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The latest fitness craze is an exercise in contradictions: It's a low-tech workout that thrives on the Internet.
Its mascot is a vomiting clown named Pukie, yet it inspires cultish devotion in hardcore musclemen and grandmothers alike.
And it's led by a jock who says he bases his operating model on the open-source software system Linux.
CrossFit promises elite fitness for the masses, and the masses have begun to take notice. Starting with an empty gym and a bare-bones website in 2000, trainer Greg Glassman ("Coach," with a capital C, to his disciples) has built a grassroots fitness empire with 350 affiliated gyms worldwide, including 27 in Canada, and thousands of online CrossFit addicts.
The program harks back to the "no pain, no gain" school of fitness. Some devotees brag of throwing up from overexertion (thus the mascot), and tackling the workouts too hard has sent several CrossFit newbies to hospital with rhabdomyolysis, a dangerous condition in which muscle cells break down.
But adherents say the results are worth it.
"I love the intensity of the workouts," said Jamie Maillet, a firefighter from Saint John, N.B. who lost 40 pounds doing CrossFit. "I have drunk from the CrossFit fountain and I am a believer!"
The premise is simple: You go to the free website, CrossFit.com and find the "Workout of the Day," or WOD in CrossFit parlance. Then you do it.
The catch, and the appeal, is that the workouts are crazy hard. One recent WOD ordered 100 pull-ups, 100 push-ups, 100 sit-ups and 100 squats, done as quickly as possible. Another prescribed 90 "squat cleans" (lifting 95 pounds off the ground to above your head), 90 pull-ups and a 2,400-metre run, broken into three rounds. And that's after the "warm-up" of 30 squats, sit-ups, back extensions, pull-ups and dips.
"I thought I was in good shape; then I tried one of the workouts and it literally floored me," said Kevin Wood, a 26-year-old schoolteacher in Moncton, N.B. But a year of CrossFitting has shaved six minutes off his five-kilometre run time, and he said he looks and feels better.
"I couldn't imagine going back to any other way," he said. Anticipating the daily workout "is like Christmas every morning."
The key to CrossFit's wide appeal isn't the puking - it's the scaling. Most people don't do the workouts exactly as prescribed; they substitute lower weights, fewer repetitions or different moves. Despite CrossFit's macho culture, there's no shame in that.
"I do things at my own pace. I don't feel self-conscious at all," said Sonya Scarrow, 57, who works out at a CrossFit gym in Toronto. She said she likes the variety. Rather than the usual cavern filled with beeping and clanging machines, the small gym has free weights, kettle bells, medicine balls, ropes and rings hanging from the ceiling, overgrown monkey bars, empty kegs and filled sandbags.
"You really do challenge yourself," said Ms. Scarrow, who added she's lost weight and had fewer aches and pains since she started CrossFit.
Mr. Glassman eschews conventional weightlifting routines in favour of exercises designed with real life in mind. Workouts include many overhead lifts, for instance, because people often lift groceries or children overhead - but no bench presses, because we rarely need to lift objects while lying flat on our backs. CrossFitters do endless squats, but no leg presses.
Despite its hardcore ethos, Mr. Glassman says, CrossFit is for everybody. "The needs of Olympic athletes and our grandparents differ by degree, not kind," he said. "One needs functional competency to win gold medals, and one needs functional competency to stay out of the nursing home."
