CrossFit

After 7 months of CrossFit I want to share what I wished I'd known at the start. First: membership costs vs. regular gyms — it hits earlier and harder than the internet suggests. Budget for it practically and mentally. Second: the knee sleeves you buy first will probably be wrong — ask your coach b…

I started CrossFit six months ago with zero background in the sport. The first few weeks were humbling — I couldn't do double-unders properly and had no idea what Fran even meant. My coach kept pulling me back to fundamentals, which was frustrating at the time but clearly the right call. By month t…

I've been competing in CrossFit for three years now, training five days a week. I want to give an honest picture of what the competitive path looks like. The technical demands compound. Olympic lifting in metcons at beginner level and at competition level are almost different skills. Understanding …

After 15 months of training CrossFit I entered my first competition. I lost. It was the best thing that's happened to my development in the sport. Competition exposes gaps in your game that rolling or drilling never will. My Olympic lifting in metcons fell apart under pressure. My understanding of …

I'd been training CrossFit for two years when I picked up an injury that kept me out for four months. Coming back was harder mentally than physically. My toes-to-bar had regressed and AMRAP I'd taken for granted needed rebuilding. Open season competition was what brought me back to myself — about s…

Around the 15-month mark in CrossFit I hit a wall. My progress with wall balls wasn't improving and I felt like I was spinning wheels. It's apparently common but that didn't make it less frustrating. What helped: going back to fundamentals with my coach, spending more time drilling AMRAP slowly rat…

I track everything, so here are actual results after 4 months of CrossFit: significantly improved cardiovascular fitness, noticeable strength gains, and a flexibility improvement I didn't expect. None of that came from a gym program — it came from learning wall balls and understanding AMRAP. Open s…

A friend dragged me to a CrossFit trial class. I went to be polite. I was terrible. I went back because I couldn't stand being terrible at something. That was 6 months ago. The kipping pull-up I stumbled through in that first class is now something I teach to newer beginners. box culture has become…

I got into CrossFit after watching Katrin Davidsdóttir compete and thinking I wanted a piece of that. Reality check: what they make look effortless takes years of work. The double-unders I admired on screen took me 12 months just to do passably. But somewhere in that process I stopped caring about …

Purely as a fitness tool, CrossFit is good but not exceptional. There are more efficient ways to get fit. Where CrossFit is genuinely underrated is everything else: the double-unders problem-solving, the EMOM depth, how varied the programming keeps you engaged. These aren't fitness outcomes — they'r…