I love exercise. But that doesn’t mean I’m good at it. Some friends have recently been converted into the religion of Crossfit, and I’ve been sadistically anticipating my chance to give it a go. Yesterday was that day. I’ll preface this post with a disclaimer: My arms are sore. Please ignore the typing errors.
When I first walked into the Swamp Rabbit Crossfit in Greenville, South Carolina, it looked much like I expected. It’s an old warehouse building right on the Swamp Rabbit Trail, a 30+ miles long railroad-track-turned-bike-and-walking path.There aren’t a lot of bells and whistles in The Box (that’s what they call a Crossfit gym), just barbells and pull-up bars. You won’t find treadmills or Nautilus equipment. Here, your body is your exercise machine.
After checking in, the gal at the front desk said to hang out in the stretching area, where everyone was beginning to congregate. When folks started heading to the main gym, I followed. Trey, the trainer, started explaining the warm-up routine with a language I did not understand. There was not enough equipment for everyone in the class, and I had no idea what I was doing. I had told him this was my first class– wasn’t this supposed to be
an intro class? Everyone else seemed to know what to do, and I felt like an idiot. One of the gals in the class was trying to help me along, showing me how to do the warm-up exercises, but that meant she wasn’t able to keep up with the class, either. Frustrated, I put away the barbell I had managed to scrounge up, and headed to the front desk to find out what was going on. THAT is when I noticed Brandon standing with a small group of people, explaining something about the Crossfit philosophy. Ah-ha! That’s where I needed to be!
Now, I’ve been through a few workouts in my day. I’ve done squats and push-ups–these are basics. Not a biggie. Except that Brandon taught me more than I ever thought it was possible to know about the mechanics of a squat, the proper placement of the feet and how to pivot the feet for greater “torque”, and how to push the knees out for the best rotation. It was like I was doing squats for the first time ever.
Once we had the push-up and squat down, it was time for pull-ups. Now, this girl has never done a pull-up in her life, and I couldn’t help but laugh out loud when Brandon insisted that I would be able to do one. But,
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| Random photo I found on-line to show what a band-assisted pull-up actually looks like. This does NOT, however, accurately depict the pain involved in a pull-up. |
do one I did– many, in fact! Brandon looped exercise bands around the pull-up bar. You stick your foot in the loop of the band, and it helps you get that chin OVER the bar. The key word there is “helps”.You’re still doing the majority of the work.
And that was it– three exercises. And then we put them all together into a beginner WOD (Workout of the Day):
Because there was a regular class going on at the same time as the beginner class (that was the class I initially tried to join), I was able to see that a class typically includes several more exercises, and it looked like they were told how many rounds to do. The instructor then starts a timer, and the participants use poker chips to track how many rounds they’ve completed, then write down their time on a big dry-erase board (see the photo at the top of the page).
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| Brandon (grey shirt) works on stretching exercises with some of the newbies. |
There’s a lot more I need to learn about Crossfit. As I did some googling, I learned that there’s a workout called a MURPH. No idea what that is. And there’s something about a Rx? I did buy a Groupon-type deal for Swamp Rabbit Crossfit, so I’ll be going through Ramp-up there to learn more. But not until I can manage to sit without grimacing through the soreness.
Note: The author received no compensation for this review, and the facility had no prior knowledge that she would be writing and posting a review. This post does not contain affiliate links.
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