Hi, my name is Nicholas Hodgson and
I'm 22 years old. The reason I am
starting this blog is to track my journey through Crossfit. I am currently about 6 months into
Crossfit. I will spend a few posts on
how I got here and my first few months of experience. The dates on the posts will reflect the date of events not the date I published them on this blog, since I just started this blog in February. From then on I will be updating my progress
and experiences on a daily to weekly basis.
I spent most of my high school years and a few years after doing the
Globo Gym routine chest and tris, back and bis, and threw in a half-hearted leg
day in there. I saw tremendous gains
through my first year and a half going from a scrawny 120lbs my freshman year
to about 185 going into my junior year.
Now I didn’t put on 65lbs of pure muscle but a good proportion was. I also grew a few inches which made up some of
this weight gain. After reaching my peak
junior into senior year with a 330lb bench press I started to hit a serious
plateau. A shoulder injury also stunted
my gains. Three years later of training
the same way, I actually lost a good amount of strength and muscle. It seemed like I was just going through the
same motions over and over. I followed
bodybuilding and strength routines over and over trying to break through my
stunted growth.
I worked as a personal trainer for about a year when I was 19 and began to lose my passion for fitness. I would see the same redundant routines passed onto our clients without any real progress. Many clients didn't want to train which makes it hard to want to train them. I eventually left there unsure of what I wanted to do because I thought some form of physical training would be my calling. Two years later I’m bored with my routines and I started looking into Crossfit. I saw the Crossfit Games on ESPN a couple times and thought it was awesome. I was like who are these crazy fit athletes walking on their hands, doing 30 pull-ups in a row, squatting on one leg? This is absolutely insane, so one day I’m scouring through the internet trying to find out more about this crazy fitness routine. I become even more intrigued by hearing stories of the everyday crossfitter who have become more mobile, fit, and able to do things they never thought were possible. I saw the camaraderie of people inside these gyms that were filled with just about every age group, gender, shapes, and sizes and was inspired.
Looking on the internet I saw a couple workouts and decide I’m going to give one a shot. I figured I’d pick Fran which is a combo of thrusters @95lbs(whatever those are!) and pull-ups 21-15-9 repetitions of each. How hard could it possibly be? So I went to my regular gym and got all set up with a barbell with no bumper plates and a curved handle pull-up bar. Not exactly the ideal set-up. I got my Blackberry phone stopwatch ready 3.2.1. GO and off I went. First thruster ouch that’s tough 20 more to go Yikes! It took two sets to get the thrusters done and now I’m on to the pull-ups. I figured I’d do the pull-ups strict since I had no idea how to perform a kipping pull-up. Very tough, got these done in about three sets. Now onto the round of 15 I’m out of breath and can barely stand. Grab the barbell and get 4 thrusters. Now I’m strongly considering throwing in the towel. I toughen up grab the barbell and get 6 more repetitions. I am struggling and eventually I am doing pull-ups in sets of twos for my round of 9. Finished hit the timer and see a time of 11:15. I collapse to the floor head’s spinning and I'm on the verge of puking on the floor. After about 10 mins of being completely useless I go home with my head held high thinking I got this. So I go on the web and look up people’s times for this workout. I see that I was basically in the lowest category. 2:30 is the elite category 3:30 excellent 5 mins good 6:30 average and 8:30+ untrained. Wow this was a gut check. All these thoughts began to race through my head like am I really this out of shape? Has any of my previous training paid off? What kind of people do this in under 2:30?
I decided to watch the technique of this workout and give it another go two days later. I develop a kipping motion on the bar more like a fish flopping out of water but it works. Sort of, I get the thrusters down a little better, thinking technique was 90% of why I did so bad last time. I go and do Fran again I seemed a little more efficient on these movements. I stop the watch thinking I’m probably around 6 minutes. Way off! 8:44 was my time and I’m still in the untrained category. Afterwards I felt just as bad as I did when I did it two days ago(lying on the ground gasping for air on the verge of puking). I was frustrated but now I’m very intrigued by Crossfit, I'm hooked!
So, I look up local Crossfit gyms
and find Crossfit Grand Strand which is not too far and has a pretty low rate
compared to other local boxes. The membership is included with a regular
fitness center called Fitness Edge just down the road. I finally built up the courage to go to the
fitness center and sign up for a membership.
After signing the year contract I thought to myself, what have I done? I don’t even know what the Crossfit gym looks
like, other than a few photos online.
