My name is Nick Cruz and I’m Crossfitaholic.
The Setup:
I started Crossfitting when I came back from my 5 year anniversary trip to Hawaii. I had heard about Crossfit from some friends who knew someone on the SEAL team and it sounded really intriguing to me. I told myself that I would look it up further after I came back from Hawaii. Before I left for Hawaii I weighed in at 220. I knew I was not in shape but didn’t realize how out of shape I was until I saw the pictures. I would look in the mirror and try to convince myself that I wasn’t that fat. My diet consisted of lots of crap (burgers every day, pizza, sugar laden coffee drinks etc), lots of alcohol (I would finish a handle of Captain Morgan and at least a 12 pack of soda every weekend – disclaimer: I had help- , and would have a large tumbler of whiskey almost every night). I started going to the gym before my trip but I would not say that I had a strength background. I wakeboard on occasion, and I go snowboarding in the winter. One year prior I had torn my right ACL in half and ripped some of my MCL while wakeboarding. Looking back on it, I know that I injured myself because of the lack of strength around my knee. Now, one year later, with a cadaver Achilles tendon in place, I could hardly go past parallel on a squat (not that I knew what a squat was at this time) without REALLY making my knee hurt.
Initiation:
My first workout was Tabata something else. I was completely humiliated! I couldn’t do the pull-ups and I wrote down that I should have only done half of the excersizes. After that horrifying eye opener I discovered Brand X’s website (brandxmartialarts.com) and their scaling protocols. I also spent every waking free minute that I had downloading videos, reading the forum, asking stupid questions ( I still do this) and soaking in everything. On a side note, I still can’t believe how gracious the corporate Crossfit organization is. Nearly every day a new high quality video is posted that aides in developing your form and serves as motivation to get some and go again. I have about 4 gigs of videos downloaded to my work computer with probably that same amount or more at home! For free!! Incredible!
Crawling:
Every time a WOD came up with a new movement that I was not familiar with (pretty much every WOD) I studied the slideshows and played and replayed the videos until I was sure that I understood it. Then I would practice the motions in front of the mirror in the bathroom at work (fortunately, there was a lock on the door). I can only imagine what people thought I was doing in there when they heard me stomping the ground as I went down into the catch! I remember being really humiliated by the OH Squat. I racked a bar and pushed it overhead thinking “This is too light, maybe I should add some weight.” Boy, I’m glad I didn’t. As soon as I went down so did the bar, except that the bar went forward and made an awful racket in the gym. Mental note: Practice OH Squat with PVC at home.
Physical Differences:
Almost immediately into Crossfit I started shedding weight like I was throwing off a winter coat. Everyone that I came across thought that something was wrong with me or that I was sick. I was called “skinny”, “gaunt”, etc., etc. If not for the positive strength gains that I was experiencing the comments would have made me self-conscious and self-doubting. But I pressed on. Every week I dropped 2-3 lbs or so. I measured my weight every day and every day a new lower number would pop up on the scale. I would hit plateaus but no more than 1 week went by without some change in weight. At this point the only diet changes that I had made were cutting out the alcohol and snacking on raw almonds and raisins instead of chips, pretzels and M&M’s. In addition to the weight loss I was experiencing gains in strength and endurance. I was starting to be able to run distances greater than 50 meters, and I was slowly weaning myself off of the pull-up / dip assistance machine.
Switching it up:
When I got to about month 6 I had bottomed out at 176 pounds! For those of you keeping track that is a loss of 44 lbs! Now I started to think that I was about as low as I really wanted to be. Not to mention that when I started Crossfit I only anticipated dropping below 200 pounds! However, at this point I was lacking raw physical strength. I could not do the weighted WOD’s without scaling the weight considerably and my first Crossfit Total score on Dec 3, 06 was a measly 535 (205 BS, 135 Press, 195 DL). That’s when I decided, after much lurking, to finally jump into the Zone Diet. At around month 8 I purchased Journal # 21 and dove head first into it. After checking my requirements via Dr. Sears’ calculator I came up with a diet of 19 blocks. However, because of my desire to gain lean muscle mass I added 3x-5x fat to my meals. In addition to the diet change I started up with Coach Rut’s ME Black Box program. My weight bumped up to 184, my body fat percentage stayed about the same (based on mirror calculations) and my strength numbers started to climb! My last Crossfit Total done at the Crossfit Games topped out at 650 (225 BS, 140 press, 285 DL)!
Conclusion:
I have, to date, run 2 10k’s, one was the World Famous Mud Run at Camp Pendleton, competed in the first ever Crossfit Games, regained full ROM in my right knee, and have become so damn sexy I turn myself on when I look in the mirror! I am an absolute Crossfit fanatic! Right now I train with 2 friends of mine, have gotten a couple of other people into Crossfit and have been toying with the idea of getting my cert, if for nothing else to just increase my own experience and knowledge into what physical fitness SHOULD BE. Who knows, maybe I’ll turn this into a full-fledged affiliation! Hell, If I had the money and time I would follow the seminars around the country like a rock-band groupie. I am really looking forward to the coming years and am always on the prowl for some new event or activity to get involved in. I recently starting bouldering and have a desire to get into mountain biking. Who knows where I will be in 1 year. One thing is for sure though. In one year I will be even stronger and more fit that I am today! Thank you for taking the time to read this. I hope that it will somehow encourage someone , somewhere to take charge of their own physical fitness and really go for it.
Nick
Taken just before starting Crossfit Ewwww! And yes, it hurt like a son-of-a bitch! I would not recommend it to ANYONE! Somehow my wife was able to capture the EXACT moment the needle hit a network of nerves!
Ahh, much better!
Note: Links will take you to my Picassa Web Albums. The first one is of a trip my wife and I took to Hawaii. The second is from the 1st annual Crossfit Games.
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