Trying my hand at some homemade Crossfit

I never jumped on board the Crossfit wagon because it always seemed to be a bit too much like a cult for me to get involved. The people who like Crossfit seem to REALLY like Crossfit and I don't know what they put in the water at those places but it makes most of the members seem a bit nuts.

I do however use some of their tactics that I am aware of on days where I don't really feel like working out but know that I should.

Keeping in mind that I don't really know how Crossfit works this was my plan for days like this one where I don't really feel like I have it in me to do a gym session but get off my ass and do it anyway.

The way that it works is that I go to the small gym that is in my apartment building and set up a series of 3 exercises and then put my weight at around 50-60% of what I would normally lift. Then I aim to do 12-14 reps of each exercise and when I am finished I immediately move on to the next exercise which is already set up. I wouldn't attempt to do this in a public gym because monopolizing multiple pieces of equipment for yourself, especially in a busy gym, is an asshole move that I would never attempt. In my house gym though there is a very good chance that you are going to have the place to yourself because there are only about 30 people living here and most of the residents have likely never even seen the inside of the gym the entire time they have lived here.

This is the first time I have really attempted this and I think that it kind of works really well for the days that I don't really feel like exercising.

The Garmin watch isn't completely accurate because each time "bench press" appears a second time in a row it is actually a lat pulldown and if you don't know what that is here is a helpful picture I pulled off the internet.

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I take no breaks between sets and have intentionally put them all in different muscle groups. After the curls I would take about a 40 second break to use a towel on my sweaty face and gulp down a bit of water. Then I head straight back in for the next set. I do five sets of each or a grand total of 15 sets. Then I take about a 5 minute break or perhaps a bit more to look at stupid crap on my phone after I set up the next set of different exercises.

Sets 16 through 30 I did an overhead shoulder press, a seated row, and 12 crunches following the same system as before where I have zero break between sets and about 30-40 second break for towel and water.

I didn't bother recording the crunches because the Garmin doesn't realize I am doing anything at all. Fair enough! I know what I did and that is fine.

Now the things I was happy with as far as all of this is concerned is that it got me off the sofa and doing something that will better me in the long run. The disappointing aspect of it was that my heart rate was only slightly higher than if I had been doing nothing and perhaps that is why at the end of it the readout says that I didn't burn many calories at all. I suppose that isn't what I was doing it for.

Towards the end of it I felt a bit of fatigue and I really don't even know if this benefits me a great deal. At the end of it all the real objective here was to do more than nothing and to remind my muscles that we don't take days off. I think that if you have a house gym that something like this would be beneficial. If you don't have one you could always create something similar by doing an easy amount of pushups, some of those triceps dips from a chair, some situps / crunchers, and if you have access to it maybe some chinups or pullups. The only real system that I am using here is to mix things up and to always do about half of what I could actually do if I was properly strength training.

The end result of all of this is that I got a gym session in and therefore didn't feel like a jerk for not exercising when I did in fact have time for it. I try to not make excuses because I really to feel as though all of us really do have time for exercise but we just come up with different excuses for why we can't do it. So this took an hour and it was over really quickly because I didn't allow myself time to screw around on my smartphone between sets, which is something I think most people that life fall victim to.

If you are having a lazy day just remember what I always say: The hardest part about getting a workout in is the first steps that you take out your front door!