CrossFit is a mainstream sport that has attracted a huge number of people as well as big name brands whose specialty is in CrossFit gear. With this array of wears, no one would imagine that athletes would still be confused about what works and what doesn’t. Coaches are occasionally bombarded with questions from Cross Fitters on what is the appropriate wear and where they can get it. To shed light on this somewhat interesting beginner area, below are some pointers shared by the experts in CrossFit Gym, on what your workout gear should constitute. Tops Slogan tanks and box t-shirts are hugely popular. It seems everyone wants to shout out the gym they have been to while training during the holidays. These tops are mostly made of cotton which despite its lightweight and breathability, it doesn’t manage moisture as effectively. The best top you can get is one that is moisture-wicking and one which has a stretchy racerback that will move with you through each movement you execute. Going for a close-fitting top is a good idea because it means your shirt won’t flap around or flip up during handstands and pikes. In addition to the top, you should get a decent sports bra to enable your comfort while going through different exercises in CrossFit Gym such as box jumps, skipping, and running intervals.  When properly selected, tops can give you a confidence factor during your workouts. Bottoms As you probably know, CrossFit training is one of the hyper sweaty sessions. Depending on the weather, you may switch between shorts and crops. The reason why full-length leggings may not be appropriate for you is that they retain too much heat. In the crop world, there are lots of amazing patterns. The guiding factor should not just be the fitness of your bottoms, but also made from a material that can comfortably take a beating. Rolling around on the box floor requires materials that can withstand the friction. Footwear As a rule of the thumb, the footwear you choose should have a low, but hard sole. There are many brands of footwear you can sample either online or in your local sports shop. Running shoes are not the best for the CrossFit gym because when starting out, you need a solid footing. If all you have are running shoes, they may serve you in the short run, but prepare to get good shores. Training with flatter soled shoes will give you the flexibility you need to quickly change position and direction without losing balance. If you are planning to undertake WODs that mix lifts with cardio activities, go for lifting shoes. These literally glue you to the floor and help you in withstanding heavy weights without sliding. Remember to always carry a notebook or have an app for you so that you can note down your new PR lift, WOD time, or sprint interval time. Knowing your numbers is an important part of your progress and preparedness in CrossFit.

If you are a runner and have been working hard to increase your mile pace or simply boost your short sprint speed, strength training could be all that you need. Strength training has been a go-to program for athletes in endurance sports such as rowing, cycling, swimming, and skiing. There are lots of benefits attached to strength training such as fat loss which in the end prove beneficial for your running career. There is a possibility you have been in a CrossFit training program, and you have not as yet realized the benefits that others are speaking about. Well, it is one thing to do strength training in CrossFit and totally another to do the right kind of CrossFit training. Protocol matters and you need to get it right. Among the reasons you should embrace strength training in your running career include: Enhanced Speed Research proves it that strength training can make you faster. It doesn’t matter whether you run short distance races or you were a long-distance runner, one of the things you will experience when you start strength training is that your pace will pick up gradually. Strength training improves leg strength and your body’s efficiency to utilize oxygen and energy. The main goal of endurance training is to enhance the ability of your body to properly utilize oxygen. This utilization is measured by the maximal oxygen uptake also known as VO2 max. If you can decrease the oxygen your body takes in at certain speeds, you will be able to maintain a fast pace for a much longer period. A Better Final Kick Strength training helps you generate more force every time you kick off the ground. When this is combined with efficient usage of energy and a better running economy, your final kick will be amazing. Strength training achieves this by increasing the proportion of your type IIA muscle fibers which fatigue much slowly and have the capacity to produce a burst of speed and power. Decreased Body Fat Through strength training programs, your body will lose fat and become lean. Body fat slows your metabolic rate and produces some substances that increasingly make you fatter such as adipokines and aromatase. On the other hand, muscle and lean tissue enhance metabolism and this, in turn, makes you a better runner. Experience and elite runners will tell you that CrossFit workouts which mainly consist of high-intensity CrossFit training are the go-to for fat loss. A Better Body Composition Research has proven that if you properly program through strength training, you can get in shape and gain muscles. The major concern among competitive endurance athletes is that strength training may make them gain body mass which is detrimental to optimal performance. However, to counter this argument is the fact that strength training enables your body to gain muscle mass, but in the legs which make you a much faster runner. To add to the above, strength training is one of the CrossFit exercise routines that will most certainly go a long way in helping you to get rid of chronic pain and nagging injuries. It will also assist you in correcting structural imbalances which have largely been classified as precursors to injuries.

