Day 93 - CrossFit

As I think more and more about my ultimate goals, the more I think about my "dream" body. Others may have a picture in their mind, or have pasted their head onto their dream body to help them visualize. Ultimately, I want to be fit, strong, and healthy. I am an athlete, but an athlete that no longer has a competitive sport to compete in. What does it mean to be an athlete? What does it mean to be athletic?

The more I think about it, the clearer the picture is for me. I want to model my "dream" body on the athletes that exhibit the greatest strength in all aspects of fitness, which includes cardiovascular and respiratory endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, power, speed, coordination, agility, balance, and accuracy. The best examples I can think of that cover this category are Boxers, Wrestlers, and mixed martial artists. Now, I'm not a violent person, but I like that each of these sports requires someone to compete in a specific weight class.

As a shorter and smaller person, I've always had to rely on other aspects of my athletic ability to compete against those bigger and stronger than me. My strong points in athletic fitness were always, well, everything but strength and power. But that was absolute strength and power. When you compete in weight classe, strength to weight ratio and power to weight ratio are what matters. So, my "dream" body is to maximize my abilites in all aspects of fitness, while remaining in my "weight" class, whatever that may naturally fall in, which I'm guessing is somewhere between 135-145 lbs.

I guess what I'm trying to say, is that I'm not just looking for big muscles and low body fat. I'm looking for everything else. Yesterday I stumbled upon CrossFit, which is a strength and conditioning program that combines different exercises into workouts that develop all aspects of fitness. It takes the idea of cross-training to the extreme. If you haven't heard of it before, you should definitely check it out and watch some of the workout videos. Everyday they post a Workout of the Day (WOD) and CrossFit athletes performing them. Now, I've only watched a few, but you'll soon realize that these are killer workouts. Watch these people with excellent physiques become totally wiped and struggle to complete these exercises as they tire.

This program is used by firefighters, police officers, SWAT, and military. I like to think of it as the training Jason Bourne got.

I think this is exactly what I need. A lot of the WODs look like obstacle courses, which I used to just love as a kid. Run, jump, climb, throw, lift, as fast as you can and try and put in the best time.

Well, it turns out that there's a CrossFit club in my current city. I really want to join, but I don't know if I'll do it right away, as it would be an extra cost and I'd have to drive to it. I can't really justify that now since my gym membership is essentially free (student at Uni) and it's a short walk away. It's also at a specific time each day, so there's no flexibility. Eventually it's something I would like to do though. It just looks awesome! You do something different everyday, so it's exciting and you wouldn't have to worry about boredom setting in. It is possible to just follow the workouts on your own, but they use a lot of equipment that my gym doesn't have.

They also use a lot of squats, deadlifts, presses, power cleans, clean and jerks for the weight lifting portions. I think I'll have to work on my form first before I fully engage. But this is certainly exciting stuff!

Cheers,
Raiden

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Day 93