Hello
everyone,
As I am
slowly but surely running out of topics (or better said which I think are interesting for other than
me), I decided to write again about sports, but this time it has also something
to do with the USA. I want to introduce you to CROSSFIT.
It has its
roots in the USA where it already built out a very big fan base. Competitions
and Crossfit Gyms open up all around the World, especially in America. In the last
3 years over 600 crossfit gyms opened up in the US. It spreads continuously and
it starts to reach the public too. For the US this means another national
sport.
Crossfit is
a Sport that combines basically every kind of exercise you can imagine. From weightlifting
to rope climbing to chin-ups. The best in the whole thing is that anyone can do
it and it is not even hard to set up a workout plan. It only requires some
imagination and endurance. The workout is splited into WODs which look like
this:
-21 pull ups
-21 toes to bar
-21 sit ups
- 15 pull ups
- 15 toes to bar
- 15 sit ups
-9 pull ups
-9 toes to bar
-9 sit ups
WOD means
Workout of the Day, though this does not mean that you can’t do more of them within a workout session.
The goal is
to accomplish this set as fast as possible. But you can also set your alarm for
7 minutes and do as many rounds as possible. Here you can see that it has many
variations and everyone can find his/her favorite. It is pretty easy to set up
a crossfit gym. Basically the only fixed equipment is the pull up bar,
everything else requires only space.
The competitions
are structured as to give every competitor the same chances because there are
no weight groups. This is the tricky part in it. Every competitor is different
in weight and size and all of them have workouts in which they are better than
the other, but the question is: who is the fittest among all of them.
Some days ago
the Crossfit Regionals took place all over the World. In Europe it was in Denmark.
To participate in this competition is already a great honor for the most of
them. To my surprise, my favorite crossfitter
Kovács Lacee from Hungary won the
Regionals and with this he qualified for the World Championship in America.
On the picture you can see Lacee, the Hungarian who won the Crossfit Regionals in Europe.
After watching the video I can say that Crossfit strongly reminds me of the sports course I attended this year. (It's provided by our university's sports institute.) The course I did was called "Bodystyling" – the term is a bit vague, I have to admit. However, it was probably one of the most wearing sports I ever did.
ReplyDeleteThe trainer – a woman – managed to make 20 men in room groan and after the 1 1/2 hour work out everyone was as silent as a lamb. Most of the time we did a circle training, with different exercises. Most of them used own body weight or rather smaller weighs. It didn't look very strenuous at the beginning, on the contrary it was very tiring. It didn't really matter if the weighs were not that heavy since we had to do as many repetitions as possible – in 30 seconds. Then go to the exercise. In between every exercise there was an "active pause" of 30 seconds, which wasn't a real pause since "active" meant we had to do "Strecksprünge", hop from left to right, jump back and forth, ... Only after one circle we were allowed to make a short break 1 - 2 minutes to drink a bit. Maybe you can imagine that only after some minutes my body was soaked in sweat. (The next day I had an advanced swimmer's course – but I was too weak there and sore, because of the work out.)
Crossfit, however, looks more diverse and very tiring. Do you actually do Crossfit? Are there any places here where they do Crossfit?
ReplyDeleteSorry that it took me so long to answer your comment.
Actually the course you did is very similar to crossfit. The only difference is as you sad that it is more diverse and besides own body weight exercises it also includes weightlifting or any other kind of movement that exhausts the body. From year to year they introduce new exercises. That's why it is so hard to be good in this sport because the champion has to be good at the most of these exercises in order to win the competition. I do crossfit only as a hobby. I combine it with kettlebell and try to have as much fun as possible :).
Sorry, I forgot to answer your last question. Graz has a Crossfit Gym. If you search for it on Facebook I'm sure you'll find it.
ReplyDelete