CrossFit: A new and innovative way to train.
Recently, I have seen a growth in the popularity of CrossFit in North America. New gyms are popping up all over the place and this workout style is becoming something like a cult. This craze has now crossed the Pacific Ocean and entered the Philippines, and I knew I had to give it a try. I was hooked right away and at the end of my first workout, I found myself lying on the ground gasping for air. Over the next few days, I found myself experiencing a new type of sore in places where I didn’t even know I had muscles. I definitely had a great workout. The amazing thing is the workout only took around 25 minutes to do, hit every muscle group in my body, and worked on power, speed, and endurance all at the same time too.
CrossFit is a workout that uses functional movements that are performed at high intensity with a time or repetition domain. The exercise program includes dynamic exercises like plyometrics and Olympic lifts with unique equipment such as kettlebells and TRX suspension machines. The workouts are structured in a way that challenges the participants to finish a certain number of reps in a specific time frame where points are given. This is where it gets interesting as CrossFit goers compete with each other locally at their gyms or even globally over websites as the workouts are uniform. This is how it becomes a cult because CrossFitters are always trying to one up their friends. This is also great for you personally as you can graph your scores and see how you progress and improve in your fitness.
Trying out CrossFit with sports media personality Jinno Rufino and Powerade’s Josh Vanlandingham
My views on the benefits of CrossFit:
- Time: If you are trying to maximize your day, you can get an amazing workout within 30 minutes.
- Easy on the joints: Most of the movements are body weight or light weights that do not put a lot of stress on your body or joints, which is great for a basketball player like me.
- Anyone can do it: The movements are easy to learn and there is little weight used so anyone can perform the workouts at their own pace.
- Easy to monitor improvement: Since each workout has a score, it is very easy to see how much your body has benefited from the program over time as your see your scores increase.
- Full-body workout: Almost all CrossFit workouts use whole body movements, meaning they work out every muscle in your body, allowing for a complete workout.
- Functional movements: Most traditional weight lifting isolates only the big muscles (for example, a bicep curl focuses on the biceps brachii). This can cause imbalances throughout the body that can lead to injury. Functional movements incorporates multiple joints and multiple muscles, including the stabilizers that are rarely trained.
Here is a video to give you an idea as to what CrossFit may look like. The big weights look deceptively heavy but aren’t because they are made of rubber so you can drop them and they bounce.
