The Ultimate CrossFit Nerd

By: Nora Sweet

When people meet me in any circumstance they are always surprised that I’m an Engineer.  Yes that’s right, I’m a female who isn’t into Dungeon’s and Dragons, has decent interpersonal skills, and has a fashion sense.  I promise I’m not the stereotypical Engineer. I took what felt like tons of math classes along with physics, statics, dynamics, and thermodynamics.  I love the degree I got and am happy that I get to use my degree in my current job.  But what’s so fun is that CrossFit kind of brings out the Engineering nerd that I am.So why am I about to relate it all to CrossFit?  Because everything we do is about engineering our bodies around equipment or objects to move them, especially the Olympic lifts.

I totally geek out when it comes to Oly lifts.  When I’m coaching, I love looking at someone’s lift and picking out little issues because that’s what I do in my full-time job.  I have to pay attention to details otherwise something is not going to work with something else.  With these lifts if you don’t move your body in the correct manner or order then sometimes the lift won’t be successful.  Sometimes the lift is successful but that doesn’t mean it was done well or efficiently.  I’m all about efficiency, who isn’t?

Now what about tracking your progress in CrossFit?  There’s so much to geek out on.  You can track your weights on lifts.  There are programs just made for keeping up with all this info and puts it into graphs.  We are lucky to have a free system, if you are a member at our gym, WODHopper, and it’s awesome.  I can see how far I’ve come since I practically started going to CrossFit Max Kane to the present.  Then you can even calculate your power for a given lift if you want!  This is where physics comes into play.  If you know the force (your weight) and the time it takes to move the weight a certain distance then you can calculate work and then power!  How awesome is it that we can actually figure out how powerful we are?!What about your diet??  Well guess what, there is even a thing called the Zone diet where you learn to balance each and every meal and snack.  This is by far the easiest way to track what and how much you eat because you weigh and measure the food you eat.  I learned that on the Zone diet you should consume protein in every meal or snack.  This was the biggest benefit where I saw results that were overwhelming.  Fat loss and muscle gain is almost a given. There are other ways to track your diet with counting marcos also!  Best thing about either of these is that being healthy doesn’t mean eating less.

It’s true some of us just do CrossFit be stay active.  But those of us who fall in love with the idea of CrossFit and the ideas behind it, really love this kind of stuff.  It doesn’t take an Engineer to see the beauty of this program.  Take functional movements and perfect those movements then once you have perfected those movements you add weight and then intensity.  That is how you progress.  And being able to have a definite way to track that progress is just genius!  There will always be somewhere or something to improve on because none of us are perfect.  So what are you waiting for??  Give CrossFit a try and if you already CrossFit keep tracking your progress!!