june-2011

culture || The Fan
WOD SQUAD CrossFit devotees
work out with kettle bells
third attempts also fall short, so I
pause, compose myself and hurl the ball
like a 4-year-old shooting hoops. I keep
throwing, and by the time I reach 30
reps, my arms and legs feel like they’re
made of Go-Gurt tubes.
It’s hard to imagine that CrossFit
founder Greg Glassman ever thought a
keyboard jockey like me would be doing
this when he developed the program in
the mid-’80s. CrossFit’s emphasis on
total body workouts and full range of
motion exercises fi rst a racted S.W.A.T.
teams, police forces and firefighters
to its easily digestible daily workouts,
which can be done with a few pieces of
rudimentary gym equipment and a li le
reckless abandon. In 1995, Glassman
opened his fi rst CrossFit gym in Santa
Cruz, Calif., but the program didn’t take
off until it went online in 2001.
CrossFit.com began with a message
board and posts of the workout of the
day—called a WOD. Most WODs fall into
two categories: “girls” and “heroes,” the
la er of which are named a er fallen
soldiers, police and firemen. There’s
the Helen (three rounds of 21 ke le bell
swings, 12 pull-ups and a quarter-mile
64 JUNE 2011 • HEMISPHERESMAGAZINE.COM
Unwavering devotion to the workouts
handed down by instructors has led
to one of the more bizarre criticisms
of CrossFit: It’s a cult.
run), the Angie (100 pull-ups, 100 sit-ups,
100 push-ups, 100 squats) and the JT
(rounds of 21, 15 and 9 reps of handstand
push-ups, ring dips and push-ups). If
those workouts sound nearly impossible,
that’s because they are. One of the main
tenets of CrossFit—and a big reason why
it’s a racted so many followers—is that
everyone from a professional athlete to
a professional cross-stitcher can participate
in the same workout, though only
a pro can complete it.
“There’s no person that CrossFit isn’t
for,” says Anthony Preischel, a CrossFit
coach in New York City who I watched do
seven pull-ups while carrying on a conversation.
“I have guys that are fresh out
of playing sports in college and people
who are much older. All it really takes is
someone who’s willing to get their bu
kicked and come back for more.”
That commitment to extreme eff ort
may have won CrossFit fans in the
mixed martial arts and military worlds,
but some doctors don’t like it. There is
a fear that the workouts, which people
o en compete to fi nish fastest, encourage
speed over technique and can lead
to injury. Then there is the rare occurrence
of rhabdomyolysis, a potentially
deadly disorder caused when muscle
fi bers break down and enter the bloodstream,
poisoning the kidney. Dr. Marc
Rogers, a professor of kinesiology at
the University of Maryland, says that
rhabdomyolysis usually occurs in
sedentary people who are starting an
intensive workout regime. “We see it
in military recruits who aren’t very fi t
when they get to basic training and
suddenly they’re doing three or four
hours of intensive workouts a day,”
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF CROSSFIT/SUSANNAH DY