Very cool article here, written by one of our members, Matt Puttnam. Matt came to CrossFit from the US Marines and also has his own fitness qualifications. He writes about his experiences with CrossFit, gives some great training advice and explains some of the reasons behind why we do what we do. Article So who am I and why did I post (and why should you read) this long post. I am Matt, member of Crossfit Swords. If the name doesn’t ring a bell think tall, American accent, and rarely wears sleeves except the one tattooed on his right arm, ha. Anyways I have been a member since June 2013 and just wanted to write something about my experience so far with Crossfit and some of my thoughts on different areas of the sport. I feel the target audience is someone who has only heard of Crossfit to the veterans of it. I feel I am somewhere in the middle of this range while leaning towards the beginners. Between the last fundamentals course and the February one, there will be a good few beginners coming into normal classes and I figured this post will be most beneficial to this group so...Please read on! Fun. Crossfit is fun! For those of you that haven’t tried or maybe just started, it may sound crazy. Yes, Crossfit WODs are intense but that is ultimately a small part of the hour, and ends up being something that enhances the bond of all involved. You dread the WOD together, be in the suck together, and high five each other after completing it. It’s hard to explain but very quickly your fellow Crossfitters become more than workout buddies and soon are a 2nd family. I don’t know if it’s because we are all high on endorphins or just cool people gravitate to Crossfit. In any case, it’s a positive social experience. We are a pretty close knit group, so being the newcomer in a gym full of people who are all friends and doing crazy stretches together, can be daunting. In general however I feel most of us are humble/friendly enough to introduce ourselves or at least take a minute to give a tip here and there to anyone having trouble. If for some reason you feel a bit alone, give it a week or two and I guarantee youll be one of the gang and have a growing love for neon knee high socks 😜 Etiquette Jamie is an easy going guy and, as I said before, there is a strong social aspect to Crossfit. That being said there are some basic etiquette rules to follow to make the best experience for everyone. It’s quite the task trying to organise 12 or more of us into the different phases within the hour, splitting up groups, organising the space, and giving last minute guidance all while on a strict schedule because another 12 are arriving for the next class. If Jamie (or Steve) is talking, it’s for your benefit. It doesn’t matter how many times you have been explained an over bar burpee, stop talking and stay quiet for others. Not doing so delays the class as people may have to ask the coach to go over it again or the coach will have to stop to get peoples attention. Arriving on time is an obvious one and a golden rule is if you are early, you’re on time; if you are on time, youre late; and if you’re late, well it’s not great. Things happen, especially if you are in the 5:30 and are coming straight from work. If it becomes a problem, try to book a different class or move something around. The hour Jamie has with us is tight, so at least starting a warm-up before the class starts will vastly improve the quality of the class you are about to receive, your performance, and reduce your chance of injury. So what is a good warm up? Well it’s in the phrase: warm! As good as foam rolling and banded stretches are, you need to get warm first and foremost. Skipping rope is a good start but needs to be complemented with something with a more full range of motion. Personal favourites are wall balls, med ball cleans, swings/pull ups, and a few kicks into a handstands. Doing a couple of these should be a priority before a few targeted mobility moves, as it gives you more bang for your buck in a warm up. REAL mobility progress is achieved after the class when you can foam roll and work on your areas of need. Another etiquette area is the setup and break down of equipment for the WOD. Its common sense but once you know what WOD you are on first, you need to gather the equipment needed. Again, moving quickly here is going to facilitate smooth transitions and the maximum amount of time for the class. If the class gets cut short it’s not Jamies fault, it’s ours and is each other’s loss. Is there anything I can do outside of class? Of course! This involves your own workouts and even non-workouts you can do to make yourself a better athlete for when you get back to the Box. Firstly the workout stuff. With no equipment at all you can do many Crossfit moves to speed up your fitness progress. Push ups, burpees, squats, skipping rope, planks, lunges and of course running come to mind but thats not an exhaustive list. Doing a 2 minute