Rx’d

I’ve been doing Crossfit for five months now. I love it. The Crossfit methodology keeps me motivated exercise every day, and has helped me lose weight and build muscle. Crossfit is helping me to get fit slowly.

Sill, I’ve tried not to dwell on Crossfit too much around here. I know that Crossfit can seem like a cult to the uninitiated (or at least that’s how I used to view it), and there are already plenty of other blogs that cover it. Today, however, I’m going to break my silence. Today I’m writing about Crossfit.

Crossfit jargon
One of the first things people notice about Crossfit is that it has its own special vocabulary. Crosfitters seem to speak in code. In fact, here’s a hilarious video that makes fun of Crossfit jargon:

I’ll try to keep the jargon to a minimum today, because really, this is a very simple post. Though I’m sure it’ll run to 1000 words — hey! I’m a verbose! — it could be written in a single 140-character tweet:

See, it was a big morning for me at the gym. It was the first day I’ve been able to (and been allowed to) do a strength-based workout “as prescribed”.

What does that mean?

As prescribed
Every day, each Crossfit gym features a specific Workout of the Day, or WOD (pronounced “wad”). I think some Crossfit gyms (also called “affiliates”) use the WOD posted at the main Crossfit site, but others schedule their own. Cody, who owns the gym I go to, is an experienced personal trainer, and schedules his own WODs.

Every day, each Crossfit member performs their gym’s WOD. Everyone does the same thing. Or almost the same thing.

In reality, each member has different skill levels. In our gym, we have 23-year-old female athletes exercising next to overweight 41-year-old desk jockeys (that’s me!) working out next to 28-year-old ex-football players. Each of us has different strengths and weaknesses, and each of us is at a different fitness level.

A typical Workout of the Day might be:

Five rounds for time:
20 kettlebell swings (1.5 pood, 1.0 pood)
20 pull-ups
20 wall-balls (20#, 12#)

This means that the prescribed workout for men is to use a 1.5-pood kettlebell (a pood is a Russian unit of mass equal to roughly 16.5 kilos) and a 20-pound medicine ball. (And women would use 1.0 pood and 12 pounds.)

But each person doing the workout works with the trainer to make her own modifications based on her fitness levels. Some might do more than prescribed, but many will do less. For example, faced with the above workout, I’d probably use the 1.0-pood kettlebell and the 12-pound ball, and I’d probably just do body rows or weight-assisted pull-ups. In other words, I’d do the prescribed women’s workout, but with easier pull-ups.

The goal, of course, is to eventually be able to do all of the workouts “as prescribed”. When you do this, you’re said to have done the WOD “Rx’d” (pronounced “are-exed”). This is a big goal, especially for Crossfit novices like me.

Even more jargon
Two other quick points about Crossfit jargon before I finally get to the point of this post:

• Certain standard Crossfit workouts are named. (I assume they’re named for the person who popularized each workout, but I don’t know.) For example, the Karen WOD is simply 150 wallballs. (A wallball involves tossing a medicine ball at a target ten feet in the air and then catching the ball in a squat.) And, as you’ll see, the Nicole WOD involves repeating this cycle for twenty minutes: run 400 meters, then do as many pull-ups as possible.
• Crossfitters do different kinds of pull-ups. The basic pull-up is a dead-hang pull-up. You start from a hanging position and pull yourself up before dropping straight down. A popular Crossfit variation is the “kipping” pull-up. When you kip, you push yourself away from the bar as you drop, creating a sort of swinging/rocking motion. This lateral momentum helps you do more pull-ups.

There’s plenty of other Crossfit jargon, but that’s all we need for today. With that background, I can tell my story.

Nicole
I’ve never had much upper-body strength. Even as a small boy, I found pull-ups (which we used to call “chin-ups” in the Olden Days) almost impossible. Push-ups were almost as bad.

When I started Crossfit in April, I had to use the heavy black elastic band to do weight-assisted pull-ups. Soon I graduated to the medium green band. By July, I was doing pull-ups with the light-weight blue band.

Then, on July 30th, I managed the first unassisted pull-up of my adult life. Rock on! Over the past few weeks, I’ve begun to string pull-ups together two, three, even four at a time.

Still, when I saw today’s WOD was Nicole, I was sad. (Nicole, as I mentioned earlier, involves repeating this cycle for 20 minutes: run 400 meters, then do as many pull-ups as possible.) “More body rows,” I thought. Body rows are like pull-ups, except they’re done while hanging from a barbell with your feet on the ground.

But then I thought, “Maybe Cody will let me do regular pull-ups. Maybe I can do the workout Rx’d!” I’ve never done a strength-based workout as prescribed before.

Well.

As Dan and I were warming up this morning (we were the only two there at 6:30), Cody said, “J.D., how’d you like to try today’s workout Rx’d?”

“Hell yes!” I thought. What I said was, “Okay.”

So, I spent twenty minutes running and doing pull-ups. Real pull-ups. My last pull-up in each set often missed the mark, and Cody didn’t count it, but I was okay with that. I had to kip several pull-ups, but I was okay with that. Dan did 44 pull-ups in his first set, and 12-15 in each subsequent set, but I was okay with that.

After 20 minutes, Cody wrote our results on the board. Dan, as always, did the workout Rx’d. His results: five rounds and 96 pull-ups. But today, I also did the WOD Rx’d. I did a more running than Dan because I did fewer pull-ups. But I did the pull-ups. My results: seven rounds and 24 pull-ups, Rx’d.

And that, my friends, is a long, long story to tell you something I could have said in a 140-character tweet:

I’m a long way from doing barbell workouts Rx’d, but this is a start. And I’m happy with it!