Getting Started with Crossfit!

You can start CrossFit at any age and at any level of fitness, including the advanced decrepitude of life long couch potato.The key to success with CrossFit is to learn proper execution of our basic movements, and to learn them in the right progression. For example you should not try to do a thruster until you have learned both the front squat and the push press. You should not front squat until you have learned to squat without weight, and you should not try the push press until you have learned to press. Proper form for each movement comes first (Mechanics, Technique, or Form), then consistent execution of proper form (Consistency), and last comes Intensity.

We have people with rods implanted in their spine, folks with bulging and herniated lumbar discs, folks in their 70s, and people who’ve never exercised in their lives all get off to successful starts with CrossFit. CrossFit is intense, even for fire-breathing 25 year old studs, but we make the intensity relative to whatever you are capable of. The workout we give a 70 year old overweight senior on day one will be very different from the workout we give a 22 year old athlete who has been doing CrossFit for years, but each will feel that they have done some real work. The athlete may do several hundred squats as fast as he can, the senior may only sit up and down to a chair 10 times in 10 minutes, but each is doing the same movement.

Look at this video on how a diverse group, which includes a woman over 60 years old, all do the same workout modified to each individuals abilities. This is what we mean when we say we scale load and intensity, we don’t change programs. Scaled WOD.mov Scaled WOD.wmv

We almost never start anyone out with the Workout of the Day (The WOD) as prescribed. Those workouts are designed to challenge the fittest athletes on earth. So we modify it or scale it or do something else altogether.

Many people who start out with low fitness and strength levels find the CrossFit Warm-up to be a challenge, and these warm-up movements can be and often are the focus of their workout for weeks and, in some cases, for months. The CrossFit Warm-up, subject to some variations, is this:

3 times through:
Samson Stretch, 30 seconds each leg
Back Extension, 10 reps
Overhead Squat with stick or dowel, 10 reps
Pullup, 10 reps
Situp, 10 reps
Pushup, 10 reps

For any of these movements that cannot be done with full body weight or full range of motion, we have ways to do the movement with less than full body-weight, and progressions that will develop the ability to do them with full range of motion.

These warm-up movements, without anything more, are often sufficient to provide some quite amazing fitness results. But as soon as we can we teach people to dead-lift and to lift weights overhead. We have a weightlifting bar that weighs only 2 pounds, several that weigh only 15 pounds, and we can reduce the weight for these movements to amounts appropriate for anyone.

To learn more about getting started with CrossFit visit us on one of our Open House Saturdays (Free), or check out Getting Startedat CrossFit.com

Beginners Program http://www.crossfit.com/journal/library/BeginnersMay03.pdf