If you’re new to the movements of CrossFit, and your only exposure to it is watching the fittest on earth compete on Netflix, it’s natural to be concerned about injury if you were to attempt it. In fact, this comes up a lot in our one to one introduction sessions with new members.
First off, we never throw someone into classes without getting to know them, their exercise history, goals, and injuries. We then use this knowledge in how we train you. For example if you have an old ankle injury, you’re not going to be asked to run hard or do box jumps straight out the gate!
We start you off with one to one instruction so we can monitor your movement and determine the correct weight, range of motion, and movements for you. This also gives you a chance for you to get used to communicating with a coach, letting us know how everything feels so we can guide you better.
Our warm ups are more than just warm ups. We aren’t only interested in getting a bit of a sweat going. We use this time to undo the damage that sitting in a chair for 8 plus hours can cause, and strengthen your joints. Your joints are what decide how much you can push in training, and how healthy overall your body will be. We strengthen joints primarily through animal crawls, and weighted stretches. Weighted stretches help us build strength at the end of our range of motion, which is where we’ll need it most.
We take a long term approach to building up your fitness. This gives your muscles and connective tissue plenty of time to adapt. In your first month, we keep you at about 50% of capacity. Don’t worry, you’ll still feel like you’re getting a tough workout – and you are! The exposure to new movements and combinations unique to CrossFit is enough to drive adaptation. Month two we’ll move up to about 75% of capacity, and month three we’ll go to 90%. 100% is reserved for those few times of the year where all the stars align and we’ll really go for it.
Finally, we’re always watching In every session, be in personal training or group classes, we’re monitoring your movement speed, how fluid it is, checking your technique and making adjustments so you can keep getting fitter and healthier!