The first rule...

Some of you may know I'm getting into Crossfit :)

Some of you may have seen the joke about the first rule of Crossfit.

The first rule of Crossfit.... well it's the complete opposite of Fight Club....

But I promise to not start endless blog posts about Crossfit workouts.... honestly... I'll try my best :)

I had to do this one though as I'm pretty stoked since I have just completed the intro certification course. The intro cert is 4 weeks (12 1hr sessions) of training & technique that must be completed fully before you can enter the main classes.

It starts and ends with a fitness test. Here is my post after the first session and test....

We started with 4, but the end of the course there were only 2 of us left.... that young fella had disappeared so no one to really race. Except the young lady on the intro course with me who kept kicking my arse in a lot of the workouts!

How did I get on with the test.....

400m run - 1min 10s to complete
40 squats - completed at 2min mark
30 sit-ups & 20 hand release press-ups - completed at ~3min 30s mark

That just left the 10 pull-ups...and 30s  for the time I wanted to hit, but after getting up from the press-ups... I had nothing left and was on auto-pilot... it was a struggle.

So final time was 4min 23s. 23s faster than the first test, so I was happy that I was faster, but disappointed it wasn't quicker. I reckon I could have done better.

The time wasn't helped by being no-rep'ed! (If you don't complete the exercise correctly, the coach will no-rep you... i.e. it doesn't count). No-reps suck as I really didn't want to have to do an extra pull-up! Lesson learnt... :)

What else have I learnt over the 4 weeks? Counting. Counting is hard. And I mean only counting up to about 10 or so.... Ok, so some context. During the workouts (the really high intensity part), you often have to keep count of the number of rounds you have completed. That's along with counting how many reps you've done of each exercise whilst concentrating on technique whilst exhausted :) I struggled to keep track of the number of rounds completed in most of the workouts.... maybe this will help me with learning to multi-task?

The other lesson... don't let go of the high bar while doing knees to elbows... the floor is rather unforgiving!

The workouts for the intro were tough enough, so there is a mixture of feelings heading into the main classes. Will be good though. I do actually feel a little stronger and can definitely see Crossfit doing good things for my strength and fitness. Who knows.... you might even see me in some comp photos like the ones I took last weekend :)

If you're curious as to what Crossfit is and why I'm giving it a go. then check out this poster I found on the interwebs... I reckon this sums it up nicely: