Crossfit and Starting Strength

Last year I discovered Crossfit. I know I'm late to the party on this, but I loved the idea of mixing cardio and weightlifting. While I started by looking at the crossfit main site, the weights these guys (and girls) were using seemed a little ridiculous. 135 pound overhead squat!? I can't even get that amount of weight over my head to begin with.

My first solution was to hop in the way-back machine and start doing the workouts from 2003, a simpler time, when there was only one crossfit box and the same 15-20 people commented on the website every day.  I found myself competing, or trying to compete, with the woman above, Kelly Moore. She is a 115 pound fireplug whose only weakness seemed to be running.

Over a few months, I got stronger, faster, and fitter. I still couldn't do some of the benchmark workouts, and I was really being limited by strength. This really became clear after a month trial membership at a crossfit box here in Chicago.

Everything came to a head last week during the Open Games WOD 12.3. For those interested, it was a workout of as many rounds as possible in 18 minutes of 15 box jumps, 12 push presses @115 lbs, and 9 toes to bar. I had never attempted one toe to bar, so I knew that would be tough. But the killer was the push presses. I got 4 rounds, and almost a fifth. But it was clear to me that I was wasting most of my time on the presses. I needed to get stronger.

With my month membership up, I had the ability to revisit my training plan. I started looking up strength programs, at first with the idea of just adding some strength work in before my regular crossfit workouts. But the more I thought about it, I realized that I needed to devote entire workouts to building my base strength from the ground up.

I chose Rippetoe's Starting Strength for a few reasons. First, its a simple 3x a week program, focusing on compound lifts. Squatting, pressing and deadlifting should cover most of my needs at this time. While my equipment is lacking a little (no rack for bench presses, so I'm substituting dips; make shift squat rack on top of universal machine arm) I have been through the first three workouts and don't foresee any serious problems. Second, the lifting technique that Rip teaches is the same that crossfit emphasizes. This should help my strength gains contribute to crossfit improvement.

I know I can't say I am strictly following Starting Strength, since I've changed the bench press to dips, and I'm still working out on a 3 on, 1 off routine, but I'm expecting to see some big gains in strength, without sacrificing TOO much in overall fitness.