CrossFit Ocean City: The Best All-Around Training for You

Training at CrossFit Ocean City

At CrossFit Ocean City, CrossFit is our program and it’s all we do. We don’t offer multiple programs, so you won’t find Pilates, yoga, step, cycling, aerobics, kickboxing, or any of the other fitness programs here. We know that only CrossFit works. So why waste time on other programs that don’t? Those who’ve tried our program see results. Those who haven’t tried our program need to.

The following series of posts discuss our training method and should help answer a few questions about our program.

What is exercise?

Exercising has many definitions and means many things to different people. Many people exercise to make themselves feel fit. You see examples of this everyday at most gyms: people on the treadmill reading the newspaper; a person moving through the machines, taking lots of breaks, talking to their trainer, looking hardly like they’re “working.” These people get to feel good about themselves because they’ve “checked the box” on their to-do list labeled “workout.” These are also the people you see whose physiques never seem to change.

At CrossFit Ocean City, you will never see our CrossFitters doing "cardio" while sitting on a bike, reading a magazine. Nor will you see them "exercising" using a weight machine. Our workouts are intense – they challenge you and your body to do things you never dreamt possible. They require mental alertness, focus, and concentration. And our workouts will call upon your coordination, accuracy, balance, agility, speed, power, strength, endurance, stamina, and flexibility. Working these ten general physical skills is what we call "training" - and its purpose is to make improvements regularly in all areas of fitness.

CrossFit vs. the Typical Workout Regimen

Every time you work out, you have a choice – sit on a stationary bike, elliptical, or treadmill and read the newspaper, going at a moderate pace, or do the typical three days of lifting weights to focus on isolated body parts with some cardio thrown in on the off days; or you can challenge your body to do something new, hard, and intense. Challenge yourself to do something that your body needs to adapt and adjust to. When you choose the latter, you are effectively backing your body into a corner – adapt or suffer. We guarantee that with CrossFit, your body will adapt. People that choose the former style of working out are the ones you see at the gym day-after-day, year-after-year with the same body and same results as always.

At CrossFit Ocean City, you'll NEVER do a bicep curl or a leg extension. We choose exercises and workouts that make large demands on your nervous and muscular systems and require many muscle groups to work together synergistically. Body weight exercises challenge you to be strong and agile enough to be in control of your body (pull ups, dips, handstand push ups, push ups, etc). Weightlifting exercises require technique and skill, and call upon a large number of muscles in your body to work together at the same time (squat, deadlift, clean, jerk, snatch, thrusters, kettlebells, etc).

Most of what you will see when you come to CrossFit Ocean City is open space. Our "machines" are free weights - to simply pick them up requires skill, balance, stabilization, proprioception, and accuracy. We teach skills and movements that require functional and multi-joint (require movement across 2 or more joints in your body) movements, from core to extremities. These neuromuscular activities are commonplace in both life and in sport, and since our objective in training is to mimic both, weightlifting (i.e. the sport of lifting weights), with proper instruction and coaching, works this best.

How did CrossFit start?

CrossFit is a fitness and conditioning system developed by Coach Greg Glassman through many years of watching, working with, and coaching all types of people – from those considered “normal and average”, to top athletes. Coach Glassman's idea – take what worked best from the sports and movements that create the most versatile athletes (gymnastics and weightlifting), and throw the rest out. Actually, the system really created itself - if a workout or an exercise proved functional and got great results (ie- challenged you to the bone), it stayed in the system. If not, well, you got the picture. CrossFit is what remains - bar none, the most effective fitness and conditioning system in the world!

One thing that makes CrossFit unique is that it addresses the fact that the fitness needs of an "Average Joe" are identical to that of a top athlete – the only difference being intensity (speed & weight) and volume. In all cases, the best results come when training included functional movement (that which replicates real life movement), at high intensity and with constant variety. Any exercise program that meets these three criteria can be considered “CrossFit,” from shoveling dirt, hauling rocks and cutting down trees to weightlifting, pull ups, and sprinting.

