In case you missed it last week, my name is David Jeffries. I’m a good friend of Coach Wayne’s and a fellow Beachbody Coach. We got talking and decided it would be pretty cool to have someone with a lot of Beachbody experience complete a month of CrossFit on behalf of teamRIPPED. I jumped at the opportunity. I will be posting weekly blogs about my experience and you can read more about the P90X vs CrossFit experiment in the intro post.
Week 1 – The P90X vs CrossFit Experiment
Leading up to week one, I did a little research into the CrossFit gyms in my area. I had a few options and actually decided to go with the gym I’m working out with based on their website. It had a really good feel. So I sent out a quick email asking what I needed to do to get started.
*Quick Note on Business: as we all know being members of teamRIPPED, getting timely replies from emails or contacts tells you a lot about a person or company (thanks Wayne!). I got a phone call back from my quick email within an hour or so. Even from that, I felt good about my decision in gyms.
Like many CrossFit gyms and affiliates, my gym started me off with a set of classes called “Foundations.” Foundations (at least at my gym) were to be a set of three classes designed to teach you the basic elements of CrossFit. It was $75 for three classes. The foundation classes walked me through almost all the basic movements of CrossFit. It was a one-on-one class with one of the gym’s trainers/coaches. It also serves as a fitness assessment for new members. I enjoyed the classes and it was apparent after the first class that I wouldn’t need all three classes. I am very confident and proficient in many of the standard movements (pull-ups, push-ups, squats, deadlifts, etc.) from training I’ve done with Beachbody, P90X, and Body Beast. So they dropped the third class and only charged me $50. This seemed really fair and it was really nice to get to work one-on-one with the coach. The very last Foundation class we spent a lot of time on the Clean which was a completely new movement for me.
After Foundations, you are ready be turned loose on the normal workouts (My gym’s fee is $100/mo for unlimited classes). Almost all CrossFit gyms (at least my knowledge) tend to have multiple classes throughout the day. My gym runs classes six days a week. I chose the 5:45 am class as it worked best in my schedule and seemed to have a lot of regular attendees. I do plan on going to other classes at different times throughout this experiment.
My First Real CrossFit Workout
Let me quickly go over how most classes are structured. You start with a warm-up (roughly 10 to 15 minutes), then move on to skill work (anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes), and finally you come to your main workout – the WOD (Workout Of the Day, times vary but around 20 minutes or so).
The Warm Ups
These have included a lot of movements that I was familiar with. If you’ve done P90X2, then you’ve also done a lot of the movements. They’ve always started with something to get your blood flowing like a 400m jog. After that you work through a series of dynamic stretches and usually something to warm up specific body parts that might be highlighted during the day.
Skill Work
This is where you work specifically on a skill that might be used in a WOD or focus on a strength movement. Example: for my first full WOD, we were doing cleans. So the skill work that day was on proper form for a clean and squat clean. We’ve also done skill work on practicing Double Unders (jumping rope and spinning it twice for each jump). The name kind of says it all — skill work builds a skill :)
The WOD
This is the main workout of the day. The combination of movements, reps, duration, timing, and weights all vary greatly from workout to workout. Every workout I’ve taken part in puts stress my cardiovascular endurance and muscular endurance. Each weighted element has a prescribed weight and then options to scale that weight down to your fitness level. At least at my gym, and I can’t really speak to any other, I have not seen any ego play into the workouts (LOL maybe outside of my own). People pick weights they can handle safely and if it turns out to be too much, they scale it down mid-workout.
During the workouts the CrossFit coach is circulating throughout the room to check form, encourage, and motivate. The workout’s done when you’ve completed all the tasks or hit a time limit. WODs get scored in many different ways so I won’t really go into that.
(I think it was named something… but I can’t remember.)
4 Rounds
400m run with 1 20# slam ball
30 Squat Cleans (95#)
100 ball slams with the 20# ball
Each team member had to do the 400 m run together and could share carrying the ball anyway they wanted. The partners then could decide how they wanted to split up the squat cleans and the ball slams. My partner and I settled on trading off squat cleans every five reps and then every 10 reps for the ball slams.
The workout was brutal! No individual move was difficult, but the sum of the volume of work really took its toll as the rounds continued. What seemed so easy during the first round only got harder and harder. The little time to recover while my partner was doing his squat cleans or ball slams seemed to get shorter and shorter too.
It was a lot of fun to get to work out with other people. Everyone was encouraging and as teams finished, they went to cheer on teams still working. Again, the coach was around to correct form as needed.
All in all, it was a good first real workout and a good first week!
So My P90X vs CrossFit Experience so far…
I can’t say that I have anything negative or even questionable about my experience with CrossFit so far. What I can say about comparing P90X and CrossFit (with this extremely limited experience) is that Beachbody programs have more than adequately prepared me to work out with CrossFit. My level of strength is great for the workouts, my muscular endurance holds up fine, and the only thing that is really lacking is my cardiovascular endurance, but that’s due to what programs I have been doing. I’ve been using Body Beast pretty exclusively for almost a year now. I’ve done short HIIT sessions and some T25, but I have really stuck to lifting and avoided cardio. I know my cardio will come back pretty quickly, but right now it’s work! Finally, I’m obviously still working on form for all of my new lifts. Just like we had to work on four ball push-ups, I’m working on getting all my big dynamic/Olympic lifts down.
I’ll keep bringing it and you keep following along. I think this is going be a really neat experience.
Need a coach?
My email: coachwayne@teamripped.com
IG: @wayne_wyatt
