Day One: Intro Session

Today I had my intro session for CrossFit.

I knew very little about what to expect from this session leading up to it, which made me quite nervous. I had heard horror stories about how hard it was so I watched what I ate and tried not to exert myself too heavily during the day. I spoke to a few people about it and they basically told me I was going to die. Awesome. Can't wait.

After work I came home, changed, and headed out to the facility. It was basically an airport hanger just outside Ann Arbor. It had a bunch of weights, rowing machines, ropes, rings, and bands all over the place. And no air conditioning. I should mention that too.

I wasn't sure if I was in the right place so I wandered around the gym awkwardly for a few minutes. My sister had told me that gyms in New York are measured by the level of luxury in the bathrooms so I took a look in there. Neither stall had toilet paper and the lockers didn't have locks. Not exactly in the lap of luxury. I went back outside and saw a few people at the front so I went over there.

I introduced myself and said I was there to meet with Jeff, the person I had signed up with. I was informed that Jeff was "in Cali at The Games". Apparently it was common knowledge that the national CrossFit games were going on and the girl in the lead had trained in Ann Arbor. I nodded and pretended like I knew any of that.

 Next I filled out a waiver form, obviously I lied and said I worked out over 3 times a week. I am introduced to my intro classmates. 3 lovely ladies. Score.

Our instructor then brings us all upstairs to give us a quick overview of what to expect.  Basically we are going to learn a ton of different exercises, learn how to do them perfectly, then get after it. More importantly, during introductions I learn that all three girls have boyfriends. Crestfallen. 

We go back downstairs and grab rowing machines. Our instructor takes us through proper technique and I basically dominate. He compliments my form and asks if I've done this before. Great salesman.

Next, we learn proper squat technique. We put bands around our shins to make sure our knees aren't being stressed too much. I struggle with this at first, but get the hang of it after being corrected a few times. We repeat this process with sit ups, push-ups and pull-ups. I do fine with these as I have been doing them since I was in middle school. 


Finally, the main event. Our instructor tells us we are going to be timed. We will row 500 meters, do 40 squats, 30 sit ups, 20 pushups, and 10 pull-ups. I should note that we were all told to do "jumping pull-ups". The instructor insisted that these are "hard as hell" and by no means embarrassing, but basically all you do is stand on a box and jump up and down while holding a bar. Much easier than real pull-ups. 


I have no idea what a good time will be, but I do know that I can't allow myself to be beaten by girls. Still 12. 

The instructor counts down, then yells "GO!", and with that, I go to work.

I power through the rowing like a boss, by far my best event. I finish far ahead of any of the lovely ladies, and move on to the squat portion. I do these deliberately and give myself brief pauses between each one. My legs are a little tired going in, so I don't want to die. By the end I am wobbly but still doing OK.

Next, I move to sit ups. This is by far my worst event. I take about twice as long to do a sit up as any of the girls, but still manage to finish before any of them. I move to the the push ups and bang those out pretty quickly.

Finally, I go to the pull-up station. In hindsight if I had been a real man I would have shunned the jump pull-ups and done real ones, but I was tired and the instructor had explicitly said we should do jump ones. Hopefully this was not a commentary on my general level of fitness. I breeze through those and finish in 4 minutes 59 seconds. I have no idea if this is good or bad. After everyone finishes (2 of the girls finished at about 6 mins, the other takes about 8) we go over to a wall and record our times. I only see one time better than mine on the wall, but I assume others probably did real pull-ups which would have definitely taken longer.

Our instructor tells us all good job, gives the obligatory sales pitch, and tells us he hopes to see us again. I tell him I'd like to sign up and he says to shoot him an email to schedule my first individual session.

Impressions: It really wasn't quite as hard as I expected. Despite the 90 degree temperature I felt like I got through it alright. I am sure that once we start doing real exercises it will get much harder, but I left feeling pretty good. I am excited to get going with it, and to see what the next week brings.