What exactly does a Crossfit workout FEEL like?
If you've never experienced crossfit then you might think i'm crazy, if you have, then you'll relate just fine. Many times I try to describe to friends and family what a crossfit workout is like, how it is structured, what kind of movements we do, how it feels and why it works.
I'm going to describe how I felt during my last crossfit workout, thanks to Scott Takenaga at Crossfit North.
Date: Tuesday 01/23/20007
Time: 6pm
I waltzed into the hangar kind of low on energy, it had been a long day at work and all I planned on doing today was some technique work on my O-lifts (haha Sam isn't here so I can call them that) but I happened to get there in time for Scott's 6pm crossfit class. I asked him what was on the "menu" for the day and he said, "thruster row, thruster run". It sounded like fun, but i really hadn't planned on doing anything "metabolic" today. Scott invited me to join the workout.... "give jackson a run for his money" he remarked... "i'm sore all over man" I whined as I made excuses why not to do the work out. "Jackson's sore too" Scott continued. He basically made me feel like a pansy if i didn't do the workout.... so I put on the cross trainers and started to get the blood flowing.
This was the workout:
15 thrusters, 500m row
15 thrusters, 400m run
15 thrusters, 500m row
15 thrusters, 400m run
for time. ie. do the work as fast as possible. The weight used for the thrusters was a 40kg barbell.
video of a thruster: http://media.crossfit.com/cf-video/Barbell_Thruster.wmv
The clock started and the first round of thrusters was easy, i got all 15 no prob. I then started rowing, did the 500m, still just a little out of breath, but nothing major.
did the 2nd round of thrusters, still all good, i think i broke it up into 5's with very short rest periods then I started running. The run was manageable, I didn't push too hard, just made sure to keep it slow and steady all the way through. The 3rd round of thrusters seemed easier than the 2nd, i busted through them with 3 sets of 5 again and jumped on the rower. By this time, i was feeling some overall fatigue. The second round of rowing was slow and weak with a 2:20 split, I figured I'd not try to push much harder and just keep ploughing through. The last round of thrusters was hard, I had to break it up into sets of 3 and 4 with longer breaks.... then i started running... after about the first 100m I hit the wall, there was no localized fatigue, just total catastrophic systemic failure. I had a stitch in my belly, I was completely out of breath, my quads and calves were burning, i felt slightly dizzy and felt like throwing up, but i still had 300m to go... I stopped and started walking for about 10 seconds, then with the fear of someone behind me catching up, I started running again. i wanted to breathe more deeply and get more air in but deeper breaths surely would have made me throw up. the faster I ran the sooner it would all be over. The last 200m felt like it took ages and ages. I had to stop and walk for another 10 seconds to let some lactic acid wash out of the muscles so that i could keep running. My steps had gotten clumsy in the last 100m, I had to concentrate on actually stepping forward and not "leaving my foot behind me" and falling flat on my face !
i got to the end of the 400m and collapsed onto the gym floor.
This was indeed total systemic failure. I didn't want to drink water in case I threw up, I felt like I had to focus a to ensure that there were no other malfuntions in other excretatory bodily processes. My head was spinning and i was laying on the floor with my eyes closed thinking about nothing other than my next breath and remaining as still as possible to not agitate the dizzyness and nausea... about 5-7 mins passed and I finally sat up and had a splitting head ache. i started moving around, got some Spark energy drink and started to sip on some post workout recovery shake. It took about 20 mins for my body to completely stop freaking out. I was still sweating down the middle of my back, signalling that my nervous system was probably 'stimulated' :).
The workout took me 14 mins and 38 secs to complete and it took about 20 mins for me to feel back to normal again.
Crossfit is hard. Crossfit is as mental as it is physical... Get some!
