I tried something new last Saturday afternoon. Flash back three weekends, Tricia got a sweet deal from DealGrocer for a 6 session package at Crossfit Manila. It was this new gym that featured a bunch of high intensity workouts that focus on very explosive movements. She had a lot of fun with it and she eventually coerced me into taking a free trial. She told me it was fun and that it could most probably challenge me a lot.

This was Tricia’s report after her first session. Looked like a lot of fun but she had bad body aches afterwards. I felt excited to try it. Being the sporty person that I am right now, I think I’ll breeze through the stuff that Tricia did.

The workout was nothing but easier on Tricia’s second week. She got introduced to wall balls and was hating box jumps a lot more. I feared for my life but at the same time, I felt very excited by the challenge that was ahead of me.

The day of my trial came and I made sure that I was at the gym before 3 pm. I didn’t want to be late because I heard a penalty of 10 burpees came along for every minute that you aren’t there. These guys mean business and they don’t joke about the time.

I was there with 5 other people taking the trial. The coach introduced us to what Crossfit was and how it was a good workout because it not only involved a lot of cardio but a lot of muscle work. I had my first experience with these types of works outs at the Immuvit Race Against Time run where Coach Jim Saret had us do a lot of stuff really really fast. It was great because even after the work out, your muscles were still burning those calories. I don’t know why but I think it’s because of all the explosive movements that were done.

Out workout at the gym last Saturday was a 15 minute warm up. By the sound of warm up I assumed it was going to be easy but it was far from it. In the 15 minutes that we had, we had to do 7 wall balls, 7 pull ups, 7 box jumps, and 7 burpees. I didn’t look like much but the kicker was that you had to do as much as you can in the 15 minutes. They had a scored board for the  people who tried the workout and I saw people doing as much as 7 repetitions and as little as 2. I even saw Lara Parpan’s name and she did an amazing 6 repetitions.

The coach started the timer and we were off doing the exercises. It felt quite easy on the first two rounds. I was able to do 2 repetitions without even breaking a sweat. The wall balls were the hardest. I had to throw a 7 kilogram ball up to the air from a squatting position and then catch it again. It was hard. The fear of the ball hitting you on the face was slowly creeping up as I started to feel really tired. I managed to finish my 3rd repetition with about 5 minutes to spare.

I felt light headed at that point already. I pushed to finish 4 with a minute to spare.

That workout was hard. And to think that was only the warm up. Another 15 minute main workout came after that. It was a good thing the trial only had a us the warm up. It was hard but it was a good one. I went back to the condo with a tired heart and a heavy body.

I woke up the next day with an even heavier body. I feel the aches on my back and my chest. I could not even drop down on my aerobars yesterday when I was spinning on the trainer. I could not even last a hour. It’s fun and I would certainly do Crossfit again but with my training right now, I think it is a bit too much. After two nights rest, my body still feels sore from all the stuff I did which will mean that most of the training that I will do for the rest of the week will most probably be half assed and half baked because of the fatigue. It is a great compliment to my training plan but I do hope they had levels for guys who were going to do it for the first time.

Maybe I’ll come back to it after Camsur or maybe not. Other than my training goals, the only thing that’s stopping me from doing it again is the price. For 3,500, you get 6 sessions for the month. You get a trainer and use of the gym but that ain’t cheap.