Functional Fitness – forget the machines and train properly!

When I sat down to write this article, it dawned on me that it will be challenging to put into words how much shifting to this method of training can change your life. I can only suggest you give it a go for yourself and leave all your old ideas at the door. I did! I’ve been heavily into weightlifting and fitness since the age of 14 (I am 29 at the time of writing). I’ve had decent results in strength and muscle development from traditional training utilising a mixture of machine weights, dumbells and bodyweight exercises. Recently I’ve moved into fully functional exercise following the Crossfit (http://www.crossfit.com) methodology/workouts and have comitted to never touching another machine again. The results I have achieved are nothing short of amazing. I should state I’m not affiliated with Crossfit and am not being paid to write this article. My personal improvement and success is my motivation to share this with my readers.

Crossfit training can be summed up as follows:

World-Class Fitness in 100 Words:

Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat. Practice and train major lifts: Deadlift, clean, squat, presses, C&J, and snatch. Similarly, master the basics of gymnastics: pull-ups, dips, rope climb, push-ups, sit-ups, presses to handstand, pirouettes, flips, splits, and holds. Bike, run, swim, row, etc, hard and fast. Five or six days per week mix these elements in as many combinations and patterns as creativity will allow. Routine is the enemy. Keep workouts short and intense. Regularly learn and play new sports.

-CrossFit founder, Greg Glassman

While you will get results from traditional gym exercise, you can get faster, more overall results from a truly functional fitness program. Your typical gym consists of a majority cable machines, perhaps some dumbells, a squat rack, crosstrainers, treadmills, step machines, aerobics classes. A typical crossfit gym will be filled with pull up bars, plyometric boxes, sandbags, olympic bars, kettlebells, ropes, gymnastic rings and the like. Concentrate your training on moving your BODY, rather than a machine, you are doing what comes naturally. If you are jumping, lifting, climbing, throwing and running, these natural movements are compound and multi joint which ensures extensive muscle fibre recuitment overall. There are 10 domains of fitness – cardiovascular/respiratory endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, power, speed, agility, balance, coordination and accuracy. Crossfit ensures you are across all of these. The workouts change daily and can be scaled to any fitness level. The variety of training goes a long way to ensuring motivation and there is something exciting (and slightly sadistic) about checking the website each morning to see what torture has been prescribed for the day.

If it’s not working – do something different!

I have watched with interest some of the people training at my local gym over the 2 months since I started. They come in and do the same workouts, day in day out. 4 sets of 10 reps on each machine down the line while chatting to their friend on the next machine. They haven’t had any results. They don’t look like they are having fun and I know from my experience working in gyms, they will join the long list of inactive members before too long. I used to prescribe a mixture of machine and free weights with some separate cardio. Those days are over. You don’t need to do long sessions, or separate cardio and weights sessions. 20 minutes of push ups, un-weighted squats and burpees can do wonders! I’m not talking typical circuit training, it is far more intense, simple and effective than that.

I’ve personally been plagued with injuries over the years such as dodgy knees, a severe lower back problem, arthritic pain in many joints. I’ve been doing Crossfit for about 2 months and I am pain free, have put on a significant amount of lean muscle (which SHOULD be your goal even if you are female!), reduced my bodyfat level and imortantly achieved extreme improvements in cardio fitness, strength, agility and power. I was only able to complete 6 pull ups (chin ups) in a day prior to starting. Last week I did a session that lasted 20 minutes with 3 exercises. I completed 75 unassisted pull ups as part of this session! It doesn’t matter what your goal with training is – this truly is a one size fits all way of training. I have no experience with Olympic lifting, however am learning from the videos and all you need is a broomstick to start practicing. It doesn’t cost you a cent to go to the website and watch the exercise demos and view the workout of the day. If you want instruction you can attend seminars in your area, or join your local crossfit gym to train under the watchful eye of accredited Crossfit trainers. There are scaled versions of the workouts at the Crossfit BrandX forums and some very helpful people there to assist you.

The reason I wanted to share this is simply because it works. I know my body well. I know how long it takes to go up a notch on any typical gym machine, I know how much improvement I get in muscle tone week in week out using the machines. Changing to olympic lifts, bodyweight exercises and kettlebell exercises, with short, highly intense workouts that change on a daily basis has blown away all my previous notions of how much I can improve over a week or a month. Being the mother of an 18 month old toddler means I don’t have a lot of down time to get to the gym. The fact that these workouts average between 10 and 25 minutes make it appealing too. I don’t dread going to the gym, I burst through the door, power through the short workout and get home in under 30 minutes.

I apologise for the way this article promotes so strongly a commercial venture/branch. I don’t know of any other training system that is as functional and effective as this and I feel it is worth sharing. As mentioned, you can access it all for free, there is a great support network online and I am truly passionate about this method of training. The programming is done for you, you never get bored and anyone can do it. Once you Crossfit – you will never go back.