I am either brave or foolish or both but I went to my second CrossFit session today. A bit late too so I only had time to do five-minute jump ropes then skipped the rest of the warm up. Today’s WOD was 30 clean and jerks – to be done within 30 minutes, which is pretty reasonable really. Except that they take note of the time that you finished so you really don’t want to take your time and do one clean and jerk per minute.

CrossFit has been criticized for sacrificing technique for speed but, to the credit of those running CrossFit Manila, they do seem concerned about proper technique. Before the time, Ferdie spent a few minutes with each of us to make sure we had the proper form. Since, apparently, I couldn’t get it right, he modified my WOD to 60 cleans and 60 shoulder presses. Except that, again, he forgot to inform me that I had to bring the bar all the way down to the floor (during the demo, we had the PVC bar to our shins) and I only found this out on my last count. Ah well…

I finished in 12 minutes and 30 seconds.

Advice to those wanting to give CrossFit a try, get to the gym, at least, 30 minutes before the scheduled session to have enough time to warm-up and to observe the demos.