Tag: crossfit
The Beginner CrossFit Workout That Will Make You Come Back For More

The Beginner CrossFit Workout That Will Make You Come Back For More

By Emily Abbate, rodalewellness.com (TNS)

To say that watching the 2015 CrossFit Games may have been intimidating, well, that’s an understatement. Completing a total of 13 events that included everything from paddleboarding to wearning a 20-pound weight vest to run one mile, do 100 pullups, 200 pushups, 300 air squats and then run another mile is no easy task.

But for beginners, watching a competition with that sort of intensity can make the sport as a whole majorly unattractive.

“The biggest thing is separating CrossFit as a sport, and CrossFit as a form of fitness,” said Liz Adams, coach at CrossFit Fifth Avenue in New York City. “(In reality) CrossFit as a form of fitness is what the other 95 percent of people are doing in their local gyms everyday. Functional movements practiced at a high intensity that can be universally scalable. You don’t have to have any athletic background to be able to do CrossFit. There’s a big misconception that you have to be this elite athlete and it couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, a large percentage of my members don’t have any athletic background at all. Everything we do in CrossFit can be scaled and modified to any skill level.”

Adams recommends this beginner CrossFit workout to get you started. Do three rounds, 1 minute per station.

Bodyweight Squat
Begin standing with your feet slightly wider than hip-width and your toes turned out slightly. Your hands are by your sides with your palms facing inward. Pull the shoulders down your back toward your hips. Engage your abdominal/core muscles to stabilize your spine. Keep your chest lifted and your chin parallel to the floor. Shift your weight back into your heels as your hips begin to push toward the wall behind you. Begin hinging at the hips, shifting them back and down. As you lower your hips the knees bend and will start to shift forward slowly.

Lower yourself until your thighs are parallel or almost parallel to the floor. Keep the knees aligned with the second toe and body weight evenly distributed between the balls and heels of both feet. While maintaining the position of your back, chest and head and with the abdominals engaged, exhale and return to start position by pushing your feet into the floor through your heels. The hips and torso should rise together. Keep the heels flat on the floor and knees aligned with the second toe.

Lunges
Stand with your feet together. Pull your shoulder blades toward your hips. Slowly lift one foot off the floor and find your balance on the standing leg. Hold this position briefly before stepping forward. Slowly shift your body weight onto the lead foot, placing it firmly on the floor, landing with heel first.

Continue lowering your body to a comfortable position or until your front thigh becomes parallel with the floor and your shinbone is in a slight forward lean. During the movement, slightly bend forward at your hips. Keep the back straight. Firmly push off with the front leg, activating both your thighs and butt muscles to return to your upright, starting position.

Burpees
Start by standing up straight. Bend over at the hips, pushing the hips back and reaching down to touch the floor with your hands while keeping your whole foot on the floor (your knees can bend, but you want to make sure you’re loading your hamstrings while you do this). From there, jump back with your feet into a push-up plank position.

Your chest should then touch the floor. You don’t necessarily need to do a true push-up, but you can let your knees go to the floor and then roll down to your chest without compromising back position. Return to plank position by pushing up with your hands (again keeping the core pretty tight).

Pop up using the power from your hips to bring your legs in toward your hands. Try to land on the whole foot in the same position as you passed on the way down, then stand up from there. Explosively jump upward, most people add a clap or throw their hands up into the air for the final hoorah.

Butterfly sit-ups
Lie faceup on the floor with a folded towel under your lower back, soles of your feet together knees open to the sides, and arms overhead on the floor. Brace your core and sit up, reaching your fingers toward or past your toes. Slowly return to start.

Rest.

(Note: This story originally appeared on Rodale News, formerly known as fitbie.com.)

(c)2015 Fitbie.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: Amber Karnes

Growing CrossFit Program Branches Out To Children

Growing CrossFit Program Branches Out To Children

By Kim Lyons, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (TNS)

As fitness crazes go, the workout program CrossFit has some of the most dedicated disciples.

The wildly popular, self-directed program, which puts a focus on core strength training and conditioning, has built a robust online community, where its participants set goals, share routine variations and track their progress. They’ve even developed their own language: the WOD is the workout of the day, AMRAP is “as many reps as possible” and a C&J is what’s better known to weightlifters as a “clean and jerk.” It’s safe to say that for many of its followers, CrossFit is a philosophy, as well as a workout regimen.

Chiropractor Patrick Landry, 48, a former college athlete, discovered CrossFit while training for a marathon several years ago. He didn’t feel like he was getting what he needed from his running and his judo practice and decided to give it a try. He was so pleased with the results that he opened the CrossFit gym in January 2012.

“I know there are a lot of skeptics of CrossFit, and some people call it a cult,” Landry said. “But it creates an emotional anchor for people, emotionally, spiritually, and physically. People who have never exercised a day in their lives are learning to control their bodies, to move better and have better flexibility, better coordination, and stamina.”

In the fall of 2012, Landry took what he thought was the next logical step: starting a kids program. He has four children of his own and wanted to give them options besides team sports. He now has about 30 children who participate regularly and semi-regularly in the program.

Barry Novotny and his daughter Ainsley, 12, are part of a CrossFit family that goes to Landry’s gym. She uses the training as a supplement, to help her build endurance for cross-country running and the other sports she plays.

“I think the majority of her soccer team does CrossFit as an extracurricular activity,” Barry Novotny said. “We try to go as a family as many nights a week as we can. There’s a real community aspect to it, which makes it more fun for the kids.”

That’s a primary goal for Landry: that the kids participating in the program aren’t seeing it as one more thing on their already full schedules.

“The way I teach the classes, you can drop in and out, and you don’t have to be here every day,” he said. “There are too many sports where kids are told they have to be there, at practice, at the games, and they get overcommitted.”

The gym is one of the 1,800 CrossFit facilities that teaches the CrossFit Kids program. According to the program’s website, the aim is to “provide an active alternative to sedentary pursuits, which means less childhood obesity and all-around better health for our children.”

The CrossFit Kids program is structured so that it builds mechanics first, then consistency, then adds intensity, which Sara Colley said was a good way to prevent kids from performing exercises before they’re prepared. She added that a big concern with growing children are growth plate injuries, which can result when children try to do exercises they’re not ready for.

Colley, a physical therapist with UPMC Sports Medicine and the Centers for Rehab Services, said while she has some concerns about inexperienced children possibly injuring themselves with some of the ballistic movements in CrossFit’s weight-lifting routines, like snatches and clean-and-jerk lifts, there are plenty of positive things they can gain from the program.

“It can be fun, and there’s no emphasis on ‘winning,’ which is a great idea,” she said. And, CrossFit can provide an alternative exercise for kids who are involved in only one sport, which can lead to repetitive stress injuries, Colley said.

“If they’re doing CrossFit while they’re taking time away from their sport, that’s a good thing,” she said. “And any time you can boost a kid’s self-esteem, that’s good, too. But that requires a good coach.”

She said that was an area of concern for her because according to CrossFit’s website, the training to instruct children consists of a weekend session and a criminal background check but no additional certification or degree, which Colley doesn’t think is sufficient.

Landry said he has a good rapport with the kids in his program, which he agrees is crucial to their participation.

“If I don’t know how to connect to kids, they won’t respond,” he said. “I want it to be fun for them, for them to want to be here.”

Photo: John Heller via Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/TNS