So, I have two friends who live about an hour away from me who recently celebrated their 1 year anniversary of being CrossFit junkies. They are proud to be junkies and proud to be part of the cult. It scares me a little. BUT they have great camaraderie, friendships, support, and fitness, largely through CF. These are ladies I know from teaching group exercise classes who have continued to up their fitness levels over the last few years while I have upped... well, not much other than my fat content and my potato chip consumption. I had been feeling pretty down on myself for my lack of motivation with running, my loss of strength, my weight gain (yes - I am admitting it. The scale DOES have an affect on me too), and my overall feeling out of shape. I could (can) tell the difference as to how my body reacts when I exercise. I don't like it. All of these things coming together with that "I need to make a change" desire that takes over my life once a year or so, and I was ripe for the pickin' when my friend started back in on how I should join CF.
So... I started doing some research... into CF in general, into the gyms (they call them "boxes" at CF... no clue why) in my area... into why people have such STRONG emotions towards CF. My basic conclusion after a week or two of this? It's a lot like marathon running or triathlon participation. You have to be a little crazy to join. You are never going to stick to it if you don't have that innate drive to compete against yourself and push through pain and exhaustion. You are likely to wind up becoming obsessed and loving it and possibly talking about very little other than it. While emotions seem to be even stronger for CF than marathoning, they seem to line up pretty well. Most people fall in to one camp or the other: 1) Why the hell would anyone want to do that?!?!? 2) I think I could maybe do that. Yeah. I bet I could do that. Damnit, I am going to do that.
Once I was at the "yeah, I bet I could do that" stage, I contacted several boxes in the area. Based on the responses I got, on their websites, and on what little I could gather as far as the "atmosphere" at each, I chose two to try out. For both I went in for an assessment/get to know the gym workout before committing. Very different experiences. One gym was much "nicer," had computerized check in, asked medical info before the assessment, etc. The guy was very nice, seemed to know what he was doing safety wise, and all in all it was a good experience. The other was a little more run down, put you straight into a workout after making sure you could have good/safe form on a few exercised, and put me to the test. It was a much shorter, but harder, workout. The biggest difference I noticed? Everyone was super friendly. The person who ran me through the workout announced my name to the gym and perfect strangers were cheering me on. Several of them introduced themselves to me afterwards. Now THIS is what I was looking for. Community. Motivation. People who I will get to know and thus feel accountable to. THIS is what will help me reach my goals. As soon as I determined that, yes, it was financially feasible (though just barely - I keep having to remind myself that its cheaper than a personal trainer, because it ISN'T cheap) I signed up.
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