AMRAP of even one of these is a start and can keep you focused in between sessions at the gym. I know I personally couldn’t go to Crossfit say Monday and Wednesday, and do nothing Thursday to Sunday before the Monday class or I would have a serious case of the Mondays! Mobility is another big one. Mobility is one of my personal loves of Crossfit. It forces full ROM, high quality ROM, step by step bracing sequences and just general good body mechanics that transfer not just to military/firefighters/garda, but to us average joes that can get thrown curve balls in life. Mobility takes focus but doesnt have to be an hour a day. Pick an area to work on and give a dedicated and focused 15 minutes while watching TV or having a chat with your partner/kids. Hell, have them join in! A relatively easy way to find out what to mobilize is to get into a squat and hold it till something starts to nag you. It might be hips, quads, ankles or even your thoracic spine. Now you have a target and you can go at that spot today, and then target another area the next day. Those 15 minutes a couple times a week will really add up and in a few short weeks you will be hitting better positions and setting PRs all while reducing your chance of injury. Nothing to lose and everything to gain! So you’re wrecked and have already done your mobility or maybe you want to doss a bit at work. What is there to do? Read. There are plenty of articles online from sources such as tabatatimes, poliquin, techniqueWOD and performance menu about all things training and nutrition. Knowledge is power! Jamie can’t teach you everything in a one hour class and it wouldn’t really be appropriate using the hour he has with us to explain some of the finer details. Asking him to go over Turkish get-up technique when it comes up on a WOD is fine, however, not knowing what a Turkish get up isn’t ideal. Watching a YouTube video and/or reading a technique/tip article can be really beneficial. This act primes you for instruction once you are at the gym and really enhances the quality of your training which accelerates your progress. Cost Is Crossfit more expensive than a tradition gym membership? Well yes it is. Why? For one you are getting group coaching, and over a variety of disciplines. You are paying for that coach’s experience, training, and time outside that class developing workouts and carrying out other administration. Finding someone who can teach you the Olympic lifts while also gymnastics isn’t exactly common place. This is especially true amongst the dime a dozen personal trainers who have received a brief overview and limited scope of movement patterns. Personal training is also more expensive, but you already knew that. I personally know a bit about the fitness and without coaching, I would get by. Key word there, get by. Having a coach guides your training, makes you do things you don’t want to do, and at the very least gives you feedback on your movement and training. This is simply something you don’t get by casually going to a traditional gym and is why so many people have little or no progress with those memberships. Crossfit works and at 20 quid a week is incredible value for the comprehensive benefits you receive. Group classes aren’t always perfect. This goes for all group classes obviously, not just Crossfit ones. As a budding Crossfitter you have started to get the basic movements down but may struggle from time to time. You are in that rough period where doing the Rx seems right, but it’s quite difficult and form can suffer. One thing to remember is everything is scalable and talking to Jamie will help you figure out what weight/movement to do. In Crossfit we pride ourselves on ‘preparing for the unknown’ and things being ‘constantly varied’. This does not however mean that Jamie writes a random list of exercises on the whiteboard an hour before you arrive. Without delving too deep into macro and micro cycles, just know there is a bigger picture behind the workouts. He isn’t programming for you, the person next to you, or the person next to them. He is programming for this phantom trans-individual member who closely fits everyone’s cumulative ability and goals. All this while making a template that can fit someone who only comes twice a week as well as someone that comes 4 or more times a week. This is no small order, but let me assure you that he knows what he’s doing. If you really feel that something is wrong or you have a question about the programming, come early to class early and have a chat with Jamie or ask a fellow member in a non-gossipy way. There may be an obvious answer. This isn’t his first rodeo and our placing 2nd in Navan amongst more established gyms should be ‘proof in the pudding’ Not all WODs are created the same. On the face of it you can see a variety of reps, exercises and delivery methods of EMOTM, AMRAP, Chipper, ect. Each workout is going to test you in some way, but ultimately the WOD