Crossfit2600 Blog

WEEKLY BLOG

ANGIE, my first Crossfit wod.

Lying busted on the ground, heart jumping out of my chest, vision blurred not knowing what had just happened to me. ANGIE had just welcomed me to Crossfit.

It was the end of 2007 and two ex-rugby mates, Birchy (now 2600) and Rookie (Crossfit Gold Coast) had told me on separate occasions about a new training regime called Crossfit. Both these guys had been training partners throughout different times in my own rugby career as we complemented each other with intensity, competitiveness and a lot of niggle, no quarter given and none taken. They knew what they were talking about so I looked it up.

At first I was a bit stand offish, 8 minutes for a workout??? I was going to the gym at least 2 hours a day, 6 days a week, with social footy mixed in. This would be easy. Monday chest and tri’s, Tuesday back and bi’s, Wednesday shoulders and legs bit of cardio and repeat. 20-25 sets, supersets, drop sets,21’s anything to stimulate growth. This new workout or wod couldn’t be too hard compared to the training I was doing.

Scrolling through Crossfit.com I saw a few movements I had never heard of: Turkish get up, GHD sit up and toes to bar. So when I saw pull ups, push ups, sit ups and squats I knew I could have a crack at doing the wod. It was a benchmark wod called ANGIE, that is 100 reps of the 4 movements as fast as possible. If I was going to do this, I might as well give one of the big ones a go.

So I called up Birchy who was a trainer at Fitness First in the city at the time to organise when to do it. It was first up the next morning, he had a client to train so the advice he gave me was “don’t spend too much time on the pull ups and have a red hot go on the other movements”. No worries, bodyweight suits me, let’s see what all the fuss is about.

3-2-1 GO!!

I could do 28 strict pull ups (back then kipping is cheating) as a max set, so I thought sets of 10 then 5’s then whatever. They slowed down pretty quickly. I was around 60 reps and down to singles as Birchy was suddenly training his client near me yelling at me to get to the push ups. Great! My forearms were fried and I was doing a ridiculous amount of bench press (still doing mobility on my right elbow to get it straight) so I enjoyed this part.

Sit ups just go, go, go. Hard but I had been at this level of intensity before so all was fine.

…then we got to the squats. Birchy’s client had disappeared and he was now in my ear telling me to do 100 straight, DON’T STOP, DIG IN and HAVE A CRACK! I was pretty cooked from the 260 odd reps before but air squats are easy right? Wrong, especially if you add intensity. At the 30 rep mark my legs were burning. At 60 reps the blackness started to come into my vision so I just closed my eyes and counted down.

…98,99, 100! Time!

 Looking at the crossfit.com videos and seeing all those guys lying on their backs at the end of a wod I was always cringing telling them to get up. But that was me: absolutely busted on my back, my lungs were burning and even though Birchy was still talking about how good this is, how much we are going to train blah, blah, blah his voice sounded 50m away down along corridor. All I could think about was that the showers/toilets were upstairs and how was I going to get up there without being sick and not having proper function of my quads.

Hooked! Even though ANGIE wiped the floor with me I knew straight away that this was for me. Not many times have I been back to that level of darkness as you learn not to sprint the first 100m of a 5k but every now and then a gem appears and just reminds you of when you first started Crossfit. I hope you guys can remember your first WOD.