Last weekend marked the 3rd Annual CrossFit games held in Aromas California.

Congratulations to Aussie, Steve (Commando) Willis for finishing up the games in 4th place. What an awesome achievement!

Here are a couple of video links showing the first and last events of the games. Check out the intensity!
1st event, day 1mov file
1st event, day 1wmv file
Final event, day 2mov file
Final event, day 2wmv file

Why do I think CrossFit is the future of exercise?

Because it makes sense!

Walking into a gym filled with 10’s of thousands of $$ of useless machines, being bombarded by people in suits trying to sell me memberships and lying to me about what each wonderful machine will do for me does not make sense.

Walking into a gym where I can pick heavy things up, lift my own bodyweight up, get more balanced and coordinated and work my cardiovascular system without wasting hours on a treadmill does make sense.

CrossFit will get you ready for what life has to throw at you, be it picking something up, sprinting for a bus, getting up off the ground if I fall over, pulling myself over a fence, jumping over a puddle, running away from a mugger or anything that life can throw at you, because life is unpredictable.

I have heard it said that “CrossFit teaches you not to suck at life!”

So…

The basic description for CrossFit is Constantly Varied Functional Movement at High Intensity.

Breaking that down;

Constantly Varied – One of the main points of CrossFit is to specialise at not specialising. Become good a everything, thus building great overall fitness.

Here are the 10 avenues of fitness as defined by CrossFit;

1. Cardiovascular/respiratory endurance
2. Stamina
3. Strength
4. Flexibility
5. Power
6. Speed
7. Coordination
8. Agility
9. Balance
10. Accuracy

What other fitness program covers that many bases?

With the constant variety you receieve a broader experience thus creating better General Physical Preparedness!

Functional Movements – Real functional movements, not standing 1 legged on a wobbleboard with a medicine ball in one hand and body blade in the other…

Functional movements are;

1. Natural. Its ingrained in our brains and bodies to pick things up, move things around and move our own bodies at any angle and in any direction. 
2. Compound movements, yet irreducible. Multi jointed. 
3. Core to extremity. Core training is midline stabilization. Extremities are your arms and legs. Strong core, moves larger loads.
4. Essential to Independant living. Picking things up, putting things on shelves, playing sport
5. Safe compared to non-functional movements. How often we hear of injuries from the pec dec and the leg extension…
6. Can move large loads, long distances, quickly. This is one of the main points of the program.

High Intensity – Putting it simply, this is the independant variable which will either get you fit or not. You get out what you put in!

Power = Intensity

What is power? 

Force x Distance / Time = Power

Ok, so away from the science lesson. Lets say Force is your body weight and Distance is you standing up. Now, Time is how long it takes you to stand up. So power is how long it takes you to get your body from the ground up.

Simple and it makes sense.

Am I fit if I can bicep curl a weight in my hands 15 times x 3 sets then sit and chat in between sets without raising my heart rate?

or

Am I fit if I can do 120 squats in 4 minutes and have my heart rate through the roof without stepping foot on a treadmill?

Make sense?

I have so much to say, but I don’t want to bore you, so I will finish with one more comment. Nutrition is at the base of what you can do to your body by training correctly. Train hard and don’t nourish your body with the right food and you are wasting your time.

I will expand on many aspects of the program in future entries, but for now focus on training large movements at high intensities, regularly and in different ways combined with a diet rich in protein and vegetables, avoid sugar and you are on the road to success.

If you have any questions, please enter your comments and I will get back to you asap.

For more info straight from the horses mouth visit www.crossfitcom

Yours in Fitness

Troy Shipsey

Your favourite Personal Trainer in Randwick and Centennial Park

Wow, what an exciting weekend I have just had.

I spent 2 full days at CrossFit Brisbane getting certified as a CrossFit instructor/trainer.

click to enlarge

The weekend was full on an well worth it.

We sat through 17 hours of lectures and practical workshops. Add on top of that the 3 workouts they decided to throw in to show us what “intensity” is. We completed bottom to bottom “Tabata” squats Saturday morning. “Fran”  Saturday afternoon and Sunday afternoon we did 10 minutes as many rounds as possible of 7 Medicine ball cleans and 7 chest to ground push ups.

So what does this new qualification mean to you my clients?

Most of you already know, or should know by now where my principles lay. I believe in whole body functional movements, high intensity workouts and eating according to the caveman diet incorporating a diet heavily based on protein and vegetables, some fruit, little alcohol and minimal caffeine.

Now here is a couple of the principles of CrossFit; 

What is CrossFit? Constantly Varied Functional Movements performed at High Intensity.

Why do we CrossFit? For Increased Work Capacity across Broad Times and Modal Domains.

What do CrossFitters eat? Meats and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar.

Sound familiar? It seems that I’ve been on the right track all this time, I just need to refine my processes.

So you’re probably wondering what I learnt and why I had such an awesome weekend…

What did I learn? Heaps! So much more than I thought I would! This I will impart to you in coming entries.

Why did I have a blast? I really felt what intensity is, during the workouts I took part in and by watching the instructors demo workouts. I do make my workouts high intensity, no doubt as most of you will know, but there is nothing like being around some of the fittest individuals you’ve ever met and working along side them and being pushed by them to further yourself.

I have already implemented 1 new thing that we focussed on with my Centennial Park guys by making them break horizontal in their squats. In 2 minutes, they went from barely reaching horizontal if we are lucky, to everyone breaking horizontal with their thighs and maintaining good lumbar curve.

I am not going to bore you any longer today, but I will be writing several blogs over the coming days/weeks/months to get you up to speed with what CrossFit is all about, why I think it elicits the best results in fitness and weight loss, why CrossFitters claim to be the fittest people on the planet, why I love it and why I think it is the new frontier in fitness. 

I can also tell you now that I soon intend to run training in the CrossFit style 4 nights per week in the form of small groups limited to 3 people per group. If you are interested, please let me know ASAP as I anticipate those spots will fill fast. 

Stay Fit Everybody

Troy Shipsey