13.03.10
Posted in Crossfit Workout & Exercises, General Colin McNulty Stuff at 3:48 pm by Colin McNulty
This is a map of every Crossfit Affiliated gym in the UK, with contact details right on the map and listed below. I’ve been meaning to do this for a while and finally got round to it. If you spot any mistakes, let me know, especially if I’ve missed one off or haven’t quite got the location in the right place (I’m only human and this took far longer than I thought it would!)
There are a couple I know I’ve missed off, that’s because their websites were down at the time of writing (Crossfit South and Crossfit Central Scotland spring to mind). If that’s you, let me know when your website’s up and I’ll add you on.
Here is the full list of Crossfit gyms in England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Ireland!
- Unit J, Astra Business Park, Guinness Road, Trafford Park, M17 1SD
- 07850 740 992
- info@crossfit3d.com
- Unit 9, Davigdor Mews, 64 Davigdor Road, Hove, BN3 1RF
- Miles: 0777 9402991
- Unit 3D, Three Rock Road, Sandyford Industrial Estate, Dublin 18
- 01-2063669
- info@crossfit.ie
- West 15 Whickham View, Newcastle upon Tyne NE15 6UN
- Kempie: 07786 917 285
- kempie@hotmail.com
- Unit 3, Annesborough Industrial Estate, Annesborough Road, Lurgan, Co Armagh, BT67 9JD
- info@elite400.co.uk
- 02838 342963
- The Master St James Kickboxing Academy, Upper Floor, 174 Rendle Street, Plymouth, PL1 1TP
- 07877045566
- james@abcfit.co.uk
- 4 Bridgewater Close, Reading, Berkshire, RG30 1JT
- Unit 16, Mackintosh Place, South Newmoor Industrial Estate, Irvine, KA11 4JT
- 01294 218508
- fit@basixgym.com
- Unit 35, Evans Easy Space, Stafford Drive, Battlefield Enterprise Park, Shrewsbury, Shropshire, SY1 3FE
- 07532223447
- mail@crossfitshropshire.com
- Unit 2, St Katherines Court, Winch Wen industrial estate, Llansamlet, Swansea, SA1 7ER
- 07775 848 429
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22.02.10
Posted in Crossfit Workout & Exercises, General Colin McNulty Stuff at 7:19 am by Colin McNulty
My daughter attended the England’s first official Crossfit Kids class, at Manchester’s latest Crossfit affiliate on Saturday: Crossfit 3D.
Previously from Crossfit Manchester, Karl and Rachel Steadman are right from the off, launching a dedicated Saturday morning Crossfit Kids class from 9-10am, which happens to suit my Saturday morning schedule perfectly.
In August, Crossfit3D is also hosting the first ever Crossfit Kids certification outside of America. You can get the details off the main Crossfit site but places are limited; I’ve already signed up!
Anyway, as the first ever class, Jadzia was the only attendee! The session’s exercises included bear crawls, tuck jumps, short runs, situps, burpees, ball throws at a bin, with a focus on squat form. Then there was a frantic game of scatterball, followed by a general play session. Here are some pics, next time I’ll remember to take a better camera!
Bear Crawls in the warmup.
Tuck jumps.
Practicing good squat form.
At the top of the squat, you Stand like superman! It ensures hips go through the full range of motion.
Throwing shapes in the burpees.
How low is that squat?!?
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19.01.10
Posted in Crossfit Workout & Exercises, General Colin McNulty Stuff, Olympic Weightlifting at 10:02 pm by Colin McNulty
Going back to the Cardiff gym this week, for the first time since November, was always going to be messy but I’m as sore as I’ve ever been right now.
I decided to do workouts from the main Crossfit.com site. I can’t necessarily follow their daily scheme, either because like today, it’s a rest day, or because it’s not practical in a “normal” gym, e.g. Fight Gone Bad. So this is what I picked for yesterday, after doing some heavy Cleans, up to 90kg:
With a continuously running clock, squat for 60 seconds. Subtract the number of squats completed from 60, and do that many pull-ups in minute two. In minute three, squat again, subtracting the number completed from 60. Do that number of push-ups in minute four. Minute five is squatting again, and minute six pull-ups.
The pattern is squats, pull-ups, squats, push-ups, squats, pull-ups, etc. The goal is to stay within the workout’s formula for as long as possible.
Don’t do more than 60 squats in any round.
In any case, stay moving for at least 12 minutes.
It looked like fun, and was for the first 4 minutes or so, then it started to go down hill. I won’t bore with the details, but I did do 174 squats in the 12 minutes and boy did my thighs ache this morning!
Then today, I decided to do some light Snatch work, and so just did pairs of Hand Power Snatches + Squat Snatch, up to a modest 55kg. Followed by Grace (30 x power cleans and push jerks) @ 60kg. I was way off the pace at 11:20 and if I thought my thighs ached before, I was wrong! Walking upstairs this evening was a serious struggle, and that was after a good 10 minutes stretching out.
Ho ho, welcome back Crossfit, how I’ve missed you!
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04.11.09
Posted in Crossfit Workout & Exercises, General Colin McNulty Stuff, Olympic Weightlifting at 9:31 pm by Colin McNulty
I didn’t get round to posting what I did last week, which was week 7 of the program. Because of holiday I only managed to get to the gym twice, and was recovering from the back niggle from the previous week, so took it easier that I perhaps should:
Day 1
- Snatch – singles up to 75%: I started with trebles, then doubles, then did singles up to 65kg.
