Crossfit

John Sedlar

A crossfit enthusiast at work

By Ronnie Teasdale

A space of sport, training, and lifestyle.

Your body is a machine, in fact the greatest machine ever created. Humans are currently the reigning champs of a planet that has been supporting life for over 3.5 billion years. Our bodies are perfectly designed to handle the conditions of this planet. Able to withstand the challenges of weather, predators, hunting, building shelter, solving problems, mating, and raising and teaching our children the same.

Everyone who is reading this is human. So that means that everyone who is reading this should have a body that is capable of the above tasks

Somewhere in our history one of our ancestors was standing in a field with some of his buddies with a sharpened stick and had to go run after and take down a giant mastodon.

Barefoot, he ran through the grass and with accuracy had to propel a spear at the animal until it was brutally conquered. This was a regular task. This is what he had to do to eat lunch. He was using the same body as you are.

So why do you look more like the mastodon? It’s because you use your body like one.

We were born into a time when humans do not need to use their body to find food, build shelter, or fight for mates. Rather the better we are at tasks while sitting, the MORE money we get. Money is then traded for food, shelter etc… It’s literally like the Sitting Olympics in today’s society: Who can sit through school and take tests the best. Who can sit behind a computer and develop the best Internet business. Who can sit through lunch meetings and smooze the most people. Who can sit and research companies and find the patterns in stocks the best.

The winners of the Sitting Olympics are the ones held in high status, at least in America. It is time to get back our body, the product of billions of years of evolution. To sit is to disgrace this fact. Unfortunately, now-a-days we have to sit. We need to drive, and we need to work to put food on the table. But there is a way. There is a way to turn this all around, and force your body to be skillful on a daily basis. And that way is CrossFit.

Imagine signing up to compete in an event in which you have no idea the tasks that you were going to do. You have no idea who you were going to be competing against. There will be no weight classes, and you have no idea what the rules are. All you know is the date of the competition, that you will be competing against the same sex and that everyone there will be trying to display that they can do more than you.

This explains the sport of CrossFit. CrossFit competitions aim to find the fittest person. And the way that this is done is that the competition event details are held from the athletes until right before the competition starts, sometimes seconds before they have to start the events. And then they hear 3,2,1,GO!

Athletes may be asked to lift a heavy stone from the ground to on top of shoulder as many times as possible in two minutes, followed immediately by another 2 min time block to acquire a max barbell lift. Or they may have to fill up a sandbag with their bare hands, run backwards with it up a hill, and when we get up there, walk 100ft on their hands. Or just a straight up 2 mile swim, fastest person wins.

Athletes in the sport of CrossFit have to be able to do everything thrown at them. Whatever the tasks, they will do it, and to the best of their ability. Competitors are ranked for each event, and the person who averages out the highest above all others wins the competition.

I, along with many others are CrossFit athletes. We train to be good at everything. We make no excuses for anything. We work on our weaknesses until they become strengths. We try not to specialize too much because that will be taking away from getting better at something new. We borrow the best training techniques from all over the world. Including gymnastics, strongman, power lifting, Olympic weight lifting, plyometrics, martial arts, and all sorts of endurance sports like rowing, biking, running, and swimming. We seek out the best coaches in the world and learn from them. We video tape these coaches and share the knowledge with everyone who wants to thrive.

When it comes to training we vary everything: Intensity, Frequency, Types of exercise, Length of workouts, Weight, and Reps

We make conditions hard on us so that when game day comes, everything feels easy. We work out with weight vests on, at elevation, in the hot sun, or right after eating. As competitors we need to be ready for everything. And it will show who is prepared or not at the competitions.

This is how everyone should train. We all need to be ready to use our body as a tool. If you think about how much time you have left to live it is a long time. 10-20-50 years? A lot can happen in that time.

You never know what you will have to face. You could be walking through the woods with your friend and he/she slips and breaks their leg. Are you going to be able to pick them up, put them on your back, and carry them 2 miles to safety?? Would you be able to pull yourself while disoriented out of a burning car? What about that earthquake?

The truth is that the sport of CrossFit mimics life. You never know the challenges that will happen, you wont know the circumstances, and there will come a time when you will have to depend on your body. For your safety or someone else’s.

For this I created CrossFit Mean Streets in Downtown Los Angeles. Everyone at CrossFit Mean Streets trains with fitness as their main goal. To get better at everything. To get better at life.

Not everyone at the gym is training like maniacs in preparation for the aforementioned competitions. But they are all spending the right amount of time for functionality. They are educated in how to fuel themselves for hormonal optimization and they show up everyday to get work done. The members may not be hunting their lunch, but their body thinks it is.

Most of our workouts are 5-25 minutes of intense work. Some times more, some times less. This will mimic the times when they had to kill their food. When they had to carry wood for shelter. When they had to climb trees to escape predators. And because of this their bodies will learn that they need to be capable. Their body’s hormones will kick in to promote lean tissue and will not hold onto fat. Their bodies transform to a time when the “Sitting Olympics” did not exist.

Benefits of challenging yourself physically on a daily basis go way beyond achieving a functional body. Overcoming challenges frequently will transfer into all aspects of your life. You will think more creatively, you will always find a reason why you can and “can’t” will not exist. How many people do you know that have to push passed their self-perceived boundaries on a daily basis? Do you know the power that can give you? It’s time for you to be the one who does.

 

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