fun

I have climbed more this summer than I have in the past four years because I am having fun.  For a decade I spent the majority of my time climbing.   My passion for the sport waned after I did too much of it.  I developed a skewed perspective of cragging that has taken me several years of not climbing to figure out.  My love became an obsession which then morphed into frustration.  What had been my raison d'etre became onerous.  Towards the end I felt like I was going to work at a factory:  I had to get in my laps, bag my endorphin high and get home in time to make dinner.  This scenario was played out every afternoon after work, if it wasn't raining, and on weekends when all day attendance on both Saturday and Sunday was mandatory.  The only reason for a break was bad weather or, God forbid, an injury.  After a season of preferring yard work to climbing, my partners stopped calling and I was free to pursue my new passion - CrossFit.

I have been a CrossFit instructor for four years and have enjoyed working with clients and learning new fitness modalities.  Because CrossFit is the latest exercise craze that has taken the country by storm it has been the subject of much debate in the fitness community.  Overall I have benefited from the CrossFit model.  I have always cross-trained and I was excited to learn that there was an organization devoted to that activity.

CrossFit has been faulted for its use of kipping pullups and box jumps due to a significant occurrence of shoulder injuries in the former and ruptured Achilles tendons in the latter.  Every sport has risks that are unique to that particular discipline and dangers that are shared across all training modalities.  Over training and burnout are hazards common to all sports (even curling).

The other discipline that CrossFit has popularized in the fitness community is the Olympic lifts.  Olympic lifts are poetic in their grace, speed, accuracy and power (not to mention the classical implications of overcoming one's demons by lifting them over one's head and then dropping them on the ground).  The challenge is to educate clients so that they can perform these lifts safely.  When new clients see people snatching in the gym their jaws drop.  They soon discover that there is a long steep learning curve involved in gaining lifting proficiency and many try to shorten this process.  This can lead to injury.  I am not a fan of performing multiple repetitions of these or power lifts in a short period of time.  This gets back to earlier posts focusing on discretion.  If you engage in workouts that include a hundred snatches in 20 minutes, make certain that you are throwing the weight that is correct for you.  What is written on the board is a suggestion.  If you are uncertain about how much weight to use ask the coach for advice.

My enthusiasm for CrossFit has waned on occasion and in all of these cases the reason was the same - I was over-training because my expectations were not realistic.  CrossFit workouts can be brutal and if you are not eating enough (wholesome) food, sleeping well or are training too frequently you will burn out.  The problem I see with new CrossFit clients is that they quickly become enamored with the routines, so they try to train every day.  You can work up to Cross-fitting every day (although I don't recommend this) but you should never throw yourself into a demanding exercise routine of any sort until you have been ramped up to a high level of performance.

Learning to set yourself up for success is probably the best concept you can take away from any sport, so  keep experimenting within the frame-work of honesty.  Challenging yourself only works when you set realistic goals, otherwise you are entering the world of masochism (which is o.k. if you are 21 or older).  Pace yourself and then you can have fun!