The box is not as easy space especially for beginners in CrossFit. However, with the right mastery of the unspoken laws, your life can be much easier because these laws create the right environment for your improvement and continuous progress. Below are some of the ones you should know by heart. Do Not Cheat Reps When you are in the heat of a CrossFit workout and the pain and fatigue is setting in, it becomes easy to lose count. This aside, there are some athletes who deliberately cut reps to speed their scores and beat their rivals. Since the competitive element of CrossFit workout is fun, you should never lose the fact that any workout has a primary role in making you stronger, fitter, and healthier. Don’t be obsessed with winning to cheat your reps. The Last Gets the Loudest Cheers This is one of the best aspects of CrossFit. A WOD is very competitive, but that aside, the main aim of every single workout is to improve the fitness of all involved. At every CrossFit level, this mentality rules. You will see it as a first timer in CrossFit, and you will also see it even at the CrossFit competitions. Don’t Be Selective in Your WODs It is part of humanity that each one of us has their strengths and weaknesses. There is excitement when you come across a workout you can do perfectly well because it involves everything you are good at. However, you will come across the opposite scenario in CrossFit where WODs are not as fun because they demand techniques and resilience aspects that you are not good at. Instead of avoiding such kind of CrossFit exercises, you should tackle them as doing so serves to improve your weakness. Take Care of the Equipment This is more or less a matter of simple courtesy. It shouldn’t be difficult to put the equipment, bars, and plates back in the racks. Taking care of equipment is a ritualistic element of CrossFit training and obeying this comes with its share of respect. For instance, some athletes will walk around the bar after every lift instead of walking over the barbell which is considered disrespectful. Control Your Ego Don’t kill or suppress your ego because you will need it to power you through CrossFit. It has the effect of motivating us to a higher level of competition and always getting better at what we do. However, if not controlled, egos can be a hindrance to your CrossFit performance. CrossFit exposes weaknesses in some of the places you never knew existed. As an athlete, you need to be humble and not allow your ego to lead the way in the face of disappointments and embarrassments. It takes a lot of courage to accept that at times we are not as good as we think. Working with your CrossFit training coach, you can quickly learn some of the etiquettes that will inspire you to progress and improvement.

CrossFit is one of the most engaging and all-encompassing workout regime available today. Its top competitors are ranked amongst the fittest men and women in the world. Despite this profile, CrossFit doesn’t make you the best in everything. For instance, if you want to pack muscles you may think of adding in mass building training into your workout. There is a strong similarity between a mass building and bodybuilding training, but the former is concentrated more of the lifting of weights than fitness. CrossFit Workouts CrossFit by its very nature doesn’t have a predictable workout routine. They refer to their workouts as WODs which in full means workout of the day. Every day there is a new workout which is the official CrossFit website publishes. The workouts are usually a mixture of gymnastic exercises, barbell exercises, and endurance exercises. Because of the unpredictability of CrossFit training, you can’t add an extra style of training on it. Scheduling Mass Training Traditional mass training which is more of bodybuilding involves working the same muscles day in day out. To gain muscle mass, recovery becomes important. Since CrossFit isn’t inclined towards mass training, there is no priority in working the same muscle groups on consecutive days. The tricky part of mass training is the difficulty in scheduling it in the same week with CrossFit. This is because the two regimes have different philosophies. Scheduling becomes much more complicated in a scenario where your schedule is busy. To organize your schedule, you must prioritize your goals and allocate more time to either mass training or CrossFit. For instance, where you have three days to work out, you can allocate a day to mass training and two to CrossFit. Prioritizing Mass Training If you want to do mass training and CrossFit within the same timeframe, you may hive off part of your CrossFit workout if it exercises the same muscle group trained on the day before. A good example is where you train your legs on Monday during your mass training program, and on Tuesday the plan is to do leg exercises such as barbell squats during your CrossFit training program. In this case, it makes a lot of sense to skip the squats so that your leg can recover. Because of this mix-up, you will always find yourself at a crossroads in your training where your priority will have to be in one or the other, but not both. If you want to gain mass, CrossFit will have to be sacrificed and replaced with mass training in most of the workouts. Planning Your Workouts and Energy Balance When planning your mass workouts, you should split your muscle groups into lower body and upper body muscles. Twice per week, ensure you work out each half of your body and in between slot a rest day. The other approach is to break down your body into muscle groups such as chest, back, core, arms, and legs. To ensure that more energy is dedicated to mass training in any given week, you should start with the mass workout before going into the CrossFit exercises. Working out is one part of the equation that will enable you to gain mass. The other part is CrossFit nutrition. Eating enough and balanced diet will give your body system the energy you need to blaze through your workouts. A caloric surplus is recommended for muscle mass.

