By Richard Tardif
Last week I had a great workout. It left me exhausted and somehow wanting more. Yes, I took a 
session, something I said I would never do. CrossFit is a conditioning program that mixes Olympic weightlifting, powerlifting, calisthenics, gymnastics, sprints, plyometrics, and incorporates hard-to-do exercises like rope climbing with a weight vest and push-ups with weights on your back. Theses workouts are short, intense, timed and constantly changing and are considered high-voltage.
It’s an exquisitely punishing system of a combination of exercises that started as an online phenomenon, then paved the way for more than 10,000 CrossFit locations across North America. It’s that popular.
CrossFitters, and I know a few of them, often refer to this form of workout as getting to the mess-you-up moment, the recognition of spent euphoria after some creative and inventive combination of exercises. You’re the sorest you’ve been in years, and the most satisfied.
There is a cautious side.
These combinations of exercises not programed and at random, and almost strung together at the last-minute seem strange and reckless and maybe dangerous. It is risky and unhinged, many fitness trainers write. Here is a fitness routine that has sent people to the hospital, though, in fairness, some of these were extreme cases. Most CrossFit centres are taking safety measures as a priority, without losing the mess-you-up.
Led by Greg Glassman, a living recklessly rebel type of man who, in a 2006 CrossFit.com comment, wrote, “We have a therapy for injuries at CrossFit called STFU.” The box, as they call each of their gyms, is open space, with rubber floors and high ceiling, and barbells and plates, kettle bells, medicine balls, jump ropes, rowing machines arranged around a perimeter.
I was intrigued.I did one CrossFit session. “Get it done! Finish it out! Almost there! Finish it! Arrgghhhhhh!” shouted all the participants. When I was done stepping up on boxes and jumping rope, and pushing up, I was done. Not everyone around me was done. Some people, laying flat out and breathing like whales on the rubber floor, love it.These were experienced CrossFitters.
Not everyone survives. Read more about the dangers of CrossFitting.
The real danger is to new CrossFitters, like myself. Beginners can perform the workouts, and we have to start somewhere. I was warned to tell the difference between training to failure and simply getting a good workout. Too much, well, is too much. I also realized that some of the lifts require Herculean type strength combined with technique. That is why I was done – I’m not Hercules!
CrossFit is not for me. It is, however, good for some who dislikes routine and has reached a peak of health and fitness. As in all new things, go at it at a pace that keeps you safe, and gradually build up.
