CrossFit

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…

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 came to CrossFit for the fitness and stayed for the mental challenge. Everyone talks about the physical side — the double-unders, the conditioning, the jump rope. Nobody mentioned what happens to your mind. Learning benchmark workouts demands a kind of focused presence that clears everything else…

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…

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'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…

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 trained CrossFit for 13 months and then stopped. I want to be honest about why, because most reviews only come from people who stuck with it. membership costs vs. regular gyms was a bigger issue for me than I anticipated. My gym also had a culture problem — a few people had developed an ego aroun…

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…

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 …