• What is Fitness?

  Click highlighted words below:

  “Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat. Practice and train major lifts: Deadlift, squat, presses, Clean and Jerk, and snatch. Similarly, master the basics of gymnastics: pull-ups, dips, rope climb, push-ups, sit-ups, presses to handstand, pirouettes, flips, splits, and holds. Bike, run, swim, row, etc, hard and fast. Five or six days per week mix these elements in as many combinations and patterns as creativity will allow. Routine is the enemy. Keep workouts short and intense. Regularly learn and play new sports.”

  -Coach Glassman, CrossFit Founder

• What is CrossFit?

  CrossFit is a strength and conditioning program focused on combining exercises used by the best athletes in the world, such as Gymnasts, Weightlifters, and Track and Field athletes. Workouts are a mix of bodyweight, lifting, throwing, running, rowing, jump roping and other movements.

Common Questions

• “What is all this stuff?
  Do I have to lift weights?”

  CrossFit is: “Constantly varied functional movement performed at high intensity. Those words from CrossFit founder Coach Greg Glassman illustrate one of many technical definitions of the movements we perform in our workouts. The words to note are “functional” and “intense.”

  “So what is “functional”?

  Functional strength is something that has been misinterpreted over the past two decades; visions of balance-balls, elastic bands and strange, slow movement come to mind. Many go through these so-called functional routines at big-box gyms (24 hr Fitness, Gold’s, Curves…) without ever questioning their validity.

  That is not what we do!

  Functional movement is useful. Movements that help us effectively proceed through everyday life, professional work, or competitive sport. Civilians and athletes alike, firefighters and grandparents, can all find the same intensity and benefit from the CrossFit methodology, using different weights and progressions to learn how to move effectively. Calisthenics, basic gymnastics, weightlifting, running, rowing, squats, medicine ball throws, deadlifts, push-ups, sit-ups, jumps, pull-ups, sprints, climbs, and lunges are just a few of the exercises taught, learned, mastered and then used in the CrossFit world.

  “That seems intense!
  Aren’t I too old/weak?”

  Anyone can do CrossFit!
  These exercises are movements that your body was designed to perform on an everyday basis. Your knees were designed to squat properly: it is how you sit and stand. Your arms should be able to push you off the ground or pull you over a ledge. The balance and coordination required for manipulating your own bodyweight is a necessity in life, and the strength and technique required in handling external objects (a barbell, a ball, a box, a couch along with any other object you may have to move or lift) is necessary in many professions and sports worldwide. If we cannot lift a box, a piece of furniture, an injured person’s body, or ourselves, we are effectively disabled.

• Click the videos below about
  intensity and function

  CrossFit is a unique blend of technical exercise and intensity. Many can lift some weights well, do push-ups well, or run a mile well. Very few, however, can do all 3 within the same workout, switching between them as fast as their form will allow. Intensity is one key to CrossFit’s efficacy, encouraging participants to push the limits of their physical and mental capacity.

  Functional exercises are based on natural movements that your skeletal system was designed for. Sit, stand, run, jump, grab, push, pull, catch and so on. Locking ourselves into artificial ranges of motion on machines or working only one body part at a time is not the answer to fitness.

  Focusing on functional movements, rather than isolation exercises, machines, and fitness gimmicks, will prepare CrossFitters for a high quality of life even into old age. Being strong, self-sufficient and mobile is what keeps us working and playing, instead of occupying a hospital bed or retirement home.