Globo Gym or CrossFit?

Globo gym or CrossFit?

I visited a Crossfit affiliate for the first time ever this weekend. Allow me to compare and contrast a first-time Crossfit visit vs. a first-time Globo gym visit. Globo first:

• Enter gym. Notice front desk employee sitting in front of a computer. Wait about 15-20 seconds for them to stop playing solitaire or Facebook.

• “Hi, I’m Brian. This is my first time here.” “Oh, let me get a “trainer” to show you around.”

• Walk through the gym. Trainer shows you the “cardio areas”, which consist of rows upon rows of treadmills, ellipticals, and stationary bikes.

• Next, you are shown the “machines areas”. Various contraptions with diagrams that highlight whatever muscle group the thing is supposed to isolate. If you’re lucky, they’ll have Hammer Strength stuff!! You may get a line like “This machine is designed to work you exactly like free weights.” You think to yourself, “Hmmm, well why not just do free weights, then?” You also note that at least 2 of the four walls in every area are made up entirely of mirrors. And people are standing and looking at themselves in them.

• The tour continues: “Here we have the free weight area. You can use this if you want to get hyoooge.” This typically equates to the square footage of a walk-in closet. Work boots, little tank-tops, and multiple shakers full of supplements abound.

• Now, the all-important retreat into a tiny office where you get the used-car sale. Something like, “Well, typically our memberships are $59/mo, plus a $269 sign-up fee. We’ll waive the fee and set you up on a tiered payment plan where every year the fee will drop 11.59043% until you reach year 4, at which point…” blah blah blah. You counter with, “Well my friend pays $20/mo with no sign-up fee.” They respond, “I’ll have to get my manager.” The dance continues. You threaten to walk out. At this point, you may or may not get the “super secret pricing deal”. You realize you’ve lost a little bit of your soul. They throw in free tanning.

• You are now a member. You work out for 2 years. You see the same people every day. You never talk to them. After 2 years you notice that they all look exactly the same as the first day you ever saw them, despite the fact that they spend at least an hour a day on the elliptical while reading a magazine or talking on their cell phones.

OK, the Crossfit gym first-time experience:

• The first thing you notice is that there really isn’t a front door – it’s a garage door. Or two. Did this place used to be an auto shop?

• The next thing you notice are people on the floor gasping for air. You can see this clearly as the whole place is one open room and the garage doors are open.

• You walk in. At first, you’re not quite sure who works there and who works out there – they all look about the same. Eventually, a trainer or owner finds you and greets you enthusiastically.

• You’re invited to take part in a workout. As you wait for the current group to finish up, you take notice of your surroundings.

• No air conditioning. No mirrors. Not a single treadmill. Rowers – uh oh.

• Ropes and gymnastics rings hanging from the ceiling. Kettlebells. Weight racks. Weird rubber weights. Lots and lots and lots of places to do pull-ups. Instead of mirrors, the walls are covered with dry-erase boards. And peoples names are listed under various workouts that have girls’ names as the titles. Obviously people compete over everything here. As people finish the workout and peel themselves off the floor, you notice that they all seem to be friends.

• OK, time for the workout. A trainer takes you and whoever else is there for a first-time visit and you do some stretches, and then they actually teach you how to do whatever you’re going to be doing that day. Real instruction (with PVC pipe), and the guy (or girl) actually sounds like they know what they’re talking about.

• Workout time. 3-2-1-go. 1 minute into the workout you realize that you actually might die before it’s done. You regret eating whatever it was you ate for breakfast, because you’re pretty sure everybody is going to see it coming out of your mouth. 7 minutes later you’re finished, and soaked with sweat on a pile on the floor. You think to yourself that you did more work in 7 minutes than most people at your old globo did in a month.

• After the workout, you’re told you can hang around and ask questions or go home and ice yourself down. No pitch.

Now, which one sounds better? I’m pretty sure I have not exaggerated anything here – these are my actual experiences. I’m also joining the Crossfit gym.

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Source: Rehoboth CrossFit (Shared post from a new member of CrossFit Franklin Lakes)

We are Different

We are Different.

By Jonathan Heuer, CF Hollywood

We are a different breed.  We get excited by things most people avoid.  The idea of being laid out on our backs after a workout is appealing.  We strive on performance, deal with the pain, and take pleasure in small victories.  5 more pounds, 2 seconds quicker, an inch higher: these are the milestones we live for.  These are the reasons we come in day after day and do what we do.  We love the suck.

We are also a little ridiculous.  We try and explain to friends and family why our shins are always scraped open, why our hands are ripped, why we’re having trouble walking down stairs that day, and then immediately try to convince them why they should come and do it.  We tend towards a cult-like mentality.  (Get more than two of us together and try to have a conversation about something else.  Won’t happen.)  We get way more excited about food than is normal, and we take cheat meals very seriously.  We wear ridiculous looking shoes, or sometimes no shoes at all.  We cheer when someone gets their first hand-tear and then take a picture of it.  We congratulate someone for puking during a workout, and none of this seems unusual to us.

