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

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