CrossFit?

What crossfit is good for:
- Building strength
- Learning new skills
- Working on cardiovascular health (short duration)
- Adding some lean muscle
- Creating a more athletic look (strength, mobility, functional awareness)
- Finding motivation to stick with a program

What crossfit is not good for:
- Fat loss (that is based on food choices), however it can be part (small part) of a fat loss strategy
- Getting muscle mass (reps and approach are more endurance based)
- A short cut to getting fit (it takes hard work in and out of the box)

If your goal is strength gain and you want to develop a more athletic look (not bulky, which I’ll discuss below), then you may want to try crossfit. Before you do, make a commitment to your goal. And by commitment, I mean like you do for your best friend when you promise to do something for them. You wouldn’t skip out on them would you? Now, make a promise to yourself (you value yourself as much as your best friend, right?). You won’t skip out on this one.

What to look for in a good crossfit box:
- A solid foundations/elements class that teaches you the basic movements.
- Good coaches that watch and instruct.
- A willingness in the box to help you scale the workouts to your fitness level.
- A group (not just the coaches) encouraging you to be the best you can that day.
- A major focus on warm up and mobility work.
- Programming that gives a good balance between strength, olympic lifting, gymnastics and metabolic conditioning. This will be hard to see early on, but will become evident when you start learning more about the different modalities and find your favorites.

Is crossfit a cult?
In most cults, there is a charismatic leader that drives his flock. They tend to be very controlling and make it nearly impossible to leave. There are rituals, a language and underlying source (e.g., bible, Dianetics, etc.).

The people that created and run crossfit (often referred to as crossfit HQ), are interesting people, but they by no means dominate the community. With a Libertarian bent, they allow anyone to work toward and obtain a certification and open their own box. They pay a license fee to use the name crossfit. Beyond that, they have full freedom to program and run their box the way they see fit.

Crossfit has a general meaning of functional fitness. The WODs use similar features (AMRAP = as many reps as possible; EMOM = every minute on the minute; RFT = rounds for time) but are all box specific. If they stay within the basics, it has more to do with branding than some higher level control.

While you might sign a contract with your box, you’re not otherwise locked in. Quite a few people start crossfit and leave after a couple of years. Nobody hunts them down to drag them back. There are rituals (battle of the boxes, charity workouts, Murph on Memorial Day), and a language, and the Crossfit website (along with the training and certifications of the coaches). But far from a religion.

Gaining too much muscle:
Getting muscle mass is hard. It is hard for men and even harder for women. To get muscle mass gain, you have to do three things: 1) Lift at a volume and intensity to stimulate muscle gain; 2) Eat enough to both fuel the workouts and provide raw materials for muscle gain; and 3) Have sufficient testosterone and other hormone balance to allow you to remain anabolic and not get catabolic. That third one is the stopping point for most of us (especially women). Unless you’re taking steroids, you’re muscle mass gains will be slow and hardly noticeable over week on week. So, it will take you years of hard lifting and focused eating to get any significant muscle mass.

Been doing Crossfit for almost a year myself. The best thing about Crossfit is the community and the support you will get there. I've lost 20# but not changed a pants size or a shirt size, but my body has changed...it's more tone (not beastly muscular) and I can do lots of things i have never been able to do in my whole life. The thing about Crossfit is that it is completely scale-able to your abilities, but you will work your *kitten* off because you will constantly push yourself if you are that type of person. If you aren't that type of person...it won't work for you. I've stopped measuring my weight...and started counting the number of lbs I can lift, and how fast I can complete a workout. I also pay way more attention to how I eat. You can NOT out-train a bad diet. If the workouts intimidate you, I suggest maybe trying to find one that had a class similar to our Lean X class. It's mostly body weight movements, some dumbbell and kettle bell exercise, with less impact. I agree with finding a gym that has a on ramp program where they teach you safely what we do. Our gyms is 3x week/4 weeks. A good coach will never have you push yourself to injury. Drop in and check one out. There are some great people, of all activity levels in Crossfit. It truly is a great community. And good luck to you!

I CrossFit. I love it. I've gained muscle, lost fat and am a couple sizes smaller.

The CrossFit experience is totally box dependent. If the box is geared towards metabolic conditioning more so than strength conditioning, you won't build tons of muscle. But, that said, a lot of reputable boxes have a major strength component outside of the actual workout of the day.

So, yes, you will have muscle and strength gains doing CrossFit if you are at a box that strength trains in addition to the normal workouts. I think that some people outside of the community fail to recognize this because they think the workout is really just the WOD.

That said, it's really hard for women to get "bulky" because getting "bulky" is diet dependent. I eat at maintenance and don't think I'm bulky.

In regards to the cult question....I don't know. I think that any time you get a group of people together with similar interests and passions, working on personal and communal goals, you are going to have a close knit community. If CrossFit is a cult, then so is any team sport.