session of the hour’s primary goal is conditioning. Some WODs are intended to be fast paced workouts. If, however, the Rx weights are 80% of your 1RM for the lift, and you are expected in the workout to do 10 reps in each of the 5 rounds, then there is a problem. Even though you may be able to compete the workout eventually, you won’t complete it in the intended timeframe or likely in the right way (think lots of singles instead of 10 unbroken). This isn’t giving you the training effect that is intended, and is very likely setting you up for injury and disappointment. The strength session is at the beginning of class for a reason. You can give it your all on low reps and get stronger so those Rx weights come into range and/or feel lighter. The WOD is to train your anaerobic endurance (think lots of reps with ‘light’ weights) and aerobic endurance (lung power!). It can’t do that if you are struggling with weights that are too heavy and thus make you take lots of breaks to complete the WOD. I can’t remember where I heard it but a golden rule of strength and conditioning is where during the peak of a workout you can’t tell which is going to give out first: your lungs or your muscles. This is the ideal balance. Whether you know it or not you have probably experienced this on a scale from ‘I can’t breathe but I feel no muscle burn’ to ‘Serious burn, but I can breathe’. You will achieve this balance if you set the barbell up with a weight that is going to challenge the energy system Jamie is intending to programme and of course, attending consistently! Crossfit is ‘breaking the rules’ as to ‘what is possible’. Before Crossfit, the belief was thought that high level ability in endurance while also holding high level ability in strength was impossible. You had to take a path: skinny marathon runner or some no cardio beefcake. This has all changed with athletes in a single weekend performing high level strength numbers and at the next event running competitive times. Each phase of the hour has a purpose, so know it and hit it with everything you got! Outro I was going to put this at the beginning as an intro, but knowing that attention spans are limited and wanting to get to the meat of the article as soon as possible, I have made it more of an outro. It’s my story if you will of my initial reaction to Crossfit and where I am at now. Maybe you will relate to it and it will serve some purpose. In any case, congrats on making it this far in the post! I have been doing Crossfit since July 2013 and have been addicted ever since. I didn’t have my first experience with Crossfit at Swords, and I didn’t like Crossfit or even think it was for me after my first workout ‘Helen’. This first experience with Crossfit was in 2008 when Crossfit was still quite young and the environment I experienced it in was poor. Helen involves pull-ups, running, and kettle bell swings. As a US Marine, pull-ups (strict) and running were things I thought I had down, and this lil kettle bell wasn’t gunna stop me from a WOD time to shame the best. WRONG. Starting off strong on pull-ups, running and flinging the kettle bell around for the 1st round was relatively easy. Adrenaline was going and it was only the first round. As I grabbed the pull-up bar for the 2nd round I immediately saw why kipping is the standard for Crossfit. Instead of thinking this was a skill, I saw it as lame and my Crossfit career seemed over after mostly strict pull-ups and muscling up the KB swings with no efficiency. After a long break of essentially hating on Crossfit and its seemingly endurance/body weight specialist practioners, I became interested in olympic lifting and was always impressed by gymnasts on the rings. This led me to look at Crossfit again and so I took the chance and came down to Crossfit Swords. After about an hour of talking Jamies ear off I was happy to give this a go and be open to the experience. My first workouts were during the day and due to this the only other person in the class was usually Eric, which if you go to Swords you know is a beast and made my feeble attempts at the WODs even more shameful. I kept an open mind though and tried to figure out this kipping pull-up thing. Ultimately in Crossfit there are things you are good at and things that seem as crazy as Klokovs 120kg strict press. I have many goats as a 66crossfitter (no excuse for my lack of DU ability or anything over 6 minutes however) but one dream movement for me is the Wall Ball. This movement allowed me to compete next to Eric in Navan and with the rest of the Swords team to secure 2nd place. This wasn’t regionals, this wasn’t battle for London, and this wasn’t a top level competition. What it was though, was a perfect example of the rapid progress in fitness you can make with Crossfit and the huge amount of serious fun doing it. I hope this has been of some use and look forward to sweating with yall soon!
Posted on: Wed, 12 Feb 2014 10:39:35 +0000