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2 years of CrossFit

by Ryley

November 4, 2009 at 3:43 pm

I’ve been doing CrossFit for almost exactly 2 years now, and I wanted to do a little run down on where it’s gotten me in that time.

My pre-Crossfit background: I had just finished walking the Pacific Crest Trail, just under 4000km of trail from Mexico to Canada. I was as skinny as I’ve ever been, almost entirely due to the logistically-enforced starvation diet, weighing in around 155 (I was 215ish when I started). Along the trail, I had briefly crossed paths with a woman named Rachel, who told me her “crazy” workout scheme, based off of CrossFit. Basically, it sounded like I could have someone else come up with a fun, varied workout plan, and all I had to do was put my head down and do it. For some reason, even her brief description clicked with me and it stuck with me all the way home.

After I finished the trail, I was in almost continual pain and hunger for a few weeks but I joined the Y and started hacking my way through some severely scaled-down versions of the CrossFit workouts. I was also restarting my ultimate frisbee obsession at the same time.

It’s hard to describe how weak the trail had left me… I had gigantic hip flexors and calves, and essentially no muscle anywhere else… My quads looked like strips of beef jerky laid down relatively normal looking legs. The first time I went to an ultimate frisbee game, I fell down trying to sprint 20 meters. My first CrossFit workout involved doing pullups, I couldn’t do 1. I ended up using a machine that took 100lbs of my weight, and then I could barely, just barely get it done.

So anyways, from that start, I steadily gained ground… I did the CrossFit workouts as often as I could, along with 4-5 ultimate frisbee practices/games a week for about a year. I got a lot better with the frisbee, and oh so slowly stronger.

Last March, a CrossFit-specific gym, Crossfit Taranis, finally opened near enough to me that I could reasonably get there without a car. As soon as I found out, I was on them – did their “Intro” course to learn the proper way to do all the exercises, but I couldn’t commit to their schedule after that, so back to the Y I went. Somewhere in here, my mum got into it, and she really got hooked on it…. And through her I was convinced that I had to get back into the group setting they offered. Ulty was slowing down, and I jumped on it in May this year.

I’ve been going very steadily since then and seen a lot more improvement. The group setting at Crossfit Taranis lets me add external motivation to my own drive. Seeing other people working so hard and striving to keep up with them just added a bit more intensity to my workouts. Having coaches watching my form, encouraging me, and correcting me when necessary has been great. I’ve also been essentially injury free the entire time I’ve been doing CrossFit. Previously, I had partially torn my left ACL and that gave me random pains. All the squats and lower body strengthening has done away with that.

Overall, I’m pleased with how I’ve done, and especially how much it’s improved my ulti game (mainly conditioning). I used to work out at a normal gym doing strength training, but got nowhere near the same result, and I give a lot of credit to the coaches at CrossFit Taranis. The rest goes to eating healthy, and getting outside to do other stuff regularly.

After the break I’ll throw down some numbers for anyone that cares.

Changes from my first workout til now:
• Starting weight of 175lbs, approximately 15% body fat
• 30lbs gained in year 1, ~25 of them muscle
• 0 pullups in a row to 31 during a recent workout (Nicole)
• 185lb back squat to 355lbs
• 200lb deadlift to 500lbs
• 5 minute jumping pullup and bar thrusters Fran, to 7:40 rx’d Fran
• 545 CF Total after a month of CF to 1020 recently
• Pullups/Pushups version of Lynne got me 34 Pullups, 92 Pushups when I started, now Rx’d Lynne was 25 body-weight Bench Presses and 86 Pullups.
• 270 workouts recorded in 2 years

* For people that don’t recognize a lot of the exercises, there are decent videos of all of them here

Since starting at CrossFit Taranis:
• 800m run time gone from 3:33 to 2:42
• first handstand pushup
• first muscle-up
• 122lb Clean and Jerk, 55lb Snatch to 225lb Clean and Jerk, 140lb Snatch
• Michael: 22:28 to 19:28
• Annie: 15:15 to 7:18
• I could go on pretty much forever – every workout is usually an improvement over the one before, but those are the first ones I found…

Finally, I have 2 public logbooks, first just a free-form one that I’ve been using since day 1: Year 1, Year 2. Second, I’ve been using LogsItAll.com since I joined Crossfit Taranis, which is much more fully-featured.

8 comments

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1. Jared

   on November 4, 2009 at 9:10 pm

   tl;dr

   Just kidding.

   Cool muscle-up site: “I say if you’re strong enough to do a pull-up with 100 extra pounds, then pulling your own bodyweight right past the transition point will be easy.” ← yeah, great, that’s good to know

2. Ryley

   on November 5, 2009 at 9:55 am

   About muscle-ups: It’s definitely more of a tricky technique than a brute strength move. That being said, I can do a pullup with 100 extra pounds

3. Jared

   on November 5, 2009 at 10:28 am

   A proper-technique pullup?

4. Ryley

   on November 5, 2009 at 10:31 am

   Indeed, kipping doesn’t do much when you’re that weighed down.

5. Don

   on November 5, 2009 at 10:44 am

   The parts of this post that I understand are interesting and impressive.

6. susan

   on November 5, 2009 at 1:26 pm

   Everything about your story is simply amazing and oh so inspiring. Having just done a 215 lb deadlift, myself I understand the huge jump to over 500 lbs!!!!

7. Sully

   on November 9, 2009 at 11:31 am

   Great summary Ryley! It’s always inspiring to watch you workout and push through barriers I’m happy to be a part of a team with you and your mom and the intensity you both bring!

8. Exercising for the lolz « MentalPolyphonics

   on December 29, 2009 at 3:22 pm

   [...] showed me this machinima video satirizing CrossFit: [...]