Most of all we are a community.  We suffer together and we succeed together.  We cheer each other on.  We help each other push past the pain and achieve things we never thought possible.  Both inside and outside of the gym we are family.  We come from all walks of life to find a common ground: Crossfit.

10 Reasons NOT to Train at FirePower

(And 10 reasons we don’t want you to come)

10. They make you try out – Just having a credit card and pulse does not get you a membership.  You have to demonstrate your willingness and ability to train intensely enough to get results. Who wants to have to meet objective standards of performance?

9. They train too hard – You sweat and breathe hard in every workout.  You train at the edge of the redline which makes it too hard to read a magazine while “working out.” They won’t let you be a part of the program if you just want to go through the motions.

8. They coach you – You can’t just sit and peddle on the bike, they make you learn and develop skills. They video workouts so people can see what they are doing and coach you on how to improve. You have to learn how to move better, so you can lift more weight faster – which means you get stronger, faster and lift properly. Who wants to be coached to be stronger or faster?

7. They don’t like whining or excuses – Complainers and criers are shunned, ridiculed, run off and are generally treated like lepers.  They don’t consider the woe is me attitude to be a good thing or a badge of courage. It is the right of every human to paint himself or herself as a victim in everything so they can increase their popularity with their everything-is–wrong peer group.   Who wants to go to a place where you can’t complain about everything under the sun?

6. They teach you new things – They make people learn new lifts, workouts and training methods – And expect you to master them.  They teach and re-teach the fundamentals so you are good at them.  Who wants to learn and perfect movements in constantly changing workouts?

5. They don’t have mirrors, treadmills, machines, TV’s Etc. – They don’t have a place to adjust your make up or to flex while you stand around figuring out your next bicep exercise. You can’t check how your new outfit looks when you work out. There is no TV with Jerry or Montel or any other car crash program to distract you from your workout. They actually make you run to do your “cardio.” Who really wants to actually focus on training?

4. They tell you the truth – They tell you when you are not moving right, or babying yourself or going through the motions. They are do not praise you when you look like a space monkey having a seizure.  If you do something stupid in a workout they will have probably videoed it and put it on YouTube.  Who wants to be held accountable to actually do things right?

3. They expect you to get better and actually expect you to train – They expect you to add weight, go faster and maintain excellent form as a regular part of the training. They expect you to try harder to overcome the weakest links in your performance. They expect everyone who has a membership to actually come to the gym to workout. Who wants that kind of stress to constantly improve or show up?

2. They measure performance – They keep score and track your results. They won’t let you just go through the motions – They keep score on the results of your training. If your scores, weights or times are not improving, they want to know why. Who wants their performance to improve all the time?

1. They charge too much – They charge enough where you may actually feel compelled to show up and train. They think that if they provide a top level, fully equipped training space and expert coaches to coach you, it is of value to their members.  Who wants to pay for a fully equipped and professionally run training center that expects people to workout and requires people to get results?

Thanks to our friends at HyperFit – USA, Ann Arbor CrossFit!

Developing Self Confidence: How to Define a True CrossFitter

May be a little stretch, but when I read this today, I couldn’t help but connect the lines to a TRUE CROSSFITTER.  We are confident in our training and why it’s so engaging and useful in life, but we are willing to admit our inadequacies in certain areas i.e. pull ups, muscle-ups, double unders, etc.  We also are open enough to listen to other’s belief in sport-specific training, but are fully grounded with confidence that CF is still the best answer.

I hope potential new CrossFitters are willing to read this article and realize no one at FirePower was confident taking that first step into the gym.  It will grow and flourish until you finally realize there is a different person inside YOU!

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“Self-confidence: The first requisite to great undertakings.”

By: Samuel Johnson

Many people yearn to be more self-confident. Yet they have no idea how to achieve that objective. They look at others who have the gift and say, “Hey that’s what I want. I hate feeling unsure of myself. I wish I could stop obsessing about what others think of me and quit worrying about disappointing other people. I want to stop anguishing over my decisions and torturing myself about my mistakes.  I think it would be so great to feel self-assured, hold my head up high and stand tall. I’ve never been self-confident. I wish there were a way I could be.”

There is a way. You don’t have to be born with self-confidence. Self-confidence can grow and flourish and ripen and blossom until you actually come to feel as though there is a different person inside of you.  Here are some insights that might facilitate the quest.

• Learn what a self-confident person is really like. They are not cocky, know-it-all   people who don’t care what anybody else thinks. They have their doubts. And make mistakes. And are far from perfect.  However, they are willing to acknowledge their inadequacies without dwelling on them. They do this by maintaining a sense of humor, putting problems in perspective, and focusing mainly on what they’ve done right, not wrong.

