Beau at the CrossFit Games Qualifier in Alany.

Monday WOD
Two rounds of:
Right arm barbell push-press 12 reps
Left arm deadlift 12 reps
Run 800 meters
Left arm barbell push-press 12 reps
Right arm deadlift 12 reps
Run 800 meter

Have you gotten faster?  Eric has...


The following excerpts are from the article God's Workout by Virginia Hefferman in The New York Times.

The superfit walk among us. They saunter or strut, depending on whether they’re showcasing their magnificent agility or their oxlike strength. They ignore the chatter in the health media over treadmill technique and pedometer steps. They scoff even at seemingly rigorous practices like Mysore Ashtanga yoga and marathon training. They are America’s self-styled fitness elite, adherents of a punishing online exercise regime called CrossFit, which orders its followers to cultivate a distinctly martial — not to say paranoid — ideal of “physical preparedness.”

CrossFitters offer themselves as evidence that people are capable of more than merely giving up sugar for Splenda and taking the stairs occasionally; according to the CrossFit creed, they can and should also be prepared to fell trees, tame bulls and carry families of four on their backs. Olympians, soldiers, police officers, firefighters and devoted fitness amateurs convene on the site, reveling in max squats and circus-strongman stunts, which they repeat as many as 100 times per workout. This is exercise not for vanity or for longevity but for an imagined moment of heroism that may never come.

The enemies in the eyes of the CrossFit crowd are “Stairmaster chumps” (who log long, drowsy hours on the machines but huff and puff on actual stairs) and myopic “specialists” — athletes or exercisers who neglect versatility in order to refine one or two skills. The CrossFitters’ critique has chastened at least one specialist. An essay by a triathlete named Tom Demerly titled “How Fit Are We?” appeared on a biking blog, conceding that if triathletes “found ourselves in a jam that required overall physical fitness to survive, we’d probably be in trouble.” Further admitting that he could barely do a single pull-up, Demerly went on to praise the fitness of a CrossFit type he had met named Joe Sparks, who “gave a demonstration using a 50-pound kettlebell making it look like he was maneuvering a tennis ball.”