Thanks to the good folks at LivingSocial, I am doing my first month of CrossFit at Balance Gym: Foggy Bottom. Located in the Fairmount Hotel in the West End, it’s a great gym and full amenities (!) and it’s been a real blast.

I undertook the Foundations course at the end of May and attended one session before my trip to the home land. CrossFit is grounded in technique and precision. As much as the commercials of muscle folk running around with 200 lbs like it’s a sweat towel might be the initial draw, CrossFit emphasizes the sport of fitness. With that, you gotta learn how to be sporty.

The biggest component is strength training, so most of our foundations time was spent learning Olympic-style weight lighting (yeah, that image of that huge German guy dropping 200 kilos on his elbow during the last Olympics was firmly planted in my brain for the first two hours).

After training, we did a brief workout. Most of the CrossFit workouts are named after soldiers who lost their lives serving our country. So, our first was the “Baby Fran.”

15-9-3

Thrusters (squats with a press lift, I did 35 lbs bar because, well, that image of the German guy was still in my brain at this point)
chin-ups.

My Foundations class at CrossFit Foggy Bottom. Photo by CrossFit Foggy Bottom

All in all, really good. Jim, who runs the Foggy Bottom gym, took a photo of us beginners (that’s me in my Rock n’ Roll half-marathon shirt which is going to get DESTROYED by the time this is all done).

The following Tuesday, I got in a CrossFit workout at 7:15 AM. That’s right, night-time newsboy got his foggy ass up to do CrossFit. (Air-breathers, particularly those of you who have known me well: I’ll wait while you pick up your jaw from the ground. Go ahead.)

This session focused on snatches.
8×3 air squat, press squat, power press squat
4×5 pull ups

Then, the metcon:
7 min, no rest
10 dips
Russian-style dumbbell thrusts (I used 30 lbs)
pinchers (having 25 lbs weights in each hand and holding them as you walk up and down the court eight times)

I did 4.5 rounds in 7 minutes.