Erick and I have been doing CrossFit for 3½ years. We absolutely love the CrossFit community in general and the CFDP community in particular! CrossFit provides us with the “complete package” fitness program – its variety, challenge, and benefits are unmatched by any other exercise program we’ve ever done, which keeps it interesting and keeps us coming back to see what’s next and what more we can accomplish. I know how cheesy this sounds, but doing CrossFit (and sharing the experience with each other and our fellow CFDP athletes) has become an integral part of our lives – we don’t “choose” to do it each day; instead, it’s a fixed and valued part of our (almost) daily routine. Having this much fun with like-minded people makes it a good experience every time, no matter how hard we’re working.

That being said, we also get a sense of satisfaction/completeness from supplementing the regular CrossFit classes with other forms of exercise. We were long-time athletes before starting CrossFit. Erick wrestled and played football in high school and, as an adult, took up running, swimming, triathlons, and weightlifting. I did gymnastics for a couple of years in high school, but my real focus was swimming, in high school and college. After taking a number of years off from exercise when my kids were small, I got back into the game by resuming swimming and starting running and weightlifting. These other sports are still fun and feel like “coming home” when we do them now. Moreover, we want to keep pushing ourselves to develop additional skills and strength in particular areas.

So, we do other forms of exercise in addition to 5x/week CrossFit classes. We don’t necessarily do a lot of additional work, but what we do makes us feel like we’re doing the best thing for our bodies (and minds) overall, as well as making ourselves more capable and prepared to do well in CrossFit. Erick lifts weights, runs, and swims. I swim and do occasional yoga and/or pilates classes. For awhile, we also both did our own ad hoc accessory work at CFDP, e.g., pull ups, sit ups, barbell work, T2B, sled pushes, etc., until we wised up and replaced that with Scott’s gymnastics accessory programming. CrossFit certainly makes our old sports easier, and the old sports are well-loved stalwarts that let us mix things up a little, mentally and physically, and work different muscle groups and/or the same muscle groups in different ways. Our days off from CrossFit become rest days with a bonus.

We love CrossFit and our CFDP family! The other sports/exercise are like our extended family – we don’t see those cousins as much, but we still love them and are richer for having them in our lives.