Spring Break

Over spring break I went with my GF to her crossfit gym.  Even though I'm not into the crossfit culture, we still had a great time together.  I think it was a lot of fun for her to show me where she worked out every week.

The session was an actual Crossfit session that went like this:

Strength:
Hang Squat/Cleans
135x3x7

For time:
21/15/9 Ring Dips
21/15/9 Power cleans at 135.

This took me about 10 minutes.   The cleans were no problem, but the ring dips sucked.  21 ring dips requires major kipping.  I don't know how to kip, nor do I have any desire to learn.  Rings dips with normal straight form are hard as fuck.  I was basically doing triples.

The next day we went to a "Kettlebell Basics" class that was essentially an introduction to KB training. Even though we knew all the movements it was still good to work on stuff and get some pointers here and there. I also learned how to do the KB arm-bar, and picked up some great thoracic stretches.  All in, I probably did 150ish swings with the 70lb, which is a lot more than I would normally do.  We ended with a 6 minute tabata style metcon of swings and goblet squats.  Nothing crazy, but it was a nice little workout.

Opinion on Crossfit
The sessions really didn't change my opinion on crossfit one way or the other.  Generally, I think crossfit does more good than bad.  It gets people doing movements they would never do on their own.  It builds strength and conditioning to a level that is completely adequate for the normal population.  Most importantly though, people like it.  Everyone there was happy and in a great mood.

With that said, I saw plenty of stuff on display that the internet strength guruz would have a field day with: lots of small dudes, funny clothes, some poor form.  I called Matt and told him some shit that we laughed about. But the fact is, I don't really care if it makes people happy.  Who cares if the average person likes crossfit and feels like they get a lot out of it?

I do take extreme issue with Crossfit (R) corporate culture.  In general I think the HQ execs are childish imbeciles who peddle negligent ideas.  And I mean negligent in the traditional legal sense.  If I ever tore an achilles, along with 100s of other crossfitters doing box jumps, I would be considering a class action law suit.  LOL at the waiver I had to sign at the beginning of my first session.  Waivers don't stop lawsuits.

I will be completely honest here and say that I think one of the huge reasons so many of the "strong" guys hate crossfit is because they couldn't do 85% of the workouts with good time.    Some of the WOD's and movements are silly, but there is a large emphasis on aerobic capacity and true mobility.

My takeaway from my little crossfit adventure is that I would probably benefit from doing more shit I'm not comfortable with.  After the ring dips I felt like my shoulders were on fire and was worried I fucked something up.  Over the next few hours though, I realized they were just completely unimpinged.  Open.  It felt good.

I'm not going to get into a big discussion on aerobics, but I feel that some aerobic base is really healthy and low hanging fruit for most strength trainers.  I've been reading up on energy systems lately, and the fact is, a well developed aerobic system enhances the quality of strength training sessions.  Why that happens is another post entirely, but as I've talked about before, nothing is truly anerobic.

So, before I get too far off topic, I'll wrap things up.  I'm not turning into a crossfitter, but I think anyone could benefit from trying a couple sessions and seeing where their weaknesses truly lie.