Don't Call It A Comeback

Ok, so here's what's what.  Back in the younger Pompita days, when my knees were still those given to me by God, I had a very seasonal approach to my fitness.  From January to July I would workout pretty hard.  Right around the end of July, my workouts would slowly begin to fade into the background due to an increase of seasonal busy hours at work.  The work would slow down in October, just in time for the Holidays.  Then when January rolled around it all picked back up again. 

It was a frustrating cycle, but it was also life.  Don't get me wrong, I still did a little here and there to maintain some sense of physical self-worth, but nothing compared to the first half of the year.

Well, here we are in early August and (surprise surprise) work is picking up and (surprise surprise) my workouts have begun to fade.  The problem NOW is that I no longer have those baby knees I had before.  I now have old man knees that have been reconstructed from my own living tissue!  Ok, that's a bad place for an exclamation mark, but the point is that my workouts CANNOT fade.  My knees begin to ache and stiffen up if I just sit around the office and don't move them.  My workouts, whether for Tough Mudder or not, are crucial to a happy and healthy existence.

So, I needed something to reignite me.  I enjoy working out with someone, yet I don't want to pay for a personal trainer, yet I need someone to push me, and I enjoy the social aspects of working towards a fitness goal with others.

In comes, CrossFit.  I have been reading about it quite a bit in the past few months and always anticipated that I'd give it a shot.  Considering my desire to sell my place and move to Brickell, I was waiting until that happened to join CrossFit Brickell.  However, I need the motivation NOW.  So fuck it, I joined the one closer to my job in the Gables and have started this week.

Yesterday was my first day, what they call CrossFit 101.  All rookies have to go through it, regardless of experience or fitness level.  I got the 411 on the whole thing and how it works.  I don't want to go into to much detail here as I don't want to lose my audience, but basically all we did was set a standard by which to measure ourselves in the months to come.  They call it The Baseline.  The Baseline consists of a specific circuit that must be completed AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE.  They have a large timer at the gym...3, 2, 1 and everyone is off.  At the end of the circuit, you record your time of completion.  In 3 months, you do it again to see how you've improved.  Three months after that, you do it again.  The Baseline circuit consists of the following (with some notes):

500 Meter Run
40 Air Squats (full squats, no weights, arms straight at a 45 degree angle to the ground and touching hands)
30 Butterfly Situps (lay on your back, butterfly your legs, reach with your arms straight along the ground behind your head, sit up and touch the floor, lay back down, repeat)
20 Push-ups (Full contact of chest and hips at the bottom touching the floor, both chest and hips must lift from the floor at the same time)
10 Pull ups.

I like the idea of a baseline.  A standard to judge ourselves by.  It doesn't have to be this one, but this is the one I'm doing.

I am off to tonight's class which hopefully is more than just another 5:30 second workout.  That's how long my baseline took.  How 'bout yours?