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Joining Crossfit In The New Year? Here’s Everything You Need To Know

So you’ve been hearing a lot about Crossfit, either through your real-life friends or your internet friends and you’ve decided to finally give it a shot in 2020.

Theres many great things to look forward to and chances are you’ll never look back.

Crossfit can be a little intimidating at first due to the wide array of movements, acronyms, and weird social media posts so we’re here to try and explain everything you need to know and anything you might be wondering.

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How Do Crossfit Classes Work?

Each class is an hour long and consists of:

  • Workout description and explanation
  • Warmup / stretching
  • Movement demonstrations
  • Full workout
  • Cool down & stretching

A certified Crossfit coach will lead you through everything and help you modify any movements if necessary. If you can not do a certain movement that is completely fine and your gym will help you work up to that movement in time, but in the meantime you can change the movement to make it more manageable while still getting a great workout in.

Every day when you show up to the gym or “box” there will be a workout of the day (WOD) written down and every Crossfit class throughout the day will be following that same workout.

This is where Crossfit separates itself from other programs as this allows you to workout and compete with your friends as well as get advice and discuss the workout in general, building the community.

Before and after class most gyms allow you to do other workouts, skill sessions, or weightlifting sessions if you want. For example, some members that have been Crossfitting for a while may show up to the gym early and do some back squats, then do the class workout.

Some people do this and some do not, either way you are still going to become extremely fit and sexy.

The workout programming for your week is not random, each workout complements each other and certain aspects of fitness are focused on depending on which part of the year it is in order to ensure maximum fitness.


Do A Lot of People Get Injured?

Somehow Crossfit has garnered a bad reputation of being an injury-inducing exercise routine, but in reality is quite the opposite.

All coaches during certification are taught to first teach proper movement mechanics and good form over anything else. After a movement can be done perfectly with little to no weight only then will more intensity be applied.

This ensures that people are ready for whatever a workout may throw at them, and again all movements can be modified in case you’re still not comfortable.

Of course there are injuries every once in a while, but those are few and far between. What is more likely is that you will be very sore when you start because you are shocking your body with a new training program, this is not a bad thing.

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What Do All of The Acronyms Mean?

This is perhaps the one of the funniest things that makes people believe Crossfit is a cult, the never ending acronyms.

Crossfit uses a lot of acronyms in order to shorten the name of certain things when writing them on a white board, there’s only so much space.

You will have them all memorized in no time, but to give you a head start we will go over most of them below:

AMRAP (As Many Rounds/Reps As Possible) – This describes the length of your workout and the goal. For example:

  • AMRAP 15:
  • 20 pushups
  • 20 lunges
  • 20 air squats

This would mean that you would try to complete as many rounds or reps of pushups, lunges, and air squats, as possible in a 15 minute time limit.

FOR TIME – This is the opposite of an AMRAP. When a workout is for time that means you try to complete the amount of work written in as fast as possible. Using the workout above for our example it would look like this:

  • FOR TIME:
  • 5 ROUNDS
  • 20 pushups
  • 20 lunges
  • 20 air squats

That would simply mean you do 20 pushups, 20 lunges, and 20 air squats in a row 5 times as fast as possible.

EMOM (Every Minute On the Minute) – This means that you have to complete a certain amount of reps of one movement in a one minute time limit. These typically have multiple movements and alternate between odd and even minutes as well, for example:

  • EMOM 10:
  • Odd minutes: 15 pushups
  • Even minutes: 30 air squats

This would mean that you would alternate between pushups and lunges for 10 minutes. Minutes 1,3,5,7,9 you would do 15 pushups and minutes 2,4,6,8,10 you would be doing 30 air squats. If it only takes you 30 seconds to complete all 15 pushups then you would rest 30 seconds until the next minute starts.

Some Movement Acronyms

Double Unders/Doubles/DU – This is referring to jumping rope where the jump rope will pass underneath your feet twice with each jump. This is a skill that has to be learned and you will see them often in class.

Video of the double under

HSPU (Hand Stand Push Up) – This is exactly what it sounds like. An athlete will flip upside down against a wall and perform a pushup. This is an advanced skill.

Video of the HSPU

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What Kind of Equipment Do I Need?

None of the following pieces of equipment are absolutely necessary, but they do make things easier on you.

Crossfit Shoes – Since your training is going to consist of weightlifting and cardio in the same workout you are going to need a versatile shoe that is good for both.

Wearing pure running shoes make weightlifting movements more difficult because it is harder to create power since the extra cushion displaces force. Wearing pure weightlifting shoes are too flat and heavy and make movements like running more difficult.

Knee Sleeves You may have heard a joke before that in Crossfit everyday is leg day and that’s partially true. You are going to be doing a good amount of squats, lunges, box jumps, etc. and quality knee sleeves are going to come in handy, especially when weight lifting.

Gymnastics Grips – When doing a large amount of movements on a pull-up bar such as pull-ups, toes to bar, and muscle ups your hands can get tender after a while and it can be hard to hold on to the bar.

Gymnastics grips protect your hands from rips while also making it easier to hold on to the bar.


What Is The Crossfit Open?

The Crossfit Open is a worldwide competition that every Crossfit gym in the world participates in. It is only as competitive as you want to make it and you don’t have to compete at all if you don’t want to.

For many gyms it is just a fun time of the year where you get to see people in the gym get excited to see how far their fitness has come.

The Crossfit Open is 5 weeks long and it works just like your typical class works.

Each week on a Thursday one workout is released and gyms around the world do that exact same workout. Instead of only the people in your gym doing the same thing, its hundreds of thousands of people around the world.

Again, participation is not mandatory but the Open is always a fun time in the Crossfit community.


Where Are They Now? The Last 6 Crossfit Games Rookies of The Year

Where Are They Now? The Last 6 Crossfit Games Rookies of The Year


Am I Going To Be Sore All The Time?

Again, Crossfit workouts are constantly varied meaning you will rarely do the same workout unless it is for progress testing.

Because the workouts are constantly new your body is constantly adapting to a new stimulus and this is what causes soreness. This also is what makes Crossfit so effective and shredding fat and building muscle.

For a lot of people soreness is seen as a good thing since they know they pushed themselves hard enough to earn recovery time.


Want To Learn More?

Hopefully we were able to answer some of the questions you may have been having facing your first month at a Crossfit gym and we hope that you’re looking forward to it.

If you’re eager to learn more please check out some of our latest posts below or you can follow us below:

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