I have just finished my first year as a Crossfitter and I have to say I am well and truly hooked. To challenge your body and mind on a daily basis and see the amazing things that you can do if you put your mind to it. Watching other people doing the same thing, is inspirational to me. It`s now got a point where I can’t imagine never having Crossfit, and the people around it in my life.
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The number one thing that I have taken from my first year is that it is not a “6-week fitness program”.
Crossfit to me is a little bit at a time.
Which is one of the main reasons I love it. When I first started training I had never done any gymnastics, Olympic lifting or strongman workouts before, so they all came as a bit of a shock. I tried to become good at everything too quickly and became frustrated when things were hard or I couldn’t do them. I happened to watch a YouTube clip one day where someone was talking about the Japanese concept of Kaizen, which means constant progression/improvement. They discussed the fact that Crossfit is a philosophy or lifestyle rather than a program. You can’t master all elements of it in one go, but instead should focus on improving slowly in a controlled manner.
This thought changed the way I viewed it and I hope will resonate with people that are just starting out. Don’t look at Crossfit as something that you will master quickly, but rather focus on small improvements across the different areas. I now spend a couple of weeks at a time before/after WOD’s practising one area to try and get that a little better and then rotate around to different elements that I need to work on.
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As you start to progress in a number of areas you will become amazed at how much the movements overlap, which is the genius of Crossfit as functional movement. Get better at overhead squats and your snatches will improve. Get stronger overhead and your HSPU will improve. Do lots of deep ring dips or russian dips (if you don’t know what these are Google them they are awesome!) and muscle up transitions will become a breeze. Front squats will help with thrusters and proper air squats will help with just about everything!
I’ve realised that Crossfit isn’t a fitness craze, but rather a way for you to be able to make your body do whatever is required of it at a given time: lifting, carrying, running, jumping etc. and you can’t do all of that at once, but rather a little bit at a time.
