Ever heard about CrossFit? This form of workout emerged in the U.S. a few years ago and is rapidly gaining popularity on this side of the border. Seven months ago, CrossFit de l’Ouest, the first West Island CrossFit centre opened its doors. The Chronicle met with the two owners, Christian Habib, and Julie Beaumont last week to see what all the fuss is about.
A CrossFit training differs from a traditional training in many ways. It is a core conditioning program that uses high intensity exercises over a short period of time as opposed to a normal, longer workout, to achieve maximum results in strength, endurance, flexibility and coordination, according to Beaumont. She says you get better results than with a normal workout.
“High intensity workouts have been shown to produce much better adaptation responses (weight loss, strength gain, etc.) than traditional 70 per cent of your max heart rate for a long period of time according to many scholars", she said.
A CrossFit training can include many movements: squats, pull-ups, dead lifts, medicine ball exercises and so on. The movements are what Beaumont calls functional movements, meaning movements that resemble movements everyone uses in their daily lives.
“It’s movements that are useful to us in one way or another like a squat. Every time you get up from your chair during the day, you do a squat. Any pushing and pulling movement we do like a dead lift is also useful when let’s say, you pick up boxes during the day or groceries,” she said.
No machines are used in CrossFit save for a rowing machine used in the warm up. During the warm-up, participants stretch, practice the exercises with light weight and learn the proper way to do the movements. A long warm up is needed before the workout begins to prepare the body for the high level of intensity of the exercise. The entire session lasts an hour. The actual workout part can last from five to 20 minutes.
A major part of the CrossFit experience is the social aspect of it and the personalized feedback you obtain from the trainers. CrossFit is done in groups of up to 10 people with two trainers giving detailed instructions on how to make each move right. Having others train beside you is often a motivation for crossfitters according to Beaumont.
“There is a nice dynamic in the group. Everybody knows each other by their first names but there is also a more competitive side to it. People get competitive with themselves. They tend to push themselves a little harder than they would do in a normal training,” she said.
Contrarily to what some may think, CrossFit is meant for everyone to enjoy and not just your typical fitness junkie who wants to take his workout to the next level.
“Before coming here, people look up CrossFit on Youtube and they see these crazy videos of really fit people doing these intense things and they get discouraged. It is a bit misleading because everything we do here is scalable. We can take any exercise and take it down to the easiest level,” she said.
New practitioners of CrossFit can expect to come out of a workout pretty exhausted. Elyssa Gold, 31 is a real estate agent. She has signed up for the beginner class about a week ago and it was her third training last Friday. She was quite tired but still smiling after a condensed workout in which she did a Medecine ball deadlift with a 14-pound-ball and a push press with a 22 pounds bar.
The workout was set so that she needed to do 10 repetitions of one exercise, then immediately 10 of the other, then nine repetitions of the first exercise followed by nine of the other and so on until she reached 0.
“I’m hurting in places I never knew I had. I’ve been working out for a very long time but this is amazing. Normally, I could work out for an hour in traditional gym and here, in 20 minutes, I’m as tired as I would be with a longer workout. Having as much of a workout in a third of the time is great. I would recommend the experience for sure,” she said.
You can find Crossfit de l’Ouest at 1400 Hymus Blvd., just south of Highway 40. To begin a CrossFit workout, you must enter the fundamentals classes. You must attend the class three times a week at first to learn the basics of CrossFit. After the fundamentals class is complete (12 classes, 4 weeks), you can sign up for a regular class.
CrossFit training is provided at a price of $120 a month for 12 workout sessions. The next fundamentals class will begin on Nov. 22. The classes will be given on Tuesdays, and Thursdays at 7 p.m. and Saturdays at 10 a.m. For more general information you can visit the CrossFit de l’Ouest website at this address: www.crossfitdelouest.com.