During a CrossFit workout, there is a tendency to exercise some muscle groups more than others. The ones particularly focused on are those that look great under your t-shirt. While it is true that the biceps, chest, shoulder, and abdominal muscles make huge contributions to your strength, other muscles are equally important and as such should not be neglected entirely. When you ignore certain muscle groups during training, you may suffer from muscle imbalances which if not checked can undermine your performance and predispose you to injury. The following are the four muscle groups you should intentionally exercise even as you concentrate on working out the whole body as a unit. The Glutes Strength training is usually inclined in working out the upper body resulting into flat butts and huge chests. To make it worse, some athletes skip leg day and this further sidelines any attempts to strengthen your glutes and other lower body muscles. The gluteal muscles are one of the largest muscle groups in your system and as such ignoring them can come at a very high price. Not working your glutes can lead to loss of power and strength during sprinting and squatting as well as muscle imbalances. People with weak glutes often complain of conditions such as hip stiffness and lower back pain. The Adductors One of the reasons why adductor-focused exercises are ignored is that they tone the inner thighs which many people feel it gives them a feminine reputation. Your body requires strong adductors which in turn helps your thighs to move laterally and give you space to do any leg movement within and outside the CrossFit gym. When doing exercises such as running, climbing stairs, squatting, and plopping down your couch, your thighs get engaged as they move forward and backward as well as side to side. When you work out your adductors, they will help protect and stabilize the knees. Experts recommend lateral lunges as one of the workout types for strengthening your adductors. The Upper Back Texting, typing, and sitting take a toll on your upper back. A weak back can easily give you a hunched posture which in turn makes your pecs appear smaller than they are because they fall in on each other. Strengthening the back gives you a more upright posture and exposes your chest. It is recommended that upper back CrossFit training should be done almost on a daily basis through pulling and pushing CrossFit exercises. The Calves A majority of beginner CrossFit athletes suffer from underdeveloped leg muscles. Since people particularly men are super visual, they tend to work out only the muscles they can see and ignore the rest. Calves often fall in the ignored category. Calves are functional muscles and the weaker they are, the lesser the volume of work they can handle. Additionally, calve muscles also play a key role in strengthening your ankles. If you are an athlete in a sport that needs quick pivoting or explosive sprinting and change of direction, you need to invest in your calves for higher performance.

Brands at times do shy away from supporting alternative sports whose future may not look promising. However, Reebok is different. They developed the first shoe to be used in CrossFit, and they became the official CrossFit games sponsor, injecting millions of money into this sport of fitness. Over the past few years, other brands have come into the scene, and they are quickly biting at the heels of Reebok as a leading CrossFit brand. Below are some of the brands that have tapped into this vibrant multi-million-dollar industry. NOBULL This brand is associated with clean products that perform well. Their latest CrossFit training shoe is known as Trainer. This shoe has a seamless one-piece construction comprising an extremely durable, abrasion resistant, and breathable material. The guard plates are constructed using a highly flexible mesh base layer that allows you to do rope climbs effectively. Strike Mvmnt This brand brings a classic, fresh aesthetic to CrossFit. Since their inception, they have been improving and honing their product to what it is today. With the release of their latest shoe, Chill Pill, Strike Mvmnt have completely reconstructed the platform and added some rope-resistant material to the sole while at the same time maintaining the lightweight construction of the shoe. This brand boasts of the superior foot strike athletes achieve when running or training in their shoes. New Balance  Previously, New Balance was famous for their running footwear. However, things took a new twist, and they ventured into the functional training scene. Currently, the brand has some of the advanced Cross-trainers used in many CrossFit gyms. The reason why their Minimus collection has become a favorite to many CrossFitters is that it is lightweight, durable, and has a low heel drop. Another key reason is that these shoes give you a variety of widths which many other brands do not. Asics This brand has been known for its comfortable and extremely functional shoes. They have a new release known as Met-Conviction which was developed and specifically tested for burpees, box jumps, running, lifts, and everything in between. It has a 3-millimeter drop and qualifies as a minimalist shoe which connects you firmly to the ground. It also has a removable sock liner to give you cushioning and to wick away the moisture. Inov-8 This brand was among the first to hop into CrossFit, and as we speak, they are on their third edition of the F-Lite Cross-training series. This is specifically designed for the workout of the day. It has a descent 8-millimeter heel drop and close to 50% denser heel compared to the forefoot. What this means is that the shoe will absorb lesser power while more of the power will go into the ground. Thanks to the enhanced cushion at the front, you have ample padding for running and box jumps. While these brands may not have the history and appeal that keeps them on par with Reebok, they are coming up quite fast and may with time dominate the CrossFit training arena.

