As you hopefully read in the last post, seeing that there was a CrossFit club beginning on campus really changed everything for me. I had heard of CrossFit and I had seen the Games which looked incredible, but I didn't really know how to apply it to myself. Then again, I didn't try too hard either to figure out how. Then, one day I decided to go to one of the workouts. Luckily, I had already done some of the exercises incorporated so that when I got to my first workout, I at least knew how to do everything, I just didn't know how hard it would be. My first workout was 5x5 of deadlifts working up to something heavy followed up by Fran. For those who don't know what Fran is, it is a deceptively terrible workout. It is 21-15-9 of thrusters at 95lbs and pull ups, oh, and you do that as fast as you can. Luckily I was spared and only did it at 45lbs, and since I couldn't do any pull ups, I did jumping pull ups. If anyone says that is easy, then go ahead and try the regular Fran.
After that workout, I was hooked. CrossFit was what I wanted to do, I just didn't really know how to do it. That was when I did what I do whenever I find something new and awesome. I dedicate all of my time to learning about it, from how it started, to the Games, how to program, everything. Within a week, I had an opinion on just about everything CrossFit related, and if I didn't, then I would go to my dorm, and within an hour of looking up stuff online, I could give you one.
After that first workout, all "bodybuilder" workouts went out the window for me, and I tried to only do CrossFit style workouts. I loved being able to say to myself that I was working out at a high intensity. My main problem though was that I think I was following one of the aspects of CrossFit too closely. "Constantly varied, high intensity, functional movements". I know I was doing the later 2, but the constantly varied, I was doing that too much. I would literally walk into the gym, see what was available and just throw ideas together. There were times where I ended up doing shoulder presses 3 days in a row and then would go 2 weeks without doing them at all. My fitness was definitely still increasing, but I think it was because I was coming from a relatively low place so I only had room to grow. I needed to figure out a way to create some sort of system to make sure that I was following some of the basic tenants of what CrossFit is, but I also needed a plan.
Part of the ignorant person I was thinking I could work out everyday and be fine, I adopted what seemed to make a lot of sense to me. I watched some video of Rich Froning and he said something about squatting heavy Mondays and Fridays, heavy presses Tuesday and Thursday, and heavy deadlifts on Wednesday. So I figured I'd adopt that, and then for the MetCon to follow it, I would just make sure to emphasize the main muscle group in the MetCon as well.
At this point I was definitely seeing my strength numbers going up, then again this was the first year where I really dedicated time to lifting weights. I was also slimming down, I was also getting better at "cardio" also even though I rarely actually included anything.
I am so glad I found CrossFit, but that point was just the beginning for me. It only gets better.
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