Three easy payments of $19.95, eight minutes a day, a pill before each meal, and a minimal amount of personal effort that never puts you out of breath. Such is the vastly pervasive conception of fitness in America these days. Nearly a third of American adults are obese, and twice that number are overweight.
To say there’s a correlation between the attitude and the outcome is the understatement of the century. This is when many people like to object and cite other sources for the problem such as genetic predisposition and endocrine disorders. Such arguments are akin to the pro-choice advocate who points to rape as the justification for abortion – in both instances such outliers may be real, but they are just that: outliers not representative of the greater whole.
Even those that do decide to get off the couch and do something often do so with little knowledge and thus to little effect. Not that those efforts aren’t commendable, but if you buy oils and canvass without going to art school, don’t expect to start turning out Picassos. Bench presses, calf raises, and the elliptical aren’t gonna get you to the olympics.
Enter the boys and girls at CrossFit. Started and still run by Coach Greg Glassman, CrossFit is a genuine approach to functional, athletic fitness. It relies on hard work and proven science, rather than gimmicks and shortcuts. Most workouts take less than twenty minutes (but you’re earning it for those twenty minutes), and combine functional bodyweight movements, gymnastics, and weight lifting. It’s the chief fitness program for special operations personnel and law enforcement. I could spend a lot of time and words doing a great disservice by trying to describe it in greater detail, but best to check the site out for yourself and get it from the horse’s mouth. The first thing you’ll notice is the Workout of the Day (WOD): each day Coach posts a workout for the day, so if you want a personally prescribed training program you’ve got one for free. For those who are less individually motivated and prefer a collective competitive atmosphere, there are licensed affiliate CrossFit gyms throughout the country.
An interesting roundabout connection to CrossFit. Remember the movie 300? The cast and crew of 300 were trained by Mark Twight, a once professional alpine climber, former disciple of CrossFit, and current owner/operator of GymJones. There is a bit of saga which involves Twight essentially ripping off the CrossFit model and rebranding it as his own, you can read about that here. Suffice it to say that those guys trained within a CrossFit framework.
Not that it matters, but I can personally attest to its effectiveness. I’ve always had to hit the gym for non-climbing workouts in order to avoid injury, and this stuff does the trick. It works for everyone, young and old, fit and overweight. If you’re tired of fooling about in the gym, and ready for a dose of real fitness, check it out.
Classes started Monday morning, so naturally I flew into DC at the last possible moment on Sunday night. Its nice to see folks, friends I’ve made, and all the new “freshman” walking around campus. Super-psyched to be back training on plastic at the climbing gym (not). The heat isn’t too oppressive at least.