• Though self-confident people do believe in themselves, they don’t try to suffocate others with their ideas or beliefs. They are confident in what they know not only because they read, learn and think but also because they respect their instinct, intuition and the unique body of knowledge that they’ve developed by living life. They realize that one doesn’t have to be labeled an “expert” to believe in one’s own truths.

• Self-confident people don’t undermine their own worth by comparing themselves with others, only to conclude that they aren’t “good enough”.  They appreciate their strengths and accomplishments and can acknowledge, without embarrassment, their weaknesses. They don’t live in the “victim” position. Even if something really bad has occurred, they turn it into a challenge, remembering to be grateful for the little things in life.

• Self-confident people let the world know who they are.  If they want something badly enough, they know they have every right to “go for it.”  Yet, they also know that the path will rarely be easy. Mistakes, blunders and failures are part of the learning process. They seek to learn from their mistakes and do not waste time torturing themselves over what “could have been”.

• Self-confident people are not obstinate people. If they have an idea about something and it differs from the way another person is thinking about it, they will usually try to look at it from that person’s point of view, see why it makes sense to them. Yet, a confident person’s sense of self is grounded. It does not blow in the wind. Their ideas do not fluctuate based on what others deem are important.

I hope these insights are helpful to you. If so, perhaps one day you will be able to  say what the actress Phyllis Rashad once said, simply but eloquently, ” I am just myself and who I am is a lot.”

Families Who Play Together, Stay Together

The FirePower Family is Strong!!

Family values are at the core of our business…from the Savard family, to the Arnold family, to our FirePower family.  It infiltrates every decision we make about business including class times, who teaches when, and who we attract as members.

You may not realize but the idea of “FirePower” came from George’s and my desire to simply A) have a place to workout together; and B) have an environment our twins (6 months old at the time) could grow up knowing family time, health, and hard work.  FirePower Boxing was born from a hobby we loved and wanted to share with our community using a small 10ft wide room inside a high school, and then grew into the FirePower Training facility and culture you know today.

Families Who Play Together, Stay Together

This has been our business motto from Day 1.  We strongly encourage other families to join us!  Very few sports allow families to sweat it out side by side in a class together, encouraging each other, making fun of each other, getting fit together. Husbands/wives, sisters/brothers, mothers/daughters, fathers/sons, etc.  New to us this year is our Super Kids program, taught by CrossFit parents, and finally allowing young children to play too.  This fall, we’ll be continuing with our after school program again.

Here’s a list of SOME of our FirePower Families who play with us:

• Chris & Tracy Hummel
• Scott & Jordan Kerr
• Jeff, Dan, Michelle, Andrea, Alyssa, Alisha Ramlogan
• Carmen, George, Vicky, Alex, Adam Schembri
• Grant & Chris Fowler
• Kim/Randy Smith + 3
• Mellyssa DaSilva, Jason Enriquez, Maria DaSilva
• Doug & Joel Herder
• Brad & Andrea Maguire
• Zena & Steve Reynolds
• Trish, Chris, Connor Lamont
• Jason & Tammy Vallaire
• and more!

Family time is the sole reason FirePower doesn’t currently have Sunday classes. We’ve been protective of our need for recharging our family after a busy week.  Thankfully as our FirePower family grows with volunteers, this will soon change and we can offer Sunday workout times.

Starting in August, look for bi-monthly FirePower Family Days on Sunday afternoons.  Just like Family Day in February, we will have family-friendly WODs, kids CrossFit area while parents workout, BBQ, music, and laughter.  The way a Sunday should be!

Thanks FirePower Family for letting us be part of your family.

Andrea

The 10 General Physical Skills of CrossFit Training

CrossFit’s main goal is to improve an athlete’s General Physical Preparedness (GPP).  How is this measured?

One standard that CrossFit uses is the 10 General Physical Skills:

-Cardiovascular/respiratory endurance:  The ability of body systems to gather, process, and deliver oxygen.

-Stamina: The ability of body systems to process, deliver, store, and utilize energy.

-Strength: The ability of a muscular unit, or combination of muscular units, to apply force.

-Flexibility: the ability to maximize the range of motion at a given joint

-Power: The ability of a muscular unit, or combination of muscular units, to apply maximum force in minimum time.

-Speed: The ability to minimize the time cycle of a repeated movement.

-Coordination: The ability to combine several distinct movement patterns into a singular distinct movement.

-Agility: The ability to minimize transition time from one movement pattern to another.

-Balance: The ability to control the placement of the bodies center of gravity in relation to its support base.

-Accuracy: The ability to control movement in a given direction or at a given intensity.

At FirePower Training we try to hit all of these physical skills. By finding our weaknesses, it allows us to shift our focus towards our weaknesses and in turn make greater gains in a shorter amount of time.

Source: Thanks to Jim Crawley and Bruce Evans of Dynamax,