CrossFit workouts gaining popularity in Utah

SALT LAKE CITY — A new exercise program has taken Utah by storm. It's called Crossfit, and chances are good that someone you know is already addicted to the daily workout regimens.

CrossFit is a series of daily workouts either performed at home or at a local ‘box'. Boxes are locally certified exercise centers that dispense the workout of the day (WOD) in organized classes.

Kevin Wunder lives in Saratoga Springs and is a CrossFit enthusiast. He began attending workouts at the Saratoga Springs CrossFit box about a year ago. He said his experience has been rewarding.

"I was always an athlete growing up, but got a little out of shape after college," Wunder said. "A friend was talking about CrossFit and I started asking him questions."

Wunder attended his first CrossFit session and balked at the workout — 100 pull-ups, 100 sit-ups and 100 squats all in quick succession. He said he decided to try just 25 repetitions of each exercise.

"About 25 minutes later I was still laying on the ground, wondering what happened to me," Wunder said.

However, since his first day, he's been able to not only beat but has far superseded his first attempts.

"Everything is scored or timed," Wunder said. "I can look at a workout from six months ago and see how much I've improved."

Krista Rykert and her husband Drew are the co-owners of the Saratoga Springs CrossFit. Krista also works as a labor and delivery nurse and has two young children. She said she was drawn to CrossFit after trying out other types of high-intensity workouts.

"It changed everything," Rykert said. "I never really had much confidence in myself. I was a triathlete before but I was never really fit until I started CrossFit."

Rykert said she loves the variety of the workouts. Workout routines change every day and can vary between four minutes to 45 minutes long.

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Both Rykert and Wunder said the biggest appeal of CrossFit is the community aspect of the boxes.

"What's really neat about CrossFit, is it's built around a community," Wunder said. "I hang out with the people I workout with outside of the gym."

Rykert said she thinks CrossFit has grown so popular lately because of the variation in the routines.

"A lot of people were getting bored with workouts like P90X and Insanity because it was the same workout over and over again," Rykert said. "CrossFit is centered on variety and change."

For a box to operate under the CrossFit brand, the owner must certify through a series of trainings.

Some critics of CrossFit have said the workouts are more about the social component of exercise than the practical nature of it. Blogger Carles, a writer for the prolific popular culture blog Grantland, recently wrote a postabout what he called the socio-physical aspect of CrossFit.

"CrossFit is an attempt to collapse the monotony of cardiovascular machine culture and the simplistic vanity of weightlifting culture," Carles said. "Exercise can make some people feel alone without a gym buddy to share a routine, but CrossFit gives participants a diverse range of exercises that strains and trains the body in a noncompetitive team context."

He said he thinks a big draw of CrossFit may not be the workouts themselves, but the social nature of participation.

"Gliding on your elliptical or even jogging on a track reduces participants to hamsters on the proverbial wheel," Carles said. "Instead, we should be preparing for a Red Dawn-like existence after the nuclear fallout of World War III while also working on the same ‘team-building' skills that our employers attempt to facilitate."

There are over 6,000 CrossFit boxes worldwide. Membership fees are paid either on a monthly "all-you-can-use" basis or per class.

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