CrossFit: Functional fitness for everyone

By TOM HASSLINGER

Staff writer

COEUR d’ALENE — Everyone there has something they hate.

Not dislike strongly, or mildly annoyed, but really, really hate.

Like Burpees.

Ask someone at CrossFit Coeur d’Alene what they think about burpees.

Those are the exercises where you push yourself up from the ground into a standing position, then jump and clap your hands together over your head, then fall to the ground again to push yourself up again — like the old up-down drill at football practice only without the leg-chop and coach’s whistle.

“I love ‘em,” said Mark Curtis, 51, not seriously. “I haven’t found anything I don’t like yet.”

But press him a bit and Curtis — a former triathloner who turned toward the gym on Fourth Street as a way to rehabilitate his shoulder after a serious biking accident while training for an Ironman — will fess up.

The Airdyne, he said.

You’ve probably seen that big, clunky stationary bike with its giant fan for a wheel at the YMCA. Every once in a while CrossFit’s coaches make their members climb on and pedal as hard as they can — for a minute, half minute, maybe only 20 seconds at a time.

Twenty seconds doesn’t sound much until about 5 seconds into it.

“That friggin’ bike,” Curtis said. “That thing is evil.”

But CrossFit isn’t designed for the elite athlete; it’s the opposite. Growing more popular across the world, the workouts focus on functional fitness for anyone looking to improve their overall health. The sessions, which last one hour from warm up to finish, concentrate on movements, not muscles.

Bench press max doesn’t matter here, and fancy equipment isn’t needed.

Basic movements, like running, jumping, pushing, pulling, lifting and squatting are the focus. And each exercise is tailored to the participant. If they can’t do the exercise with weight, they just concentrate on the form. If they can’t do a pull up, they lean back and pull themselves up on a set of rings, while keeping their feet on the floor.

It’s the same movement, just different restrictions, which enables the gym to train everyone from teens to people in their 70s, according to owner Derek Hutchison, who started the gym in 2008.

But coupled with the workouts is the diet the gym advocates; called Paleo, which focuses on whole foods. Think hunter-gatherer: No cheeses, breads and things that didn’t exist way back then.

“It’s pretty simple to follow,” Hutchison said, “If you can kill it or pick it, you can eat it. No counting calories, no weighing or measuring things, just eat real food.”

Which brings it back to Curtis, and 30 other members who took part in the gym’s “Paleo Challenge.”

For six weeks at the beginning of the year, contestants adhered to a strict Paleo diet, while working out at the gym. They kept meticulous journals of their foods, workouts and how they felt. They even swapped recipes on Facebook.

In the end, the participants dropped 136 inches and 240 pounds combined.

Curtis took first for males and Laura Rumpler earned the top female honors with Vicki Starr.

“My sustained energy has been amazing,” said Rumpler, whose job as public relations officer for the Coeur d’Alene School District keeps her at a desk and in lots of meetings during the day. “I just feel so much better.”

The gym celebrated the end of the challenge with a party and a keg of cider beer, which is much more Paleo than regular beer. It handed out $1,700 to the top finishers, with first place netting around $500 each. Coaches even dipped into the contestants’ journals and read some entries, for a blow-by-blow account.

“In six weeks I have seen more change in my body than six years in spinning,” one read.

“Wink, wink… nudge, nudge… the sex drive certainly got a boost as well,” read another.

But the challenge wasn’t a one-time thing.

It’s a life-changer, they said. And now the gym, with its 130 members, are focusing on competing in the CrossFit Open, which pits gyms across the world against each other for five weeks as participants all do the same workout on the same day.

The participation in that event has doubled to around 55,000 participants from last year, and ESPN even inked a deal to cover the championships.

The first competition of the Open, by the way, was as to do as many burpees as possible in seven minutes.

“I will never be a fan of burbees,” Rumpler said. “No matter how you package them in a workout.”

And sure, there’s always one exercise to hate, but nobody at the Coeur d’Alene gym focuses on that. Besides, when everyone comes together and hates one thing in unison, it kind of makes it fun.

“The camaraderie,” Curtis, an old Navy Seal, said of his favorite aspect of the gym. “It’s fun to see, and fun to be a part of.”