I don’t know about you, but each week seems to be flying by. If you haven’t read the first two posts in this series, make sure to check out the P90X vs CrossFit Intro and P90X vs CrossFit: Week 1. Both of those will give you a good picture of what this experiment is all about.
Onto Week 2 of P90X vs CrossFit
After last week’s post, I realized that I’d failed to mention one of the really cool things from my weekend. After my first full week of CrossFit there was a local competition going on. Maybe you’ve caught some of the CrossFit Games on ESPN — those are the top of the top CrossFit athletes competing. CrossFit gyms also hold local competitions too. Sometimes they are to raise money for certain causes and other times they’re just to compete with other local CrossFit gyms’ teams.
So Friday night I asked my wife if she would want to take the kids down to watch and she said yes. So Saturday morning we headed out to watch some CrossFit. This was a pretty cool event.
This happened to be a team event, broken into a men’s and women’s division. Each team had three members and competed against one another for time/reps/weight in various workouts. The specific workouts were the same for the men and women, and were only scaled in weight between both divisions.
It was pretty impressive. These guys and gals were obviously the top athletes from their respective gyms, and they went all out! I was familiar with many of the movements they were completing but had never seen them performed so quickly and for such a long time. The muscular and cardiovascular endurance of the athletes is what impressed me the most. I got to see a few people I knew from my morning class and that was cool too. All in all, it made for a nice morning with the family.
Back to the Workouts: CrossFit
So week two started off well. I was getting to know more people in the early class and felt like I was getting more comfortable each day. Then sometime Wednesday, my lower back began to tighten up. This tightening led to a dull pain that reached down into my left glute. Maybe you’ve had it yourself, it wasn’t so bad sitting or even standing, but as soon as I would bend at the waist (like doing a Romanian deadlift) my lower back would feel like it was going to give out.
Now to be perfectly fair, I’ve had this happen before. It happened the first time about a little over a year ago with deadlifts and the Beast. That resulted in a botched chiro adjustment, a trip to the medical doctor, and finally muscle relaxers :)
I foam rolled pretty heavily Wednesday evening and even used a left over muscle relaxer that evening before bed. I took Thursday off but continued to foam roll and roll on a tennis ball. By Friday it was noticeably better but still tight. I decided to go to a later class (the 9:30 class) and pace myself. I was given a couple more stretches to try from the coach and completed the workout without pain. This kind of gets back to Coach Wayne’s post from last week on soreness vs pain. While this was more than being sore, I knew that as Friday’s class went on that I was loosening up. It’s personal responsibility. You have to listen to your body and make the right decision. Then if you really have doubt, check with a professional (which I got into my new chiro and we are now doing REALLY well).
Saturday = AWESOME!
Saturdays at my gym only have one class time. I have heard that there normally larger classes and that they often do team workouts. This Saturday was kind of small and had a whole workout that revolved around the Clean and Jerk. The Clean and Jerk is an Olympic lift. It’s explosive and a total body lift. This is definitely one where you could hurt yourself you didn’t know what you’re doing, had bad coaching, use too much weight, or just let your ego get in the way. Take a look at a cool slow-mo C&J below:
(And that guy is really good/strong… pretty sure he’s an Olympian… but you now know what I am talking about.)
What made Saturday so cool is that there were only five or six people. Each person had their own lifting platform and the coach for Saturday knew his stuff when it came to the C&J. We worked through all the various positions of the C&J, worked with only a PVC pipe, up to an empty bar, and then with a little weight. This was all through the warm up and skill work. The WOD was 20 minutes of EMOM (Each Minute On the Minute) of C&J. You did 3 rep sets for the first 5 minutes, then 2 rep sets for 6-11, and 1 rep sets for minutes 12 – 20 (slowly working up weight).
Maybe you did the math and are thinking, “That’s only 20 minutes of real work and only 36 reps… come on… that’s not a workout!” Well I also wore my heart rate monitor for the first time Saturday. Starting right at the warm-up, the workout was just over an hour. I burned 809 calories! I couldn’t believe it. It was never like I was fully gassed, but I knew as a got heavier and heavier I had to concentrate more on each lift. As soon as that bar starts to clear your knees, the C&J is all acceleration. It’s an intense lift!
My hands have also been holding up well. I already had pretty big/gnarly calluses from all my lifting, but I am getting new ones and have been losing them more frequently. No nasty huge rips or anything.
So P90X Vs CrossFit?
I’ve given you a lot of my experiences so far, but what about any comparisons?
Accessibility for someone new to Fitness? – P90X > CrossFit
My Rationale: So obviously I’m not new to fitness, so I’m going on my previous experience and experience coaching others. I still feel confident that most people starting their fitness journey see the most benefit to working out at home. It is a comfort/confidence issue. I believe most people are going to feel they can bring their best when they aren’t concerned with other people or any influence from the surrounding environment. This is a generalization I am making for most people. I completely acknowledge that there are people that thrive off of others and are very self confident. There are also gyms that have an extremely welcoming and supportive culture. I think my gym does that really well! We have people at all places and they are working for them. It’s just the natural tendency for people to be self conscience and thus feel better working harder by themselves. Working out at home with Beachbody programs gives you great coaching and the comfort/security that you may want or need.
I think both P90X and CrossFit can be properly scaled and give you great workouts. Beachbody would give you more variety of workout types, but that is because CrossFit is what it is. It’s not a knock. They do what they do. So if Olympic lifts don’t interest you, CF might not be the fit for you.
At the end of the day, it will always come down to each individual person. You may love the group feel and getting out of the house. Or you may feel like you would be jumping into deep end without knowing how to swim if you tried CF right off the bat. Hopefully this gave you some points to think about and a little further look into my experiment. Catch you next week!
Need a coach?
My email: coachwayne@teamripped.com
IG: @wayne_wyatt
