After a 20 year break from regular exercise, I stepped into CrossFit Route 7 about 7 months ago. Health and fitness had been crowded out by other priorities. After a disconcerting health check-up, my doctor suggested that I should do more exercise. Prior to my prolonged absence, I had been active and successful at sports at school and university. I was familiar with some of the CrossFit exercises, and an online search led me to Crossfit Route 7.
It was shocking at how out of condition I had become and was determined not to stay that way. I did not finish my first foundations class. Thanks to coaches BJ and Tucker for sticking with me, I managed to gingerly get through the foundations and began to slowly find my feet again and joined the regular classes. It was amazing and inspiring to me how people could breeze through the gymnastics, cardio, and strength exercises.
My approach has been simply to turn up to several classes a week, step-up and give it my best shot (max effort), and to let this accumulate into improvements over time. Allowing time for recovery has been a necessity with the adjustment to a fairly intense exercise program. It is always challenging to find the time to go to classes, but the range of class-times has made it possible to get these in, particularly the 6am weekday classes and weekends. The class structure, fellow CrossFitters and excellent coaches have provided an atmosphere conducive to pushing myself beyond what I thought possible.
After 7 months I am pleased with progress. Some of my strength is back (recent 300lbs x 20 back squats – a long way from my first foundations class), stamina and endurance have improved (30-40 percent improvement in times for some benchmarks – although still fairly slow), and I am beginning to recognize elements of my past self. Still a long way to go – particularly on gymnastics movements, stamina, endurance and mobility which are weaknesses I need to work on. So perhaps not a success story yet, but work in progress, and while there is no predicting the future, so far, so good.
CrossFit has turned into something I currently enjoy doing. The advice on exercise at my earlier medical check-up was to find something I enjoy, as this increases the likelihood of sticking with it, rather than just doing something for the need to exercise. I have found this general enjoyment factor in CrossFit, with thanks to all the coaches and fellow CrossFitters at CrossFit Route 7!
