I've been wanting to try Crossfit for a very long time now and finally decided to do the free intro session about 3 weeks ago at Rocky Point Crossfit. I was pretty intimidated to try it out since most people I know that do Crossfit are in amazing physical shape and honestly I expected it to be a lot like the typical bodybuilding gym culture but it was not at all like that. The gym, although predominantly male, has a good number of members that are female, moms and mature adults. This makes it much more approachable for me, especially since the coaches are so encouraging and expect you to be able to succeed at the workouts. You definitely don't feel out of place or like your getting in anybodies way of having a serious workout by being the newbie.
I though this was a really good time to start Crossfit since my running seems to be lacking in motivation lately and I've been doing 3-4 mile runs 2 days a week. I want to do the BMO Half Marathon again in the Spring but I just can't seem to get out of this running funk so I thought it would be good to try something very different that would build strength as well as stamina.
My intro session involved a lot of squats. I did about 100 squats in an exercise called Tabata, pullups using bands, pushups and sit ups as well as a 400 meter run with a medicine ball. When I got home I was sweating, my muscles where shaking and my heart was racing. When I come home from a run I'm usually sweating but my muscles aren't so tired they're shaking and my heart isn't usually racing throughout the entire workout. This was exciting. I was so very sore for the next several days and sore from neck down, not just my legs. It made me a bit worried about how I'd be able to manage going to a next class with such sore muscles but I've been told that the first 3 weeks are the hardest.
My first day of the 12 foundation classes was on Monday and it was brutal. The first lesson was deadlifts and I started with 110lbs, did a few reps at that and the bar felt too wobbly and light so we moved up to 125lbs and that felt comfortably heavy and my technique improved. After about 2 sets of 10 The Coach bumped me up to 135lbs and 5 reps and that gave me 'the look of consternation' that Coach was looking for and then he popped on an extra10lbs and I pushed out 3 lifts which nearly killed me. From their we moved on to Kettlebell Swings and I sucked so badly at those. I couldn't get the coordination down and do the movements properly and out of 30 I probably got 10 right. After that I did a few pullups using the highest resistant band and I hopped down in the middle of my required reps because I felt my arms where going to give out on me and I would get propelled like a sling shot. My next task was something called little Helen which was a 200 meter dash, 12 Kettlebell Swings and 6 Pullups and then repeated. I was so glad when the class was over but I felt so empowered that I was able to lift so much with the dead lift and that I could get thru such a challenging workout. Today, I am pretty sore but not as sore as I was after my intro session. My inner upper thighs and below my butt are currently what is hurting me the most which is good because thats an area that is hard to target in a workout. My back and shoulders and tummy are also sore but not nearly as bad. My next class is on Thursday and then I think i'll start going every other day during the weekdays with maybe a weekend class thrown in.
I'll try to keep you guys posted with weekly posts. I've also added a 'Before' picture and I hope to be able to update it with a significantly improved 'After' picture at some point. My goals aren't really scale related but I'd love to see some changes in definition and strength.
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