crossfit?

No. Get the gym membership. Lift some weights, do your cardio.

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Oblig repost:

Depends on what your goals are. My wife does Crossfit and I think it's fucking retarded. It's also fucking ridiculously expensive, especially for what it is.

You can do all the crossfit shit at a regular gym and it won't cost a second mortgage on your house.

The one positive side to Crossfit is they're usually very good about creating a sense of community and motivating people, so if you're completely unable to motivate yourself even if you sign up at a gym it can be an OK option.

Lejina_sl said:

I don't get what's expensive about crossfit, you're paying for a trainer and a dedicated gym? I've been using military gyms for the last decade, there's been a crossfit corner for a long time now and I cant swing a cat without hitting a certified crossfit trainer, so I may be taking that shit for granted. Not that you need any of it for many of those workouts. It's basically an intensive circuit training. There's the training routines right there on their website for free last I checked. Pick one for your next PT and go to town.

The recurring problem with crossfit is the absurd amount of injuries, but what do you expect when people swing weights around and jerk their entire body as fast as they can for 15min+ straight. If you don't destroy yourself first, you'll get in shape, that's for sure.

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Most people don't have access to shit like tires and kettlebells and olympic weight sets and whatever other shit Crossfit uses. So you have to go to a box. Which are anywhere from $100 on the extremely cheap end up to $250 a month.

Comparing what's available to you, free, in the military is ridiculous. I work out on base for free myself, but I don't go asking why people are paying $40 a month for a commercial gym. That'd be retarded.

There IS value in some of the boxes though. If you've got a former olympic or power lifter who coaches and they're form nazi's, it's to the benefit of the members there. You generally don't see the injuries there. It's the ones that are hardcore into just breaking PR's every single WOD and the people who don't know what the fuck they're doing who get people hurt. My wife goes to one run by a physical therapist and lifter. It's also a bit of an older crowd. There's one down the street from it that's the fucked up retarded kind that attracts a younger crowd. One of my coworkers (who I got into an argument about how Crossfit is way more dangerous than my regular 4 day bodybuilding split) is nursing a fucked up back from going there.

Crossfit is good for bone strengthening as it has high impact. Wish I could say the same for cycling. Blah, lol.

WTF is bone strengthening?

Is that like drinking milk??

Doing Crossfit magically produces Calcium??

It will increase your bone density because it's high impact. Things like cycling won't do anything as there is little to no impact. That's why powerlifters and gymnasts have thick bones. Crossfit has high impact, so it's good for that. But, the sport does include many injuries.

Crossfit is adequate if your goal is to be "in shape." I say adequate because there are better, and cheaper, ways to do the same thing.

I have two issues with Crossfit though. One of them is the same issue I have with cardio for getting in shape. The other is related, and that's that it's not focused enough. Really these are the same issue, but I couldn't figure out a way to explain it otherwise.

So, why do I dislike cardio? There's no progressive resistance. You have your body weight and that's about it. You can increase your distance or the incline, but that's as far as you can go. Your body will quickly adapt to those and then you're done. At that point, it's basically just burning calories and wearing out your joints. Crossfit does have added resistance, but that brings me to the second point, which is that it's not focused enough.

The Crossfit WOD's are all over the damn place. Take a squat for example. Crossfit absolutely includes weighted squats, and that's great. The problem is that you may squat once every 2-3 weeks. That's not nearly enough to actually make any progress in it. Crossfitters will make SOME progress, but it's severely limited by the frequencies that they actually do things. Back to my first point, Crossfit suffers because it's more concerned with reps than it is progression. By that, I mean instead of setting goals for a workout of lifting a higher weight, it's almost always a goal of doing more, faster. For a beginner, you should be having linear progression. Time shouldn't make a difference.

That leads into the issue thateveryonehas with Crossfit in that it's dangerous. If your goal is just to do as many deadlifts as possible in a 5 minute period, your form will breakdown and you'll get hurt. Dumb.

Good friend blew his Achilles doing crossfit. True story.

Get good at lifting first (esp. with form) before doing CrossFit - from my experience, those strong at CrossFit were all probably pretty good athletes with some weightlifting experience back in their younger days and are at far less of a risk of getting injured. My knowledge of lifting and form helped my ass a lot too in knowing when I should and shouldn't be pushing myself

That seems like a silly argument for crossfit. Become strong with a program that will actually make you strong, so you can start a program that won't make you strong.