Happy Two Weeks Everyone!

It's been two weeks since experiment My Next 100 started! I have to admit, the accountability makes me get out of bed and go to my workouts even though I want desperately to stay in bed. Which was precisely the case this morning. Rough day to get out of bed.

I promised yesterday that we'd talk about CrossFit. If I can summarize it for you, I'll be surprised. It started out for people who were looking to forge elite fitness. Basically you military types looking to get better, stronger, and faster at what they do. CrossFit defines physical fitness as exhibiting all of the following attributes: Endurance, Stamina, Strength, Flexibility, Power, Speed, Coordination, Agility, Balance and Accuracy. All of the movements in CrossFit are based on developing these attributes. And the concept is pretty simple. Constantly varied, functional movements at high intensity. You'll notice I will never write down that my CF WOD consisted of 45 minutes of cardio. But I might row, and then do push ups and ring rows for 5 rounds or 10 rounds or whatever. It mixes up a lot of different movements and condenses the time you put into them. My heart is still beating fast and my muscles are burning metabolically for a long time afterwards.You will see a mixture of Olympic Weightlifting movements, gymnastics elements, endurance elements, plyometrics, and full body movements. You will see a different WOD (Work out of the day) every time you walk into the CF Box (it's a box not a gym) and you will notice a distinct minimalist sort of set up. Rowing machines, weightlifting bars, plyometrics boxes, kettlebells, medicine balls, pull up bars, and gymnastics rings. It's still the most intimidating workout I have ever approached. And it doesn't ever get easy, you get better and push harder. Awesome.

CrossFit also comes with it's own vocabulary. Here are some of the common abbreviations I tend to use.

CF                                              CrossFit
WOD                                         Work Out of the Day
Box                                             CrossFit Gym
AMRAP                                      As Many Reps/Rounds as Possible
KB                                              Kettle bell
#                                                  Used to indicate pounds ex. 85# instead of 85lbs

I will usually just describe the movements in the workout so that it's not all just a jumble of letters and numbers so I won't go into every single detail regarding all of the abbreviations for the movements.

So why did I choose CrossFit? I had been stalking CrossFit online for about 6 months before I found out about the "universal scalability" of all the movements. You don't have to be super fit to get started, you just have to be dedicated and willing to learn. Since I started in late October/early November I have grown like crazy in my strength and rage of motion. I still can't do everything as "prescribed" but I show up, sub a movement I can do for the one I can't, and put in my hardest effort.

WOD 06/15/12

Five rounds for time of the following:
10 walking lunges
20 box step ups
10 Ab mat situps
20 KB Swings

I finished in 30:53

Nutrition

Breakfast: 1 cup cantaloupe, 1 chicken sausage.

Lunch: Chicken bbq salad and 1 cookie

Snack: cheese, and 1 serving of popchips

Dinner: Chicken stew, tomato salad, and dinner rolls.

It's now gotten quite late and I need to get myself off to bed. We'll talk more CrossFit later as I haven't even begun to touch the tip of the iceberg of information. Think of this as a very brief intro. And thanks for holding my feet to the fire, it's been a great two weeks so far!