While other sports use workouts to train for competition, CrossFit fuels competition from the workout, creating the ultimate full-body challenge that tests athletes each year from around the globe. With dedicated gyms, trainers, and an ever-growing community of diverse ages and experience levels, the humble beginnings of this twenty-year-old sport have grown into an international phenomenon. What separates CrossFit from other sports, and how does it deliver the ultimate measure of strength, agility, endurance, and mental fortitude?
Full Body. Full Workout.
Greg Glassman opened the first CrossFit gym in 2000 in Santa Cruz, California as a way of incorporating a wider range of fitness activity for a fuller degree of results (RookieRoad.com). While traditional gyms focused on components of exercise, targeting parts of the body one at a time, CrossFit dedicated its workouts to the movements that strung each activity together. This fluid range of exercises targeted muscles in quick succession: from squats activating the lower body, switching to pull-ups for the upper body, switching to box jumps for agility, switching to barbell lifts for strength. Full athletic prowess came from head to toe and made the mind and body the stars of the show.
CrossFit stripped away the elaborate equipment that crowded gyms and brought it back to basics. Bars, ropes, boxes, and medicine balls facilitated the movements but never dictated them. The body steered the workout, which meant there was nothing to hide behind. A person needed complete control and awareness of his or her actions to perform at this level, and it was through setting this high athletic bar, competition was born.
Competing at the Ultimate Level
Glassman established the first CrossFit Games in 2007 in Northern California, which . Not only would it test competitors in a string of full-body challenges, but it would feature a signature element that separated this competition from all others: the power of spontaneity.
To prove the best athletes could handle anything thrown at them, competitors were unaware of the challenges they would be performing in until arriving at the event. In the first games, competitors had to do a “1,000 meter row followed by five rounds of 25 pull-ups and 7 overhead push jerks” (RookieRoad.com).
This element of surprise has continued to this day, making every year’s games more difficult than the last. From swimming to running to weightlifting to climbing to walking on your hands, competitors know every part of them will be tested. It’s this “Expect Anything” approach that highlights the mental flexibility and fortitude that is also on display. Biceps and glutes are only as powerful as the brain’s ability to adapt to its surroundings and formulate game plans on the fly. That is why the CrossFit games are the fullest measure of strength, agility, and endurance.
While the games are in a class of competition all to themself, reaching the annual event is a challenge unto itself.
Reaching the Ultimate Goal
Several months of qualifiers held by CrossFit gyms inch athletes from across the planet closer and closer to the main event. One such qualifier put on by CrossFit Decimate in Colorado Springs for the CrossFit Games 2022 will be held June 10th through the 12th, and SOM Footwear will be there with a booth for you to try on our latest models. As a proud supporter of CrossFit Decimate’s Masters of the Community Legends Qualifier, we hope to see you there. There is no other live competition like it.
While we’re sponsoring a qualifying event, SOM fan and four-time World CrossFit Masters Champion, Mary Beth Prodromides, is competing in her own set of qualifiers. Having already reached the medal podium six times, she is hoping for her seventh this year. She’s been wearing her SOMs through competition, saying they “did great on the rope climbs and have gotten her to the semifinals!” She’s so close to reaching the games, and we’re cheering her on every step of the way.
The Perfect Shoe for the Ultimate Workout
CrossFitters like Mary Beth know the importance of stability and strength when competing at the CrossFit Games level. They need footwear that matches their movements, flexing over every obstacle and disappearing under every weight.
Only SOM Footwear delivers the zero-drop balance and lightweight, barefoot-feel shoe made in America to strengthen feet with every step. From smoothly transitioning from one exercise to another without slowing down, to providing space for toes to breathe, freeing the rest of the body to adapt to new challenges, SOM’s athletic trainers, like the Nutrail Air, give athletes the confidence to perform at their fullest level in a sport that measures their truest potential.
