With new CrossFit gyms springing up in Gainesville, I wanted to find out firsthand why it’s so popular.
From what I’ve seen on TV, CrossFit is an insane, high-intensity workout. The girls and guys competing look like beasts and they throw around giant tires for fun.
I doubted that a fairly small, 115-pound, nonathletic girl would make it at a CrossFit gym, but I told Sherman Merricks, owner of Dynasty CrossFit, to sign me up anyway.
An upbeat rap song was blasting when I walked into the gym. Animal-like grunts escaped from people of all shapes and sizes exercising in the back of the gym.
As one girl struggled to lift a weighted bar over her head, others cheered her on.
When she did it, everyone clapped.
“Here we go. Two more! Stay tight,” Merricks said to another girl, who then dropped the bar and fell to the ground.
“That’s all right,” he said.
Merricks came over to greet me.
“Are you nervous?” he said.
In my head, the answer was yes, but I said no. He told me I could warm up, but I had no idea how to. I just sat there in my high school swim T-shirt, which I wore to appear more athletic.
When my class began, Merricks played a YouTube video showing various adults of different professions turning to CrossFit to stay fit.
He then wrote our warm-up on a whiteboard: 50 jumping jacks and three sets of five pushups, 10 situps and 15 air squats.
“Do you work out regularly?” Merricks asked.
I looked down and shamefully shook my head.
Every movement in CrossFit has a proper form. We began with the air squat.
Feet about hip-width apart. Hands up to make sure your chest stays open. Squat down. Butt out. Get low enough so that a marble placed on your knee would roll back onto your thigh.
I couldn’t get it quite right, and every time he said the word butt, I laughed. When Merricks said it takes three years to get the perfect squat, I lost all hope.
The 60-minute class was followed by practice. We practiced the air squat, holding up a weightless bar, holding up a weighted bar, then putting all that together in the extremely complicated air-squat-jump-with-bar exercise.
Although my lack of coordination severely disrupted my ability to follow along, I liked that each exercise was taught in steps.
If I were thrown into a regular class, I would squat the wrong way and bend my knees when I shouldn’t or stick my elbows out too much. That’s how you hurt yourself, Merricks said. It wasn’t awful, but it sure wasn’t easy.
“We’ll only make fun of you after you leave,” he said, joking.
And I don’t doubt they did.
[A version of this story ran on page 6 on 3/12/2015 under the headline “A rookie’s experience with CrossFit”]
