What is CrossFit?

What is CrossFit?
Physical preparedness for the demands of the world, throughout the lifespan.  Time spent in the gym should correspond to greater ease in the real world.  Work should generate tangible benefits.
What is the method?
The method is variation and function.  The notion here is that the world outside the gym is not full of treadmills and cable machines.  Rather it is full of unpredictable tasks that require mental and physical flexibility.  To prepare for the unpredictable, we must constantly strive to push at the margins of our abilities.

Read the party line in this free issue of the CrossFit journal:

What if I’m training for a specific sport?
Keep at it.  We think general physical preparedness is good for the sport specific athlete as well as the average Joe and Jane.  Further more, we believe gains in one field are not mutually exclusive to any other field but are in fact complimentary.
It is true that if you want to be a great baseball player, you need to play lots of baseball as well as train specific baseball related skills.  Even so, there are few, if any, major league sporting coaches that do not make their athletes cross train.  The results are too telling, especially in the professional arena where this “extra” training translates directly into wins.
Who is the instructor?
Wally Jones is a CrossFit level one certified trainer and the owner of the Westside Academy of Kung Fu.  Wally has been doing Crossfit for five years and training in the martial arts for over fifteen years. 
When are classes and how much do they cost?
Check out our schedule and fees page.
Why do you offer Kung Fu and CrossFit in one gym?
The style of Kung Fu that we teach strives to create a student that is a well rounded martial artist who has a broad understanding of the fighting game, including: striking, throwing, grappling, forms and weapon work.  We feel this dovetails beautifully with the CrossFit ideal of the generalist athlete, one who can jump, throw, lift, sprint, squat and roll with the punches of the everyday world.

How do I get started?

Take advantage of our free week offer.  The hardest part can be getting in to try it out.  Avoid the pitfall of feeling that you will need to “get in shape first,” we’ll take care of that the minute you start your first class!  We have a open enrollment policy which means we accept new students during any class and the free week offer is good for any calendar week.

CrossFit looks hard.  I looked at the main site and it’s scary.  The workouts are intimidating.  Is this really for me?  What if I’m injured or out of shape?  Can beginners do this stuff?

Get in the door.  CrossFit is “scalable.”  Weights can be lowered.  Movements can be modified.  We welcome the opportunity as teachers to work with people of all shapes, sizes and strengths.  If you want to research the movements, we encourage you to check out the section on the main site called “exercises and demos,” it’s full of great videos that show people going through the movements and often include coaching tips.  Weather you do research or not, we will systematically teach all the movements to you before making you do the workouts.  We’re not here to throw you in the fire unprepared.  We are here to throw you into the fire prepared.  You’ll taste better that way.


What is the cutoff age for taking CrossFit classes?

Students age 13 and up are welcome to take class.


How come other CrossFit gyms offer different prices/schedules?

CrossFit is not a franchise.  Each CrossFit is independently owned and operated, thus allowing each owner to charge what they want and schedule classes as they see fit. We feel comfortable charging less than most other gyms because we are a comparatively smaller facility,  have two distinct programs under one roof and offer a much smaller number of class options.


Why don’t you do the main site WOD?

CrossFit is not a franchise.  Each CrossFit is independently owned and operated, thus allowing each owner to teach what they want.  To us, this isn’t a matter of arrogance or a claim that we know better than the HQ folks in charge of main site programming – the CrossFit.com WODs are awesome. Rather, ours is a constructivist approach – an awareness of the specific needs of our particular school population.

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