Crossfit is a high-intensity workout that has as its motto “be good at everything, but great at nothing.” This means that in Crossfit 10 components of physical training are trained: resistance, strength, power, agility, balance, coordination, flexibility, aim, speed and aerobic capacity. However, even if you never go through Crossfit to be as strong as a powerlifter, powerful as a weightlifter, or tough as a marathoner, you will have acceptable levels in all of these categories. A crossfit WOD usually has the following elements:

• Plyometric jumps (such as box jumps)
• Halterofilia (Snatch, Clean and Jerk o variantes)
• Exercises with dumbbells or kettlebells (Kettlebell swing, Military Press…)
• Exercises with body weight on bars or rings (dominated, chin ups, muscle ups…)
• Cardiovascular exercise (running, rowing, skipping, assault bike…)

Your WOD will combine some or all of these elements to make you as complete an athlete as possible. No training is similar to another, except for the “benchmarks” that are the Hero WODs and the Girl WODs.

List of benefits of crossfit

You will improve your strength

The large number of weightlifting and multi-joint exercises along with a progressive increase in loads on them is a perfect cocktail to increase your strength and muscle mass. For example, when you do a lift like the Snatch, Deadlift or Squat, you are activating and therefore strengthening all your muscles from the head to the feet.

There is scientific literature indicating that compound movements such as Squats, Deadlifts, Push Press, Snatch, Clean and Jerk, Pull-ups or Muscle Up are the best for strength gains compared to isolated or compound movements, and surprise, Crossfit is full of the first.

So if your goal is to gain strength, but not be the strongest guy in the world, Crossfit is a great option for you.

you will increase your caloric expenditure

A study from the University of Wisconsin that analyzed two Crossfit WODs in a group of male and female athletes, calculated that women burned an average of 12.9 kcals per minute and men an incredible 20.6 calories per minute. Therefore it can be clearly said that one of the benefits of crossfit is caloric expenditure.

This is also related to Crossfit multi-joint exercises, since the more muscles involved in an exercise, the more calories will be burned per repetition. We’re not just talking about compound lifts, but bodyweight exercises like burpees or muscle ups work a large part of your body as well.

On the other hand, this high intensity training will make you benefit from two more effects on calorie burning. First, the increase in muscle mass will make your metabolism speed up and you can create a caloric deficit more easily if you want to lose fat. Then there’s “Excess Post Exercise Oxygen Consumption” or EPOC, which it says, high intensity training will burn more calories in the hours after your workout, typically 6-15% of the calories you burned training, no small amount! stuff!

you will lose body fat

Not everyone gets into Crossfit to lose weight, but if this is your goal, Crossfit may be a great option for you. Being a workout in which you gain muscle mass and also spend a lot of calories during training and even afterward, it is not risky to say that one of the benefits of Crossfit is fat loss.

The Ohio State University published a study showing the improvement in body composition and aerobic capacity after only 10 weeks of Crossfit. In addition, knowing that one of the key factors for fat reduction is consistency, the community that is generated around the Crossfit BOX helps users to continue working and therefore continue to progress.

it’s good for your heart

Although most WODs are not focused on the usual cardiovascular training methods, consisting of long sessions of low intensity aerobic work, you can work your cardiovascular resistance in short sessions of up to 3-5 minutes. A study from the Tokyo Institute of Technology found significant improvements in cardiovascular health, including VO2 max and blood pressure, only with high-intensity sessions of 3-5 minutes.

it’s safer than you think

Due to the nature of Crossfit of performing complex movements in a state of fatigue, it can be understood as harmful, this must be contextualized. It is true that there are times when it is practically impossible to maintain a correct technique, however let us not forget that we are training in a controlled environment with a coach who will prevent this situation from prolonging.

If we compare Crossfit with other weight sports, it has a higher number of injuries per 1,000 hours than bodybuilding, calisthenics or even powerlifting, although lower than strongman. However, when we compare it to other activities that are carried out in a less controlled environment such as soccer or handball, one of the benefits of crossfit is that it is much less harmful than these sports.

it will help you sleep better

Although there are many factors in your lifestyle that affect the quantity and quality of your sleep, it is known that doing sports helps you rest better and fall asleep. That is why even if Crossfit is not your first option, we recommend that you do the exercise that you like best because it will have a positive impact on your sleep.

However, it has been observed that high-intensity exercises are especially positive for improving sleep quality and resting better in order to continue enjoying the other benefits of doing crossfit.

you’ll get stronger than vinegar

Stronger than a kilo of grapefruit, than a bulldog, than a punch from Goku… call it what you want, but if you diet reasonably well, another crossfit benefit for men (and for women, why not ?) is that you will have a functional, strong and very aesthetic physique.

you will make friends

If you are one of those who go to the gym with a hoodie and headphones without talking to anyone, then Crossfit is probably not for you. Progressing in a new sport creates very strong bonds of friendship while you learn those weightlifting exercises or share your first muscle up. In fact, a review of the scientific literature on Crossfit reveals that it is related to a feeling of community, satisfaction and motivation.

If you enter Crossfit, it is very likely that you will end up making good friends with people who have similar tastes and hobbies to yours. There are even voices that call Crossfit “the new Tinder”

some disadvantages of crossfit

Not everything can be beneficial in Crossfit, there is no perfect program and Crossfit was not going to be the exception. Here we name some disadvantages of Crossfit.

