I’ve been doing CrossFit for a while now. In fact, I completed a Level 1 Certification Seminar this weekend. The only reason I don’t know if I passed the exam is because they had a large (and frankly inexcusable) IT failure, and we have to wait for our results from HQ. Yes, I hope to train others in the future, but I need to feel a little more advanced first.
I do have a serious case of ass envy after this weekend. My god, the female CrossFit Certification staff have such great asses. That’s not a very specific goal, however, so I don’t think that one can be on the list. “Get a Better Ass”….too general. 
Anyway, part of the reason I haven’t said anything about it is because CrossFit’s appeal is a bit hard to explain. Doing kettlebell swings and medicine ball runs in the blazing hot sun for 10 minutes with five pushups done on hot asphalt every 60 seconds does NOT sound like fun to most people. It sounded pretty awful to me before I did it. But afterwards, I felt pretty good that my partner in that madness (KBS and runs alternated, everyone drops what they are doing for the pushups) and I did 178 KBS in the 10 minutes we had for the drill.
When people go in for CF, they tend to go in for it in a Big Way, and I’m no exception there. As a system for achieving over all physical fitness, it’s amazing, but CrossFitters tend to evangelize, and that put me off for a while. In addition to that, I don’t live near a CF box – minimum 45 minutes each way – and it’s a lot to take on doing at home. I did my foundations/elements while I was in St. Louis early this summer and staying near several CrossFit boxes. I did some WODs there, then started up at home.
If you’ve never heard of CrossFit, the gist of it is this: Constantly varied functional movements executed at high-intensity. There’s ample info out there on the web, so I don’t feel like I need to talk about it here. I will be posting my WODs over at BrandX in the daily scaled WOD thread. I’m not going to do that here because I’ve seen that quickly overtake all other material on a blog, and I just don’t want to go there. I might put my WOD in a sidebar here, I haven’t decided, but it will not be part of the posts.
Moving on…
I think systems work best when you work them, so going whole hog into CrossFit means using a 3-day on 1-day off workout schedule. This seemed completely brutal to me before, but after this weekend I now understand programming and scaling for specific goals, and I do understand the “why” of that schedule now. The other thing I wasn’t doing is, drumroll please, The Zone Diet.
It’s hard to believe I’ve never tried it, but frankly, I was put off by the book and the crass commercial products that accompanied it. In particular, Zone bars are junk food and hideous hack. The book pushes hard on cutting fat and there’s even a Soy Zone book, for gosh sakes, and I’m sure it’s pretty obvious why I don’t accept either of those ideas.
The way it’s presented to new, aspiring CF trainers is a bit different and considerably simpler. After people achieve their weight goals, they start upping fat. Most of the extremely-low-body-fat types eat upwards of 4X fat blocks. CrossFit emphasizes that no foods are forbidden, but that quality really matters, and you should only venture into the center aisles at the grocery store for nuts, seeds and olive oil, and then get the hell out. They push working the perimeter, just like Primal, Paleo and any whole foods diet does. You can do the Zone Paleo if you like. Oh, and the CrossFit Zone chart doesn’t push all lean meats, skim milk and low-fat cheese: it’s just “cheese” or “ground beef” or “milk”.
I am loosening up my diet a bit. My prohibited foods list is down to: gluten, legumes, vegetable oils, and refined sugar. I might try a 1/4 cup of pinto beans or a little tempeh at some point, but legumes have failed me in the past, so I might not.
I’m not really trying to lose weight (who wouldn’t like to lose *a few* pounds?), but I’m not into elite levels of body fat either. Still, I think their blocks-per-day recommendations are too low for me. I’ll be fine-tuning that depending on how I feel, but I’m going to be having more blocks instead of 2X fats, at least for now. We’ll see what happens. I am weighing and measuring because the carbs and fats (protein is weighed out) are all in cups and tablespoons, and I used to weigh those. I feel that for me, it’s important to stay the hell off of fitday, and just go by my body fat scale and how I feel. If I need to change it, I’ll drop two blocks and double the fat. I have to say that I’m skeptical about that working for me, however. OH, and five meals a day? Are you kidding? I will not be doing that!
So yeah, The Zone Diet. Who saw that one coming? I sure didn’t!
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