Crossfit - A New Fitness Regime Coming To Hyderabad

Around 7 o clock every day, At K.B.R Park in Jubilee hills, the home of Telugu movie Industry, you hear a bunch of people yelling, screaming and encouraging fellow members to not stop and to complete the workout. Curious bystanders and walkers think of it as a crazy act but every day, in the morning, a group of fitness enthusiasts, who call themselves Potenians, take part in a free 15-20 minute training session, and train the CrossFit way. Training the CrossFit way requires you to work out 3 to 5 days per week. The workouts are highly intense and short, taking about 5 to 15 minutes to complete. CrossFit workouts typically combine explosive exercises done in a circuit format: One exercise follows right after the next, with very little rest in between.

CrossFit was founded by former gymnast Greg Glassman, and the first CrossFit affiliated gym opened in Santa Cruz in 1995. CrossFit itself is a strength and conditioning fitness methodology that promotes broad and general overall physical fitness using a myriad of exercises more commonly found in the activities of weightlifting, sprinting, and gymnastics. .These elements are mixed in numerous combinations to form prescribed "Workouts of the Day" or "WODs". Hour-long classes at affiliated gyms, or "boxes", typically include a warm-up, a skill development segment, the high-intensity WOD, and a period of individual or group stretching. Performance on each WOD is often scored and/or ranked to encourage competition and to track individual progress.CrossFit programming is used by 6,100 private affiliated gyms, including 7 in india, and by many fire departments, law enforcement agencies, and military organizations including the Royal Danish Life Guards, as well as by some U.S. and Canadian high school physical education teachers, high school and college sports teams, and the Miami Marlins.

CrossFit is not a traditional, specialized training program like doing isolated weight lifting for a certain muscle or aerobics. “Our specialty is not specializing," says CrossFit founder and former gymnast Greg Glassman. CrossFit combines strength training, explosive plyometrics, speed training, Olympic- and power-style weight lifting, kettle bells, body weight exercises, gymnastics, and endurance exercise. By doing this, CrossFit targets what it calls the major components of physical fitness: cardiorespiratory fitness, stamina, muscular strength and endurance, flexibility, power, speed, agility, balance, coordination, and accuracy.

Designed to enhance a wide array of physical characteristics simultaneously such as cardiovascular endurance, power, flexibility, speed, agility, and balance, the popularity of CrossFit has truly taken off in recent years. The number of affiliated gyms grew from 18 in 2005 to almost 1,700 in 2010.

Every CrossFit gym has a really tight knit community feel to it. You’re not just a membership payment to them. You’re a person that needs help. Unlike a commercial gym, you actually get to know the people at your box. Most gyms will have outings that a lot of people show up to. There’s always that feeling of team work and camaraderie. So, your workout is not over till the last one of your group is done with it.

“Preparing the body “not only for the known, but also the unknown is the mantra for CrossFit”, says Kat, Coach at PotensCrossfit, a Affiliate of CrossFit based at Hyderabad.

“I was introduced to CrossFit by a Friend in the US. I have been doing CrossFit for the last one and half months. I have gone down by a couple of sizes and gained 2 kilograms of muscle. I look forward to training at CrossFit every day. It is fun and rewarding”, says Sampath, an IT professional.

"Some people have done a workout in under 5 minutes, while I was stuck on it even at the 9th minute. But everyone treated me as if we all had finished together at the same time. I was instantly addicted to the feeling of being part of something greater than myself and to people who completely devote themselves to the pursuit of fitness", says Srikanth, an IT professional

“All you do is to get into the door. We take care of you for the next hour and see to it that you are giving your best and closing in on your fitness goals.”, says AL, The head coach at PotensCrossFit and an Ex-US Military.

“CrossFit is infinitely scalable. You can make many modifications to the workout so that everyone is doing a similar workout but is appropriate to their fitness levels. I and a not weight-lighting friend do the same workout but with very slight variations. Hence, indulging in the same fitness regime”, Says Anil, A working professional and a regular at PotensCrossfit.

Though crossfit is not new to Hollywood, where super stars such as Brad Pitt, Jason Stathom and Matt Damon do crossfit,
Off late, Bollywood Actors Aamir Khan, Hrithik Roshan, Arjun Kapoor, Sonakshi Sinha and John Abraham have been training at crossfit gyms, located at different parts of India, achieving their fitness goals.

With the CrossFit gym opening up next to Inorbit mall, Hi-Tech City, Coaches AL and Kat are looking forward to spreading the knowledge of fitness and training fitness enthusiasts to befit, not just FIT but PotensCrossFIT.