Keeping fit

In the never-ending quest to broaden my horizons, I decided to shake up my workouts a bit and go to an organized class. Now, I'm not one for organized fitness classes but after hearing that the clientele that I will be working with in my new career field were really into a program called Crossfit, I figured I'd better check it out.

I had a very enlightened professor in my undergraduate nutrition program named Dr. O'Neil. One of the classes I took with her was a seminar on fad diets. The first week of class, she had us each pull a slip of paper out of a bowl. Each slip of paper contained the title of one of the various popular diet books out at the time. For the remainder of the semester, we had to read the book, pull up any research sited by the authors and check out the validity of any claims made by the book. The clincher was that for one week, we had to actually do the diet. At the end of the semester, we each had to present on our diet book, pros and cons and what it was like to try to follow it. You want to know what your clients/patients are experiencing? Walk in their shoes for a while. Very enlightening! Through this experience, I learned that there are very few absolute truths in this world, especially when it comes to diet and exercise. There are some pretty solidly validated theories out there, many of which are the foundations of evidence-based nutrition and exercise. But there are also lots of shades of gray that merge with what works for each individual; something those of us working in these fields must constantly be aware of.

And so it was with this background that I showed up to my first class of a Crossfit boot camp program. Having been through boot camp once for real, I usually shun any fitness class with "boot camp" in the title, but there are a lot of basic moves and principles to learn with this particular fitness program. I figured this was the easiest way to get an introduction. So for four weeks in November-December, I attended classes 3 nights a week taught by JP at Crossfit San Diego.

This is not an infomerical for the program, so if you want to learn more about it, you can click on the link above. I'm posting this really just to make a point that sometimes it's a good thing to break out of our own "truths" and see what else is out there. Do I agree with every tenant of the program? Not really. Do I agree with all the principles of the nutrition program. No, I don't. But did I learn a few things and have fun for the four weeks I went there? Yep! Did I meet some fun & interesting folks while enjoying some challenging workouts outside my normal realm? Yeah, I sure did!

The reason I'm posting this tonight is because I had one last workout session with JP and Lauren earlier this evening. I've had a sinus infection and haven't been able to workout much for over a week now, so the session tonight was just what I needed to jump back into it. JP worked us pretty hard during the boot camp classes, but also did a great job of emphasizing proper form and keeping us motivated. Thanks to JP for shaking up my routine a bit and giving me a few more tools to add to my professional and personal tool boxes! And thanks to Lauren for keeping the class (and especially me) motivated! In the pic are the members of the boot camp class- Adam, Van, Lauren, Nicole, Maggie & baby Kelsey and me.

I fly out tomorrow for two weeks back home in Louisiana. So much packing left to do, but I'm really looking forward to this last break before I leave for training. Stay tuned, I'm sure I'll have lots of food reports coming up!