The Queen City has a secret. When meeting with my editor to discuss our goals for the New Year, I quickly learned that there is a workout facility of which I was totally unaware! Eager to investigate, I responded to an e-mail inquiry my editor received, and excitedly scheduled a meeting with the owners of the Crossfit Facility in South Charlotte.
Dr. Brian Strump and his wife Lisa are practicing chiropractors with an office in the Steele Creek area. Their Crossfit Facility is not the gym with a thousand members, thrown into a space with tons of machines they don’ t know how to operate, and probably never will. This is a close-knit concept, where their membership numbers are less than 200 and people care to know your name. When I walked into Crossfit, I was pleasantly intrigued and surprised. There wasn’t a treadmill or elliptical in sight. The room was grand and housed various apparatuses along the walls from rings to bars.
The workout I participated in was a form of circuit training.
We had to do a given number of pull-ups, push-ups and squats in 10 minutes. Sounds easy? Well that’s certainly what I thought. But when was the last time you were kept in an anaerobic state for 10 consecutive minutes? Trust me, it’s not as easy as it sounds!
However, frightening you is not my intention here, nor is it theirs. The owners and trainers of Crossfit want you to be able to do everyday movements properly and to be able to use your muscles the way they were designed: to lift things with our legs and to squat properly, for instance.
So what is Crossfit? Crossfit is a fantastic, beneficial workout that focuses on “ functional movements.” For example, in daily life you don’ t have a machine to help you pick up after your dog; you are squatting and using your body to do it yourself. Crossfit focuses on you utilizing your muscles properly, stabilizing your body correctly, and getting in an anaerobic state and staying there.
There are more than nine facilities in Charlotte, however the Steele Creek location is the only one in the area that is joined to a doctor’ s office! Dr. Strump was inspired to create this facility after having seen multiple patients re-injure themselves at the gym simply because they didn't know how to work out correctly. The goal of Dr. Strump and his wife is to get their patients better, and not have them re-injure themselves! They call these "wellness patients."
However, even if you are not a patient of the Strumps, you can still join their gym. Once you join, they will:
• Go over nutrition with you
• Discuss your body fat
• Hold a “ Functional Movement Assessment” (i.e. test your range of motion; make sure you don’ t have any muscle/joint issues)
• Discuss injury prevention
• See if you have any other problem areas
The average class size is eight, and members range in age from school children to retirees. All ability-levels are welcome, and all workouts can be modified to accommodate varying skill sets. In fact, when I was there, one of the things I noticed firsthand was that there were all types of people there and the feeling was definitely one of comfort and community. Their instructors are friendly and boast a wide range of experiences. I got to meet two of the instructors: Coach Cory Worf has a background with professional cyclists and has been doing Crossfit for five years now, and Coach Amelia Neighbors has run the Boston Marathon and is in the fire academy. Both are passionate, dedicated and extremely knowledgeable. Each morning they list the daily workout on a huge whiteboard, where they also write down challenges and motivations. Each person gets to write down what their time was for completing a task, as a form of competition. It’ s a great way to motivate you to keep doing better, to push yourself!
And trust me, the secret is out! Crossfit is popping up all over the country, with a facility on nearly every corner in California, as Cory told me. Regular gyms, though valuable, are mostly rooms with a lot of equipment, but without the personal training and an explanation of, “ this is how you use the machine." Crossfit also gives you that close-knit family feeling. For instance, Cory is planning a charity cycling tour from San Diego to Daytona, Florida in honor of a gentleman who suffered a spinal cord injury. Everyone at the facility is cheering him on and helping him out, and I find that very supportive!
I was pleased to have had this gym brought to my attention and definitely found this workout concept to be valuable and fun. To get more information about Crossfit at the Steele Creek location such as the schedule and costs, visit http://www.CrossfitSteeleCreek.com.
Until next time…
Fitness Editor, Monique Douglas
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