Sushi since you’re new (or using a new screen name) you may not realize this thread is primarily made up of posters supporting one another’s fitness efforts. Some are well-trained athletes (like Ohio and MOWC) who have been competing for many years. Others (like me) are people who didn’t get involved in fitness activities util later in life. Posters like Michael (who is a certified trainer) also share information. This isn’t a thread where people post to win arguments. I don’t really care why men do or don’t do Pilates or yoga. My observations were purely anecdotal and not based on empirical evidence.
Happy to hear you enjoy Crossfit. We all are involved in different activities. I do lots of yoga and weight training–I bench pressed 100 pounds at age 60 and didn’t start yoga until I was 62. I’m proud of that. At this point in my life, my goal is to stay strong, keep moving, and not get injured. Even though I don’t run/race or cycle, I enjoy hearing about the races/results of other posters here.
Almost forgot–today in the gym, I did 45 minutes on the Cybex arc and took a power class, which is a class using free weights (BTW–all women–not a man in sight.)
I have always wondered how zip lining would be, MOWC - and thanks to you I don’t have to wonder any more. I know I don’t want to do it! Parachuting? No way. I liked it in gym class when we got to play with the parachute. That’s about as far as I’d ever go with it.
I meant to report on the new Brooks Transcend. I wasn’t sure I was going to like it, but after a few runs I am a fan. The toe box is roomier, nicely cushioned and it’s pretty lightweight. Still needs to be properly laced to get it snug around the heel. I far prefer it to the Adrenaline 16 I’d been wearing as a backup shoe.
@katliamom, anything we can do to support, help, encourage?
@ Bromfield2. I’m new. I joined because the info on the college process was very informative. And I have children near or in the process.
It’s certainly not my intention to win an argument here. Someone asked a question about why men don’t participate in Pilates and Yoga and I gave a general answer. Someone mentions CrossFit causes injuries, which it can, but probably not more than alot of activities. I just mentioned injuries may happen in any activity. Just reaching to pick something up off the floor can cause an injury.
Besides CF, I run alot as well. Mostly 5K’s and 10K’s. Once a year, I’ll usually do a 1/2 marathon. A couple times a year I’ll run a Spartan or Tough Mudder. I also play pickup basketball on Sundays as my “rest and recovery.”
Welcome @sushiritto! We are a pretty welcoming group but we all have opinions.
I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before but my D is a cross fitter. She loves it and got her coaching certification so is coaching part time now. She belongs to a very nice gym and is very picky about technique in her classes. She has not had injuries in Crossfit but every time she runs, she gets injured. To each their own.
We are so proud of our daughter and how she has adopted a healthy lifestyle. She is pretty shy and introverted and now has the best friends from her gym. She posts all kinds of working out things to her Instagram. My niece posts all the partying she does. I enjoy seeing both
i like this spot for the fact that everyone is accepting of whatever exercise a person chooses to do. Even if it’s something I don’t choose to do, I want to cheerlead them. That’s how I feel about Crossfit.
And now that I’ve met and am friends with so many of my D’s friends and the owner of her gym, I have a very different opinion of Crossfit. It’s who she is and I am so proud of the person she has become.
Went on a nice walk today. Tomorrow is April 1 and the day I’m going to start running again. And the golf course opens Monday. It may even be warm enough to golf.
Wow, one day of dog agility and I’m behind by forty posts (not to mention all the posts from the past week that I never got time to answer).
I think yoga is definitely perceived as on the feminine side, just as free weights are perceived as on the masculine side. That said, I know lots of men who do yoga and lots of women who lift. I prefer weight work, for myself.
I am struggling with my training and my weight right now. I’m running 15-22 miles per week (15 on weeks when I’m doing dog agility on the weekend (two 20K step days with multiple sprints), 22 when I don’t). I just don’t seem to be getting any faster and it’s definitely not getting any easier. I’ve gotten to where a 3 to 3.5 mile run seems pretty straightforward but anything longer just feels like slow torture. Emphasis on the slow. I’ve been swimming a few times and was able to get into a nice relaxed freestyle, but that’s also slow. I’d bet I’m slow on the bike too–but we’ve had record rainfall this winter and I haven’t been on my bike in weeks. And my weight has crept up about 5 pounds (which could explain the slow) and I can’t seem to drop it. Sigh. (I know that I need to start food logging again. I just don’t want to do it.)
I should admit, amidst all this angst, that my dog agility is going pretty well. I qualified for and am going to Nationals in a few weeks–just trying to maintain my current level of training and the dog’s current level for the next six weeks.
Actually, writing this, I’m wondering how much of my current discouraged mental state is related to the serious lack of sunshine here in the last six weeks.
I made my first Lulu purchase ever today. I got a sports bra and a nice jacket for less than half price.
I started doing the Octane machine at the gym, bc I think I read someone here did it, and my son said it was a good machine. I’ve also been doing a lateral machine. I’m “expanding my palette” in multiple areas
You guys inspire me to do good things.
dmd77, do you have access to a treadmill? I ask because if so, you could experiment with making yourself go a little faster on your runs. (Of course, you could do it outside, too, with some sort of GPS device.) Get yourself to run a few short, faster periods and see if that helps you get faster in your general runs. I am not a fan of suffering. I have my happy pace and am happy to just run that speed. But if I run intervals I can show myself that going faster is possible and can gradually teach myself to go faster.
