Tuesday, August 13, 2013

CrossFit in Bogota



You may or may not have heard of the CrossFit program, so I'll enlighten you. CrossFit is a program that has taken over a lot of the US and is slowly creeping into various countries around the world. CrossFit has both the online and class versions. 

The class versions are in gyms or organized by trainers that are CrossFit-certified, while the online version is pretty much open to everyone. They release a WOD (Workout of the Day) online which users can do. For the class version, people may meet in a gym and do a combination of exercises for anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour.

The premise is that CrossFit is meant to improve your overall fitness by using constantly varied, high intensity functional movement. This demands the use of tools like tyres, ropes, heavy barbells, etc. as well as your body weight. I'm sure if you Google "CrossFit videos", you'd see some folks climbing ropes and doing handstand pushups. Yep, it is pretty intense.

So this past weekend, I decided that I wanted to try it out. I live in New York and I had not yet had the chance to try CrossFit before, so I decided to try it out in Bogota. When I got to the class, I could see the females were outnumbered so it was pretty obvious what kind of class this was going to be.

We started out with simple warm ups, and then some intense sprints back and forth. Well, sprints back and then squat walks forth. By the way, squat walks are crazy.

We were divided into groups, and there was a board where every group's activities were recorded. Everything was timed, and so it was about how many reps of each exercise you could do within the allotted time.


After those warm ups were over, we started with a circuit. Since we were 5 in our group, the circuit went this way:
  • 1 person holds the barbell.
  • 1 person sits on a tyre, and 2 people have to drag the tyre from one side of the park to the other.
  • 1 person does burpees at the other end of the park.
All this happens at the same time, so people switch positions as the "tyre-pullers" move from one end to the other. 



Let me ask you this: Have you tried dragging a person's weight from one place to another? It sucks! Especially since we had burpees and weight lifting in between rounds. Well, at least you get to chill on the tyre for a minute or so while someone else pulls you. At least there's that.


My whole body (especially my shoulders and arms) were in pain at the end of the workout, but I loved it. There is nothing like working out with a bunch of people, yelling at each other, sweating balls, and trying to keep mental focus. Nothing.

Anyway, at the end, I welcomed the stretching time. I think we all did. If you were thinking of trying the CrossFit program, I would say definitely take a class. Your body will hurt, but it will thank you for it. I made a ton of friends that day, and I see CrossFit in my future.

Cheers Eights & Weights!

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