Goodbye Results... to start CrossFit!

 Yesterday was my last day at my gym. I know, I loved it to. The clean locker-room, the sauna, the pool with a treadmill, the amazing spin bikes, the awesome instructor, the convenience of it being right across the street from my office.

I've spent many a lunchtime there doing strength training, stretching, running, biking... it was sad to leave. The membership people sure do know how to send you out right. The complimented my "athletic body" (Whaaa? Me?!), and all yelled out a great farewell as I left. Goodbye Results Gym. I will miss you.

Now, CrossFit has a bad(ish) rep. It's cultish and intense. But, from what I've seen, it works. The people who I know that do CrossFit have total body physique and strength.

I've been trying to apply CrossFit ideas to my own workouts: "varied, full body, functional, multi-joint movements." I've been jumping up and down on a block, noticing how I use everything to get to the top and my heartrate spikes. I've been creating circuits of planks, pushups, lunges, and jumps, and competing with friends. I've been using kettleballs, doing cleans, deadlifts, squats, and pullups. Over the last month, I've noticed how much my core strength has improved and  how easy a 25lb kettleball is to whip around and lift up. 


I decided to focus on full body strength when I realized that I could run 100 miles but couldn't do a pull-up. When I was weeks away from Grindstone, I felt so weak and out of shape. How dare I attempt such a crazy athletic feat when I still got winded running uphill and couldn't lift my body weight?

The dude from District CrossFit that
kicked my butt in just 7 minutes.

I love the idea of CrossFit: fitness for the sake of being able to do more. While yes, my friend who does it has the most amazing abs I've ever seen in real life, the CrossFit workouts are designed to create a body that can do more than just run, or weight lift, or row, or do gymnastics. It's designed to make you good at all of these things, so that you can lift your heavy carry-on out of the overhead bins and run to the next plane. 

 

Also, without running or being able to race, I need motivation. I need something to get me fired up about fitness so that when I show up at the MMT start line, I've had months of good training. Every CrossFit workout is a competition. Gymnastics was the first sport I ever did, and I'm kind of excited to be doing some of those workouts again.

Trail running does require total body strength, and I know that even though pull-ups have little to do with running, it will make me a better runner, a better athlete, and open up doors to new activities, friends, and challenges.