7 am, Saturday. I’m standing in a large L-shaped well-lit, airy room with black-rubber flooring. There is a clutch of humans pacing about, smiling animatedly, a nervous energy in the air.
“7 o’clock in the box!” bellowed a deep voice, shouting over the workout music. “Start running around the room! Go-go-go-go...” Exactly an hour later, I was puffing, panting and groaning, muscles tingling, nerves singing with the sweaty, salty adrenaline high.
That was my first test-class at CrossFit Agni, one of the seven official affiliates of CrossFit in namma ooru Bengaluru. CrossFit, for the uninitiated, is a fitness regimen designed to improve fitness and health, performed at high intensity in the shortest time, incorporating the best of gymnastics, weightlifting, running, rowing, and more.
“WODs (Workout of the Day) are defined each day and put up on a whiteboard: batch-wise with names, timings, goals, scores et al. A typical WOD has a combination of strength and endurance exercises, which are varied, with timed reps,” says Shekar Gurupatham, a Level 1 certified CrossFit coach. “The WOD is uniform for all clients — newbies or veterans: reps and duration are the same; it is the weights and intensity that are altered under supervision.”
Akash Gerald, 28, who works as a Data Scientist in a private firm, says the CrossFit coaches are always around to monitor and show you the correct form of every movement and motivate you to complete the WOD.
“CrossFit is a community workout with sweaty humans in the box — suffering together, collectively riding off each other’s energies and raising the fitness bar,” says Roy Kurian, who runs CrossFit Agni at HRBR Layout. “There’s a palpable energy at the box and I love being a part of the fitness journey of all my clients!”
These form a part of the workout
Burpees, deadlifts, snatch, shoulder-press, chin-ups, pull-ups, V-ups, air-squats, crawls, lunges, push-ups
Fun CrossFit terms
AMRAP (As Many Reps as Possible): Push push push yourself, keep going
EMOM (Every Minute on the Minute): The timer beeps unceremoniously every minute, reminding you that you got to move onto the next gruelling set
WOD (Workout Of the Day): A ‘Mary’ includes 5 handstand push-ups + 10 one-legged squats + 15 pull-ups (AMRAPs in 20 min). A ‘Kelly’, includes 5 reps of running 400 metres + 30 box-jumps + 30 wall-ball shots.
Hero Workouts: Hero WODs are traditionally workouts created in honour of heroes who have died in the line of duty.