CrossFit has been called "The Sport of Fitness" because it re-introduces personal athletic achievement and performance to training. The mindset at the start of each workout is to be stronger, move faster, more efficiently, with better form than ever. This is why even after years of training CrossFit style, scores and times in workouts continue to drop and athletes continue to improve. It’s hard, fun, exciting, challenging, and will push you to be your absolute best

CrossFit’s specialty is in not specializing, and its workouts elicit a maximal neuro-endocrine response from your body by taxing your body to its core with variety, intensity, and multiple joint, full-body, functional movements. To aid in this effective response, the workout of the day changes day-in, day-out to maximize the adaptation response from your body. You often won’t see a workout repeated for six to twelve weeks, if at all.

Do I need to get into shape before I try CrossFit

CrossFit is, by design, broad, general, and inclusive. What we mean by this is that no matter what your conditioning level might be right now, we can take you to elite fitness levels. Male or female, young or old, elite athlete or the “Average Joe”, this program is for you. To understand this, you have to try it for yourself and see just what we mean. From your first class, you’ll realize that everyone can, and will, benefit from CrossFit training.

There are many gyms around, why should I choose CrossFit Ocean City?

Why Crossfit and CrossFit Ocean City? Results. Period. To gain a greater understanding of CrossFit, read the free “Foundations” article from the CrossFit Journal, which is linked from our website, or from the main CrossFit site. Once you’ve read this, you’ll understand that most other training programs either take way too much time to get the results, or are simply incomplete, leaving a well rounded athlete with a chink in his or her armor.

In gyms and health clubs throughout the world the typical workout consists of isolation movements and extended aerobic sessions. The fitness community from trainers to the most popular fitness magazines has the exercising public believing that lateral raises, curls, leg extensions, sit-ups and the like combined with 20-40 minute stints on the stationary bike or treadmill are going to lead to some kind of great fitness. Well, at CrossFit Ocean City, we work exclusively with compound movements and shorter high intensity cardiovascular sessions. We’ve replaced the lateral raise with push-press, the curl with pull-ups, and the leg extension with squats. For every long distance effort our athletes will do five or six at short distance.

Why? Because compound or functional movements and high intensity or anaerobic cardio is radically more effective at eliciting nearly any desired fitness result. Startlingly, this is not a matter of opinion, but solid irrefutable scientific fact and yet the marginally effective old ways persist and are nearly universal. Our approach is consistent with what is practiced in elite training programs associated with major university athletic teams and professional sports. CrossFit endeavors to bring state-of-the-art coaching techniques to the general public and athlete who haven’t access to current technologies, research, and coaching methods.

I’m worried I might get big from lifting weights, so maybe I shouldn’t do CrossFit

That just won’t happen. Sure we lift weights. Almost every day; however, what you won’t see is day-in, day-out heavy lifting that requires your muscles to get big to lift the increased loads. Because our weightlifting is incorporated into overall conditioning, the high-rep sets mixed with the gymnastics and metabolic conditioning forces your body to become more lean and strong, not big and bulky. Our strict “lifting only” workouts are few and we mix these up throughout the program to help you develop strength and proper form.

How many days per week do I need to train?

That depends upon what your goals are. For some, they want to get into the best shape of their lives and their CrossFit workouts are the only “sport” they play. For them, four to six times per week is the norm. For others, two or three times per week is enough, especially if you play other sports on a regular basis. The amount of time training can also vary throughout the year, so what’s good for you now may change in six months. Again, this all depends upon what your goals are – something we will help you develop and refine.

What should I expect in a typical CrossFit class?

Each class is designed to last about an hour. We start each class with a directed warm-up routine, followed by coaching on skill work. Then we launch into the workout of the day, commonly referred to as the WOD, which can last a little as 4 minutes or as much as 40 minutes. It depends upon the workout and the intensity that you bring to that workout. Finally, we end each workout with stretching. We’re there with you every step of the way through the workout to coach and train you on the moves, to push you when you need it, and to keep you from getting hurt if your form falls apart.

How can you monitor my progress?

We provide you with a logbook on your first day, which allows you to keep track of your training. We also encourage you to track your diet as well. In your book, you can write down your goals for specific workouts and weightlifting moves, and track your progress over the course of several months. Your log book is your key to your success, because you will always know what weight to use for a particular workout and how you should gauge your intensity. Only through logging can you truly track your improved performance over time. You’re expected to bring this logbook with you to each class!