Crossfit

This is a good day for a first post about Crossfit. (Check out crossfit.com for details, I strongly encourage you!)

It would take way too much time and text to describe it all, but I'll give my short version:
The basics of Crossfit are that exercise and resulting fitness are not to only prepare you for the known (i.e. sports, common physical labor, etc) but also the unknown (emergency situations, combat, unexpected physical effort). This 'program' has been adopted by many military ranks, police, and firefighters for this reason. It is also growing among many people who are looking for more effective means of building strength, agility, flexibility, and cardiovascular capacity.

I think my addiction (and yes it is addicting) is to the variety, efficiency, and competitiveness of the workouts. In 3 months, I have only done 2 workouts multiple times. The longest I have taken to complete a WOD (workout of the day) was ~48 min. The workout was called 'Murph' - named after Navy Lieutenant Michael Murphy who was killed in action in Afghanistan. It consists of a 1 mile run, 100 pullups, 200 sit ups, 300 unweighted squats, and another 1 mile run.
I workout with about 3 other guys and we compete on these workouts. We have varying levels of ability so its not hard to know who will generally 'win', but the main competition is with yourself. Try to push harder than you did the day before, don't botch the form, complete the WOD faster than last time, etc.

I have not benched in 3 months since starting Crossfit...bicep curls, tricep push downs, leg extensions/curls, chest flys...all obsolete to me. Crossfit exercises are built on full body or multiple muscle group work at the same time. Squats, kipping style pullups, cleans, jerks, deadlifts, kettlebell swings are some of the staple exercises. There is a lot of focus on short hard efforts such as 400 meter runs or 500m rows completed multiple times with other exercises in between. The WODs can range one day being high weight / single rep sets of one exercise measured by max lifted weight to other days with combination muscle/cardio exercises which the very elite athletes can complete in as little as 2 minutes.

There are a few WODs that have gained popularity and can be considered benchmarks for people to compare against each other. One of the most popular is 'Fran' (95 lb Thrusters and pull ups completed in sets of 21-15-9). A YouTube search on 'Fran' will likely lead you to some crazy fast times in the 2-3min range. My first effort at this was 9:37, which is now my time to beat.

OK - enough.

Anyway, why was today a good day? Because I completed 2 WODs back-to-back in about 39 min. (2/26 and 2/27 WODs on crossfit.com) MANY Lunges, pullups, situps, 400m runs, and hip-back extensions. I did this all on my lunch hour! I did make it back to work and was productive because I did not want to get up from my desk.

ENOUGH already! 3-2-1 Go.