What is CrossFit? Ok, I will admit the first time I saw the word was on a pair of Rebook sneakers. The style was appealing, they were comfortable, I bought them. The shoes never entered a gym, but they were great for walking around. Especially on days that required a lot of foot traffic. It wasn’t until I noticed these CrossFit gyms popping up that I even gave the term a second thought.
Someone told me a CrossFit gym was a place you went for an intense workout. Any workout in a gym sounds intense to me. My infrequent exercise routine consists of walking a treadmill or riding the stationary bike. No more than 30 minutes. Just enough stamina to roam pit road and the NASCAR garage at a racetrack. If I want a real physical challenge I’ll walk out to one of the tracks turns and shoot some pictures. Preferably on a half-mile track instead of the superspeedways.
Back to “what is CrossFit.” Still, no idea. Then, I was invited to cover the 2018 CrossFit Games at a Fenton’s CrossFit Tuebor West. Owner and CrossFit Coach Jamie Lasco promised, “This is a really big event. Thousands of people across the world participate leading up to the international finals. You’re going to miss some great stories if you don’t come and check it out.”
No challenge is too big for a journalist looking for a good story. So, I accepted. But wait, I still don’t know anything about CrossFit. In an effort to not come across as a complete idiot, some internet research opened my eyes to the world of intense fitness regimens. Read on to learn some facts I uncovered. If you are already a CrossFit fanatic, skip down a few paragraphs and get to the facts about local competitions.
CrossFit’s Founder
According to CrossFit.com, “The fitness regimen was developed by Greg Glassman over several decades. Glassman, CrossFit’s Founder and CEO, was the first person in history to define fitness in a meaningful, measurable way. Increased work capacity across broad time and modal domains. He then created a program specifically designed to improve fitness and health.
CrossFit is constantly varied functional movements performed at high intensity. All CrossFit workouts are based on functional movements, and these movements reflect the best aspects of gymnastics, weightlifting, running, rowing and more. These are the core movements of life. They move the largest loads the longest distances, so they are ideal for maximizing the amount of work done in the shortest time. Intensity is essential for results and is measurable as work divided by time—or power. The more work you do in less time, or the higher the power output, the more intense the effort. By employing a constantly varied approach to training, functional movements and intensity lead to dramatic gains in fitness.”
Fitness For All Aspects of Life
The website goes on to say. “Overall, the aim of CrossFit is to forge a broad, general and inclusive fitness supported by measurable, observable and repeatable results. The program prepares trainees for any physical contingency—not only for the unknown but for the unknowable, too. Our specialty is not specializing.
While CrossFit challenges the world’s fittest, the program is designed for universal scalability, making it the perfect application for any committed individual, regardless of experience. We scale load and intensity; we don’t change the program. The needs of Olympic athletes and our grandparents differ by degree, not kind.”
The Core Movements of Life
Adherents to CrossFit training range in age from teens to seniors. Everything we do in life requires movement from the muscles in our body. If you want to excel in a sport, training the muscles employed in the competition improves performance. Maybe you want to just maintain a degree of functional mobility as your body ages. Again, the CrossFit coaches will tell you, “We scale load and intensity; we don’t change the program.”
Crossfit Tuebor West’s website states: “CrossFit Tuebor West is not your average CrossFit gym. We specialize in high-quality training for our Coaches to ensure our members have a top-level experience and achieve optimal results. Safety and building a strong fitness foundation are our main focus, each member learns the proper form and techniques. While pushing the body and mind to promote health, strength, and longevity.”
CrossFit as a Competition
Last year the 2017 CrossFit games saw over 380,000 people entered. Yes Jamie, that constitutes a really big event. Competitions begin at the local level in CrossFit affiliates like Tuebor West. Entry is open to anyone 14 years of age and older. This local competition is called “The Open.” For five consecutive weeks, February 22 to March 26 a “Workout of the Day” (WOD) is published on Thursday. Competitors have until the following Monday to complete the workout and post their results. Keeping the WOD a secret until the last minute is a key. Competitors cannot ignore their complete fitness routine to focus on just the aspect that is scored for the weekly competition.
The Regionals
“The Open offers two versions of each workout, scaled and Rx’d. The scaled option makes the event all-inclusive. All athletes can compare their results to others worldwide, regionally, by age or within their own gyms.” Winners “the fittest” advance to the regional competition.
Regionals for competitors in our area are held in Nashville, Tennessee the weekend of May 25th through the 27th. A total of 20 individuals and 15 teams will qualify from the Open.
The Finals
The top 40 individuals move on to the finals. The 2018 Reebok CrossFit Games finals are to be held August 1-5, 2018 at the Alliant Energy Center in Madison, Wisconsin. The total purse for 2017 was $2.4 million. Wow! In individual competition, first place paid $285,000. The top team earned $100,000 and the winner of the Master’s division took home $10,000. That’s worth getting excited about.
The Lasco Press Coverage
The Lasco press will continue to report on preparations for The Open following Tuebor West CrossFit. We will bring you the results of the weekly competitions and pictures of the events. As always, we will look for the interesting individual stories, the fun stuff. That our readers have come to expect. Stay tuned, or like Jamie said, “you’re going to miss some good stories.”
Click to Follow Steve
