)

Turns out there are FIVE women and two men in our class. YEAH! Though the women are STRONG.. don't get me wrong. Ass kickers! So we start the warm up ... I NAILED it.. well except for this thing called the Iron cross where you are supposed to lay on your back and touch your opposite hand w/ your foot.. yeah I couldn't even come close to thinking about doing that!

We did some practice OHS (overhead squat - there's like this whole CF lingo thing that I am clueless about). Basically holding a barbell over your head and squatting all the way to the ground.

Okay.

I can do that.

Now let's add 20 lbs to that 20 lb bar.

Make sure your arms are straight, look forward, keep your hands back, back.. no, back.

Okay.

Alright I got this.

Not so bad.

Okay now here's your workout: 100 pull ups (HUH?), 100 kettle bell swings (okay, never touched one of those before), 100 double unders (or something like that.. basically jumping rope w/ it going under your feet twice per jump. Okay I jumped rope like 30 years ago I should be able to figure that out), 100 OHS. SHIT!

I was then told I could do HALF of the workout since this was my first one. Oh, okay!

AND I got to use a stretchy belt thing on my feet to help me w/ the pull ups. SWEET! So I did like 7 practicing w/ the two different weight stretchy things... but those apparently don't count because you do it all for time.

AND GO!!!!!!!

50 pull ups were um, hard. I think I actually only did 40. First 15 or so w/ the 'medium weight' stretchy thing and the rest w/ the 'heavy (most assistance)' weight stretchy thing. And Austin might have pushed me up a 'couple' of times. DAMN!

Kettle Bell swings... check.

Jump rope.. I did 100 w/ SINGLE unders or whatever you call them. One time around per jump.

50 OHS... so my legs were a-okay.. I could have kept going at that weight, but my shoulders and back crapped out on me a couple of times.

Note: you don't have to do any of these STRAIGHT through.. you can take micro breaks in between. Like to a count of 5 to 10.. you want to keep the intensity up.

So I did the whole thing in about 20 mins. Then went home.

I loved it. Throwing weight around and using your body weight is pretty cool. I felt like a big girl. Like not a baby.. not big like BIG! :)

Here is some video of what we did (just stuff I pulled of the net.. not us)
Pull ups (w/ the band thingy)


OHS - this chick is a true bad ass (I only did 40 lbs)


kettle bell swing


I think you know what jump roping looks like. :)

YEA! I'm a bad ass! You can be one too!!! Look for your local Cross fit gym!