Any advice for someone starting CROSS FIT tomorrow at 6am? page 2

[Louisa655]

Thanks, everyone. Our new Crossfit gym has a 'beginner's class' and we have to be certified in all the movements before being allowed to join the 'accomplished athletes'. Suits me fine and it may take me longer to ramp up just due to my age. My first class is Thursday am, and I will be very consciouscentious about sticking to my own pace. At my age, I'm not about to let ego result in any stupid injury.

Thanks for weighing in, everyone -- appreciate your thoughts/experience. /LU

[Tricialisha]

I hope you enjoy it! I started Crossfit over a year ago (at 40+) and love it! I went 3x a week for a year before I decided to add an extra day. I still don't RX but modify just about everything to my level. Go at your own pace and don't try to keep up with the 20-somethings.

[Goldie]

Louisa, you might also want to read this thread ---> What happened to those of you that quit CrossFit? There's some comments there you might find useful.

[jaczor]

Pace yourself, specially for the first weeks. I went all out on my first class and practically couldn't walk down stairs for almost a week, not to mention that I was walking like frankenstein for a that week too.

The best thing about crossfit is that you are competing against yourself, in my case most people at my box are way more fit than me, even those new to crossfit were already fit before starting, so it would have been really demotivating to try to compete against them. Also, if you feel you can't do an excercise for a WOD, don't be shy about asking your trainer for an alternate one, for example, I can't do hand-stand push ups (can barely do hand stands at all), so I do something else that works the same muscles but isn't as hard.

The other piece of advice I can give you is listen to your body, I try to go 3 times a week, but sometimes if I feel way too sore from the previous workout I just skip one to let my body recover. One week I overworked my abs real bad on monday, and I didn't feel like I should train on wed and by friday I was still quite sore, so I took two days off and was back at 100% on monday, if I had gone on friday I would have probably extended my recovery time by a few days.

Now, I do train when I'm sore, but there are different kinds of sore, you just know when you are feeling good enough to workout, maybe you are at 70% which is ok, you might not perform as good but you wont hurt yourself either.

[Louisa655]

Pace yourself, specially for the first weeks. I went all out on my first class and practically couldn't walk down stairs for almost a week, not to mention that I was walking like frankenstein for a that week too.

The best thing about crossfit is that you are competing against yourself, in my case most people at my box are way more fit than me, even those new to crossfit were already fit before starting, so it would have been really demotivating to try to compete against them. Also, if you feel you can't do an excercise for a WOD, don't be shy about asking your trainer for an alternate one, for example, I can't do hand-stand push ups (can barely do hand stands at all), so I do something else that works the same muscles but isn't as hard.

The other piece of advice I can give you is listen to your body, I try to go 3 times a week, but sometimes if I feel way too sore from the previous workout I just skip one to let my body recover. One week I overworked my abs real bad on monday, and I didn't feel like I should train on wed and by friday I was still quite sore, so I took two days off and was back at 100% on monday, if I had gone on friday I would have probably extended my recovery time by a few days.

Now, I do train when I'm sore, but there are different kinds of sore, you just know when you are feeling good enough to workout, maybe you are at 70% which is ok, you might not perform as good but you wont hurt yourself either.

Thanks for the great advice. I'm pretty decent at listening to my body - i've been coached before in sports, so I know the difference between 'normal sore' and "over doing it sore'. My hope is to crossfit 3 days per week, and then slow movement or stretching on my yoga ball on my 'off days'. My intent is to participate in the 6am class --- thereby working out in a fasted state, and eat a good amount of calories 2 hours post class, and then another decent dinner. I'll low carb cycle on my 'off days' and see if that works for me. I'll give this a try for 3 consecutive months and see how the body responds. I'm excited about this. In the meantime, I'm departing for St. Lucia for a week on Sunday and will workout in their gym daily until I get back to start my crossfit programme. Thanks again for your feedback/Lu