• It is not specific: for people who seek to improve a specific athletic ability, Crossfit is not going to make them reach their maximum in it. If you are looking to specialize, Crossfit is not your thing.
• It is not personalized: although the WODs are adaptable according to levels and abilities, it must be recognized that training is done in a general and non-personalized way. If you need particular treatment beyond improving your general athletic level, you still need another option that adapts the training to you.
• It depends on your coach: this happens in many disciplines, but it is quite noticeable when you have an expert coach who cares about his students and when you have one who works without desire. As we have mentioned before, Crossfit is done in a controlled environment and the coach is the main control element, so if he fails, the quality of the training is drastically diminished.
• It’s not cheap: Don’t get this wrong, Crossfit is worth the money. You are training with a coach for 8-10 people paying attention to you and not in a gym with 50 people at a time and no one supervising. However, for those less affluent, paying 70-100 for training may be out of their financial means.

conclusions

There was a demand for a type of training that avoided the ultra specialization of most sports and simply sought to improve your physical abilities without focusing on any specific one. Crossfit has come to fill that gap and the benefits of Crossfit in all areas are public and notorious.

That does not mean that Crossfit is for everyone, but we do think that there should be no doubt about whether to try it or not, that is why we have gathered the greatest benefits that Crossfit offers so that you can run to the nearest Box.

The word functional, as is evident, comes from “function”, which means that it has a purpose. Functional training is made up of exercises that are intended to improve your physical ability in real life activities. We can be talking about the ability to get out of bed or a chair or to improve in your favorite sport, the most common movement patterns that we perform have been studied and functional training routines have been created to be stronger in them. Examples of highly functional exercises are squats, deadlifts, or push-ups.

Therefore, if we had to define functional training in one sentence, we would say that it is training our body to be better in the movements we use in our daily lives.

Functional physical training exercises

A functional training routine is usually made up of compound exercises such as presses, push-ups or lunges. This is so because it better mimics our day-to-day movements than isolation exercises like a biceps curl or a quadriceps extension. We do not want to say that these exercises are useless, but they have a much smaller transfer to our daily movements. Have you ever been in the situation of having to hold something with just the strength of your biceps? I sure don’t. However, it will have happened to you many times that you have to take a stride to tie your shoes, or that you imitate a dead weight to pick up something from the ground or push anything.

However, it may be the case that an athlete has a clearly underdeveloped muscle, and in that case it is interesting to try isolated exercises so that that muscle catches up with the others. It is a common case of people with injuries or mobility problems.

Functional training is not crossfit

Many people confuse Crossfit and functional training, and it’s quite reasonable. Crossfit is mainly made up of functional exercises, but the objective of Crossfit training goes beyond being functional in daily life and seeks to improve your performance in the 9 physical capacities: cardiovascular resistance, metabolic resistance, strength, flexibility, power, speed , coordination, agility, balance and precision.

This means that it will try to get you to train with fatigue, with very high intensity and making complex movements. The problem is that this type of training, if not very well measured, can end in injury. Do you want to know how to avoid injuries in Crossfit? Visit our article.

The concept that we must take away from this paragraph is that although most Crossfit exercises can be classified as functional, being functional is not the ultimate goal of Crossfit (although it is a consequence of it).

benefits of functional training

1. Use your body efficiently: By training focused on compound exercises, such as a snatch or a pull-up, we work by uniting all parts of our body efficiently. For example, when doing a plank, we work not only the abdomen, but also arms, shoulders and buttocks. In this way your general physical condition improves in less time and increases your body’s ability to train efficiently.
2. Develop coordination, agility and balance: Another benefit of functional exercises is that since there are no machines to support your body, you have to rely on your balance to coordinate your body throughout the movement. Both a young person who wants to improve for their sport and an older person who wants to improve their quality of life, these physical skills are key to being independent and having a better quality.
3. Prevents injuries: yes, as you hear. Although you can injure yourself doing sports, a sedentary lifestyle actually ends up being more harmful than training. Training with loads will make your joints have less risk of injury in your day-to-day activities as they will become stronger and healthier. You will also have better postural hygiene and in general you will have a body better prepared to suffer stress or impacts both in other sports and in everyday life.
4. You will strengthen your abdomen: the abdomen is the key muscle group to maintain the stability of our body and good stability. That is why most functional exercises work the core, which has the function of protecting your organs and also reduces back pain.
5. You will improve your flexibility and mobility: among many others, some patterns that are executed in functional training include releasing or flexing the hip, chest or back, in this way your muscles will generate and release tension by contracting and relaxing.
6. You will increase your strength and speed: exercises such as jump squats, push-ups or burpees encourage the use of your body as a whole in which a combination of strength and speed is necessary to progress in them. As you focus on these elements, you will develop great control and explosiveness in your movements, and you will be able to change direction and speed more fluidly.

what to do and what not to do in functional training

You do train your entire body in one session: you don’t have to always divide your training into different muscle groups. Exercises like squats, presses, deadlifts, medicine balls, etc… train the whole body in one go and have a wide range of benefits. The body is designed to function as a system, so to function best it must be trained as a system, not a collection of individual parts.

He does use free weights. For functional training, using weights or bands can be more effective as it forces your body to hold up, which is much more functional.

Don’t copy, seek advice. There are many exercises and equipment that call themselves functional fitness training. Almost all the necessary equipment to do functional gymnastics is in the gyms, pBut often, the equipment is used without knowing how to train correctly or by people who are not physically prepared for that specific equipment. It is common to see people who do not know what they are doing and simply copy what they see others doing in the gym. In fact, there’s a chance that the person you were looking at wasn’t working out right, and even if they were, it might not be the right exercise for you. Seek the advice of a fitness trainer on how to use the equipment and what your fitness level is so you know which movements you can perform safely and which you can’t.