According to research, 20% of people suffer from one kind of knee pain or the other. This percentage may be higher within the weightlifting population. There are many causes of knee pain some of which include misalignment, osteoarthritis, and IT band issues among others. Irrespective of the cause, knee pain can seriously hinder your CrossFit workout gains. Apart from that, knee pain also causes problems in movement patterns because your body unconsciously starts avoiding hurting movements. This is what ultimately opens the door to more knee-related problems. Collagen and Why It is Important Collagen is one of the main building blocks of body tissues which include the knee. It also happens to be the most abundant protein type within your body system and can be found in hair, muscles, skin, and your knees. Collagen is more or less like a scaffold which holds things together. Your body system generates its collagen, but you can also source it from outside from supplements and bone broth. The reason why collagen has not been a problem in the past is that our lifestyle consisted of eating connective tissues and bones of wild game as well as drinking bone broth. If you do not have access or for some reason cannot slurp broth or gnaw bones, you can go for collagen supplements. Research again indicates that people who supplement with collagen such as collagen peptides experience a faster reduction in athletic-related knee pain. You can get collagen peptides from health food stores or even in online stores and add it to your CrossFit diet plan. The recommended intake is about 20 grams per serving, and if you can have this once per day, then you will be sorted. The side effects of collagen supplementation in your CrossFit diet include thicker hair and nails and better digestion among others. Since collagen doesn’t easily melt, it is important to blend it with your protein shake or stir it in hot drinks. It is also advisable that you take it before bed. This is because it is loaded with amino acid known as glycine which can make you sleepy. Since collagen is categorized as an incomplete protein, it doesn’t have all the necessary amino acids to give you the gains you need. This is why you should not count it as part of your daily protein goals in your CrossFit training. There you go! If you can’t handle the knee pain anymore, think about this protein supplement, and your struggles could be over.

Many athletes rest comfortably on lateral raises and conventional pressing not knowing that they are selling themselves short when it comes to shoulder building. There is a lot more that you need to put in your CrossFit training schedule if you want to shake things up. When looking for variety in your shoulder training and virtually any other CrossFit training, planes of action and force angles are crucial. The following are ways you can create a new stimulus and expose significant amounts of weakness for big, healthy shoulders. The Y Press When you perform the standard shoulder presses, they strengthen your shoulders in one plane. If you could only shift the angle slightly, you could work out your mid deltoids much harder. For you to do the Y press, you have to remember your angles. Begin with your palms facing each other and at the dimensions of your shoulder width. As the arms get extended, your hands will move further away from one another, and your fist will rotate to make your palms face forward at the end. The greatest tension is felt at the top because this is where the lever arms are at their longest. This explains why posing at the very top of each rep for about a second or two is smart. The Y presses are excellent movements which can follow your dumbbell overhead presses. Seated Snatches Even with a coach in the CrossFit gym, the barbell snatch is one of those exercises that are complex and somewhat difficult to master. That said, you can simplify the movement using dumbbells. The dumbbells eliminate the involvement of the knee, hip joint, and ankle. When you incorporate a seat, it becomes great because it gives you size and conditioning. Seated snatches, unlike barbell snatches, make you responsible for the negative reps. In turn, this makes you honest concerning the weight you choose. Just like a Z press, seated snatches quickly expose mobility issues primarily because the seated position does not have a backrest. If you discover you can’t bear the weight directly overhead while in an upright torso, you may need to enhance the health of your thoracic spine and your shoulder mobility. Push Press with Snatch Grip Behind the neck, push pressing is one of the underused tools for working out the rear deltoids. If you add a snatch grip as well as a push start, it all becomes invaluable. The beauty of this movement is that it restricts the weight you can bear and at the same time works out your rear deltoids, mid traps, and scapular muscles much harder. A point to note is that this movement needs good shoulder health hence not advisable for beginner CrossFitters. Blackburn This movement mimics the overhead press pattern and serves as a good stimulant towards shoulder mobility, a neutral lower spine, and rear deltoids activation. As a bonus, it hits hard on the rest of the posterior chain. To get the most benefit out of this, secure your heels in the horizontal back extension machine instead of using an unsecured bench or the floor. This works hard everything between the rear deltoids and the back of the knees both isotonically and isometrically. This CrossFit workout gives you an excellent way to train the overhead range with a different reference point thus allowing gravity to form a new force angle.