I’ve got nothing against the concept of Cross Fit per se. If you distill it down to its basics, its a combination of Olympic lifting, power lifting, body weight training and movement training. But it does have a lot of baggage to overcome. “In the beginning”, all you had to do to get authorized to open a box under the Cross Fit name was take a 1 day class on what the system was all about. It didn’t matter what type of background you had in exercise physiology, anatomy, the kinetics of exercise, client assessment and exercise programming; if you paid the fee, you could open a Cross Fit box. That led to an explosion of Cross Fit boxes run by people who had no business instructing others on how to work out and WOD’s, exercises and movements that were bizarre to say the least. Given the often ballistic nature of Cross Fit workouts and emphasis on pushing heavy weights at speed, much of what was done was bio-kinetically unsound, form was sacrificed, people were pushed to do things they had no business doing and serious injuries abounded. Today, it’s not quite as bad as instructors with better credentials and experience get involved in Cross Fit but you still need to be cautious in selecting a box to join because the yahoos are still out there in droves. You can still become “qualified” to run a Cross Fit Studio with that 1 day course but Cross Fit has also in more recent times attracted a lot of knowledgeable people who know how to run a safe and effective program using the Cross Fit model. But it definitely is not a system of working out that is for everybody - either because of a person’s goals or physical limitations. What I object to about Cross Fit is that there still is very much an attitude among many of it’s adherents that it is appropriate for everyone, which it is not, and that it is superior to all other forms of exercise programming which is equally fallacious. These may be generalizations and there are no doubt exceptions to these observations, but as a general matter, that’s why Cross Fit still evokes a lot of controversy.
@Lizardly – no, I don’t have a treadmill. I do some intervals and the intervals themselves are getting a bit faster (and I am getting faster in 5K races) but… my runs in general are still slow. I have a hard time finding any useful research on what I should expect (as a 61-year-old long-past-menopause woman) from training. I know HIIT should help me speed up, but will it also help me run longer distances? I seem to be able to do one two-hour run every two weeks, an hour run every week, and a serious interval session on a weekend where I don’t have dog agility. My goals are all in conflict with each other, too, it seems: I want to run really fast for a dog agility run (think a thirty-second sprint – but while turning a lot and trying to keep a dog on course, too); I want to run a fast five K; I want to run longer distances easily (like I did in my long-distant youth). I also want to bike with my husband from time to time, and I love to swim in the summer (I don’t have a treadmill, but I do have a lap pool).
So excited, my new Cross bike comes in on Monday. For those who follow bike trends, its a single chai ring system with 11 gears at the rear. Have never ridden a single chainring bike as an adult other than my track bike but that’s a single speed so this is a whole new world of no front derailleur on a bike designed to be ridden on varied topography. And it has hydraulic disc brakes too! My wife is too good to me. First she lets me get a new power cage, then a new stainless steel “cross fit” bar (if you will excuse the term, lol, but that’s the “modern way” way to describe a general purpose bar that is pretty good for both Olympic lifts and power lifting) and now the bike. I think I smell jewelry in the air :). First ride on the bike will be the 56 mile gravel ride I’m doing on April 9 with 4000 feet of climbing. I’ve got some serious calf rehabbing to do between now and then.
Michael, I agree with much of what you’ve said. CF started 10+ years ago, but it’s come a very long way. It did have its burps in its infancy. And I agree, it’s not for everyone. One of the many things I’ve noticed over the years is that work rate can deter many from continuing in the long term. But that work rate and can be scaled as well.
Regarding certification, it’s been a 2-day (8 hours/day with a written and WOD test) course just for a Level 1 certificate for as long as I can remember. And there are higher levels of certification available. Everyone that joins a Box must go through a 6-session (6 hours) beginner’s course to familiarize them with the techniques and movements. And they must “graduate” the class, before they join the regular classes.
And I/we believe the programming can be scaled to anyone/everyone, unless they have some medical condition that prevents them from participating in an activity. Everything movement is a progression and I agree technique is important, though sometimes is sacrificed in a competition. But that can be the case for other activities too.
Good for you 1214mom - I love that expression “expanding your palette”. And greater still getting Lulu on sale. New workout clothes really help.
Dmd77 - I forgot - are you training for a specific race in the near future? I got back into running and for a while I never did anything longer than 3 miles and always at the same pace. Then I downloaded the Runkeeper app and it really helped motivate me because it read off my pace.
@Classof2015 – I run races as a way of forcing myself to push myself, so yes. A half trail run at the end of May… a tri in August… I have a Garmin watch that gives me pace…
Well, it’s a sprint tri: 1/2 mile swim (down current in a river), 12 mile bike (very flat), 5K run (also dead flat).
I am a very good swimmer, but very slow. I swim a mile in a pool in just under an hour. But I’m extremely comfortable and relaxed in the water and can swim (slowly) for hours without feeling tired. I’m not intimidated by open water—last summer when I did the 1/2 mile swim in the tri, I swam way out so I could ride the fast current down river–did the half mile in 17 minutes. I was swimming along the safety line of kayakers, doing side stroke, and passing all the swimmers who were less comfortable in the water and stayed closer in. I swam on my high school and college teams, but I was always dead last. The coach used to have me swim butterfly and breaststroke, because often the other team had only one swimmer in those events and I could pick up a point for the team just by finishing. Which I did… usually a lap behind the the next closest person (out of four laps).
Lots going on since I last checked in and I enjoyed reading the conversations! In my little world, this week has been exhausting (I seem to find myself saying that a lot). Lots of meetings after work, tons of testing, and I had to make a stop at the doctor. I will be seeing a pulmonary specialist in April for some things. Hopefully I get my long-time issue figured out (won’t go too much into it here).
I have my first race of 2017 tomorrow! Allergies are in full force and I have a bad, deep cough so hopefully I don’t try to push it too much. If I remember correctly there is another poster running an 8k tomorrow.
dmd77- I can relate to having goal that conflict with each other! I’m realizing right now that at this particular time in my life I really just need to focus on healthier habits and dealing with stress better. Maybe after I have a better grasp on those two I can really think about attacking some of the others.
