You think you can Crossfit?

By Brian Watson

Do you have what it takes to compete with the men and women of Crossfit?

As someone who has been active in sports and weightlifting my whole life, I have never experienced the satisfactory pain that I have felt by doing Crossfit.

Crossfit to me is a perfect mix of power and cardiovascular endurance within a short, high-intensity workout that will satisfy all aspects of fitness.

For the heavy weightlifters, Crossfit workouts include complex, compound movements such as the clean and jerk, snatches, deadlifts and squats with heavy loads.

Crossfit workouts also are geared toward building cardiovascular endurance by calling an athlete to run, row or climb ropes.

All Crossfit workouts are performed for time or for rounds, which turn workouts into a sport by competing against other athletes or yourself to beat your personal records.

Crossfit athletes are considered the most fit athletes because they are proficient in strength and cardiovascular endurance.

The owner of Crossfit and Santa Clara graduate Jason Khalipa is considered the most fit athlete after winning the 2008 Crossfit Games.

Two other Santa Clara students, Sal Hernandez and Erik Tata, have been training with Khalipa to qualify and compete in the 2009 Crossfit Games.

An example Crossfit workout could be "Murph," which consists of running one mile, 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, 300 squats and ending by running another mile.

This is a for-time workout, meaning you are competing to complete the workout as fast as you can.

The next day you could have a for-rounds workout, where you have to complete as many rounds as you can of five pull-ups, five ring dips and 15 sit-ups within 30 minutes.

The for-time and for-rounds workouts give you the mentality that every second you rest is a second wasted in possibly reaching your best time or completing another round.

So what if you can't do a pull-up or a handstand push-up? In Crossfit, you can substitute an exercise for one you can do.

I had to do this in one of my Crossfit workouts. I was supposed to do 50 double-unders, which is an exercise that requires you to swing a jump rope twice under your feet as you jump once.

Since I am horrible at jumping rope and couldn't do this efficiently, I had to do 300 regular jump ropes to substitute the double-unders out.

Now you still think you're up to the challenge?