The workout is intimidating before you even get started.
You arrive in the dark to a warehouse tucked behind a stripmall or office park.
It’s a glorified garage with cold concrete floors, florescent lights and knotted ropes hung from the rafters, and a bare bones assortment of weightlifting equipment, wooden boxes, and inexplicably, piles of tractor tires.
And even more disturbing, sledgehammers.
There are no windows, no shiny mirrors, no treadmills with their own televisions. The music is industrial, insistent, pulsing underneath the more pervasive sounds of exhalation, the clang of metal, the thud of weight succumbing to gravity.
This is CrossFit, and it’s going to change your perception of exercise.
CrossFit “boxes” are springing up across the country, with three opening in Lancaster County alone within the past two years. Long popular with military, law enforcement, and first responders, this fitness phenomenon is increasingly becoming more mainstream. Now more than 3,000 gyms worldwide are building skills and stamina for the converted.
“It was the fitness program I was looking for my entire life,” says Matt Willard, who recently opened CrossFit Chupacabra in New Danville. “I dove in, became obsessed, totally dedicated.”
Emphasizing strength, functionality, and agility, the aim of a CoreFit workout is less losing weight and more about making you stronger and faster.
The process isn’t pretty.
Before a class begins, the floor is covered with bodies. They’re doing sit-ups, push-ups, stretching out their muscles. A trainer leads the warm-up, writes the workout-of-the-day (WOD) on a chalkboard, whiteboard, or even directly on a mat, then breaks down the basic movements needed to complete the workout.
“In the beginning, we work on learning to move properly,” says Willard. “After that you can start pushing it.”
Tim Card, a cyclist who opened CrossFit Lancaster in East Hempfield, says it’s important to “get the form right before you add weight,” demonstrating how to do a “clean and press” movement by holding a length of PVC pipe before allowing his class to pick up a barbell.
“The doctrine in CrossFit is mechanics, consistency, and then intensity,” says Willard. “There are no shortcuts to results.”
Once the foundation of the functional movement is set in their bodies, then the class can break up into skill level groups, each with their own coach.
Then it’s time to do what the ad says: “Pick things up and put them down.”
Kettlebells, sandbags, weighted balls.
The class jumps onto platforms, stacks of weights, three-foot high boxes.
There are series of chin-ups and pull-ups on rings and shimmying up to the rafters on a rope.
And there are tractor tire options: you can roll them end over end the length of the warehouse, or pound away at them with sledgehammers.
It all seems at once impossible, and exhilarating.
“I don’t have to turn you on, you’re already turned on when you get here,” says Williams. “The really good part of coaching is painting the bigger picture for you, trying to show you what motivates you to do this on your own, to remind you why you want to push so hard.”
Willard, who shared his love for CrossFit with his barrack mates on his last deployment to Afghanistan in 2010, says that “the mental toughness that I’ve received from CrossFit is more than I got from the Army, not just basic training but even from the hardcore explosives and demolition schools. This is 10 minutes of hardcore pain, trying your hardest, fighting through what’s really scary and pushing through the mental block.”
What keeps clients coming back to these dark, spare boxes where every day they’re called to push harder with more intensity? It’s that they’ve all seemingly found their tribe. Willard says that he started his “box” so that he could be “surrounded by people who have that same intensity, that we all have this unique common denominator that gives you positive energy.I knew that I could be my best if I was surrounded by others trying to do their best.”
The community that forms around these spaces is addictive.
“All these people are your community, they hold you accountable,” says Card.
It’s what keeps 41-year-old Tasha Cameron of Lancaster coming back. She began training six months ago, after a recent knee surgery and pinched nerves in her back curtailed her activity level.
“When I started, I couldn’t do a lunge and running was out of the question,” she says. “Now I’m out running in the cold and jumping up on platforms.”
Increasing her mobility was her primary concern, losing ten pounds of excess weight was simply a bonus.
“I was going to the gym and nothing was happening,” says Cameron. “I know that I’m somebody that has to have somebody pushing me. The people here are so supportive and friendly. They energize me to keep going.”
The beauty of each workout is that every day it’s different. Yet the core movements remain the same. You pick things up and you put them down in short bursts of intensity. The weight load is scaled to your own ability, leaving plenty of room to increase once you become stronger and faster and more proficient.
“In life, you need these functional movements. You need to squat down. You need to press things away from your body. You need to lift things up. You need a sense of how to control yourself while dealing with an external load, like carrying your kids around or bringing in bags of groceries,” says Jeremiah Williams, whose CrossFit Collective is just north of the city on the Manheim Pike. “I got into CrossFit because it was a never ending progression of using movement that everyone needs to have to some degree – from Olympic athlete to grandmother. The degree is different but the need is the same.”
Williams, who says CrossFit has provided him with a “never-ending challenge for the rest of my life,” believes strongly in training for strength in everyday activities.
“As a personal trainer, I was trying to inspire people to develop a lifestyle of play through exercise, trying to make their exercise more playful, and in doing so, I would get my clients further away from being dependent on machines,” says Williams. “I wanted my clients to use body weight and free weights, to develop balance and coordination, agility and accuracy. These are things you actually use in life, they’re not only sports skills but functional skills.”
That emphasis on functionality is what also attracted Card.
“The difference with CrossFit is that we’re not trying to make you better at doing machines in a gym, what we do makes you better at whatever you do in your life, whether you’re a firefighter or a mother,” says Card. “Every squat, every overhead lift, is something you do everyday in your own life, whether you’re climbing a ladder or picking up your child.”
Williams says his mantra is “we want you in our box so that we can help you live life better outside the box.”