Crossfit - Much more than a gymnasium In recent years, we have seen how gyms known as “boxes” have sprung in many cities the world over for practising a relatively new sporting discipline called Crossfit. What lies behind this success? There are several reasons, but to be able to understand it, we need to explain what this sport consists of. What is Crossfit? According to the definition given on the official website, Crossfit is constantly varied functional movements performed at high intensity. We understand functional movements to mean those movements that are based on real day-to-day situations, such as carrying shopping bags, putting our suitcase in the overhead locker in an aircraft cabin or simply getting up from the floor. In order to simulate these movements, Crossfit combines elements from different sports such as weight-lifting, gymnastics, sculling and cycling, to name but a few.

A priori, one would think we could do all the foregoing on our own, either at a conventional gym or in the open air.

And in actual fact, we can. So, we repeat the question: Why does the number of people practising Crossfit never cease to grow? One of the main reasons is probably the community spirit one perceives in these places and the values the members of this community convey, such as teamwork, solidarity, endeavour, humility and the can-do spirit, amongst many others. As a rule, Crossfit workouts are done in a group, and this makes the “suffering” a shared experience. Thanks to the use of new technologies, the community in our “box” is not constrained to the four walls defining our building. Using mobile apps, we can enter the results obtained from our workout, see what our colleagues have done (whether in our class or in one before or after) and interact with them, give mutual encouragement or simply share with other people how we have felt during that day’s workout. Crossfit workouts are very tough and many of them include technically complex exercises, such as weightlifting or some gymnastics disciplines. So some people may think that this is not for them, that it is something of an exclusionary sport. That was what I thought back in the day and today I am completely addicted to this discipline. You can’t imagine how mistaken I was. I discovered it practically by chance, when a friend who had been doing it for some time invited me to take part in a charity event organised by his “box”. I have to say I was hooked immediately. However, I thought it wasn’t for me, that with my joint problems, I wasn’t going to be able to do some of the exercises. A small cyst on my wrist, jogger’s knee, hip niggles… I didn’t see how I was going to be able to cope. My friend told me not to worry, that absolutely all the exercises could be modified. And that is precisely one of the marvels of Crossfit. People practising it are not the ones who have to adapt to the sport, rather it is the sport that adapts to each person practising it. Therefore, for that very reason, there may be someone preparing to compete and can do a ‘snatch’ of over 100 kg, in the same class with an overweight person trying to do their first press-up. And indeed, it doesn’t matter if we are the first or the last to finish the workout, if we lift 120 or 15 kg, because in the class we are all the same. As long as we try to give 100%, we will be considered a true champion.