- Clean & Jerk – singles up to 75%: I started with doubles, then did singles up to 85kg.
- Front Squat – 3 x 5 reps up to 75%: I did the 3 sets at 70, 80 and 90 kg.
Day 2
- Power Snatch Doubles up to 85%: I did 40, 50, 55, 60, 62.5, 65kg
- Power Clean Doubles up to 90%: I did 40, 60, 60, 70, 75, 80, 85, 90(F2), 90(F2) which means I failed on the second lift.
This week (Week 8), as it’s getting close to the competition, I decided to see if I could set any new records. If you remember, my aim is to lift a total of 182kg (80 Snatch and 102 C&J say) to qualify for the European Masters championships in 2010.
However, I also need to lose some weight, as my weight has crept up over the last few months, mostly due to too many sweeties (shock horror!), not helped by Halloween I can tell you! So I actually started the week with a Crossfit style workout, to get the ol’ heart rate up and to burn a few extra calories.
Day 1
10 minutes of 1 minute rounds, each consisting of:
- 15 squats
- 10 sit ups
- 5 push ups
In hindsight, this was a bad idea. I should have known better than to do expect no after effects from doing my first Crossfit workout in 2 months! Over the last 2 days, I’ve had significant DOMS (Delayed Onset of Muscle Soreness) in my pecks and thighs. Not great to have when going for a new PB. :-S
Day 2
- Snatch singles for max: 3×40, 2×50, 55, 60, 65, 70, 75, then I failed 77.5kg (170 lbs and PB attempt) five times before giving up. Same old problem: losing it forward at the bottom.
Day 3
- Clean and Jerk singles for max: 3×50, 2×60, 70, 80, 85, 90, 95, 100, then I failed 102.5kg (225 lbs and a PB attempt) four times before giving up. Actually I failed to clean the 102.5, which was a blow. I was getting under it, but again, losing it forward i.e. it was rolling off my shoulders at the bottom of the clean.
All in all, not what I was hoping for. However the 75 snatch was just off my record of 77 and the 100 clean & jerk was an equal personal best, so it’s far from discouraging. I’m hoping the adrenaline of the competition will carry the day, as has happened before. No more PB attempts before the comp now.
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16.09.09
Posted in General Colin McNulty Stuff, Olympic Weightlifting at 5:01 pm by Colin McNulty
I’ve started the build up to the North Open Weightlifting competition in 9 weeks, and have started following a vaguely Hungarian influenced training program. I can only manage to train 4 days a week, not the 6 prescribed, but we’ll have to see how it goes. Here’s the first week’s program:
Day 1
- Power Hang Snatch – 6 sets of 3 reps at 65%
- High Pull of Snatch – 5 sets of 3 reps (I’d look to do these at about 70kg)
- Dead Pull of Snatch – 4 sets of 5 reps (work at your current snatch max)
- Back Squat – 5 or 6 sets of 5 reps at 65% (of your 1 rep max)
Day 2
- Front Squat – 5 sets of 5 reps at 70% of 1 rep max
- Power Snatch/Power Hang Snatch – 5 sets of 1+2 at 65% of Snatch (this means 1 Power Snatch followed by 2 Power Hang Snatch)
- Power Clean/Power Hang Clean – 5 sets of 1+2 (as above)
- Split Jerk – 4 sets of 2 at 70%
Day 3
- Power Hang Clean – 6 sets of 3 reps at 70%
- High Pull of Clean – 5 sets of 3 reps (I’d work at 100kg for these)
- Dead Pull of Clean – 4 sets of 5 reps (start at 100kg go up to 110)
- Front Squat – 5 sets of 5 reps at 75%
Day 4
- Power Hang Snatch – 7 sets of 3 reps 72%
- High Pull of Snatch – 5 sets of 3 reps (about 72kg)
- Dead Pull of Snatch – 4 sets of 5 reps (work up to 82kg)
- Back Squat – 6 sets of 5 reps at 72%
I’ve not really done the slightly oddly titled: “High Pull of Snatch” and “Dead Pull of Snatch” before, so recorded a short video to so my Crossfit coach could inspect my form:
As you can see, the first day went quite well, however I did wake up this morning with a sore back. It’s not used to that level of back related effort I think. It’s just DOMS, so a days rest to make sure I don’t tweak anything on Day 2, and it should be fine.
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10.08.09
Posted in Crossfit Workout & Exercises, General Colin McNulty Stuff, Olympic Weightlifting at 6:30 pm by Colin McNulty
The Yorkshire Masters competition is on Sunday and just like last competition, I’ve managed to injure myself 2 weeks before! Last time it was a shoulder injury, which fortunately didn’t affect my lifting. This time I’ve strained my neck doing a new exercise last week.
I was stupid really, I should have known better not to try something new 10 days before a comp. However I went to a New Mills physio yesterday (the excellent Jo) and it doesn’t appear to be anything too serious, I’ve just strained a muscle at the base of my neck / top of my back, between my spine and left shoulder blade.
How did I do it? I was trying to practice my stability at the top of the clean & jerk by holding a 100kg bar over my head for 10 seconds. I managed 2 out of an intended 3 sets of 10 seconds each when I noticed the pain. I was about to start the 3rd set when sense kicked in: sudden neck pain = stop your workout!
I will take some solace from the fact that when this happened last time, I got a new personal best Olympic lifting total. In fact, I’ve found the complete set of results for this year’s British Masters on the Yorkshire and North East Counties Weightlifting site here: http://www.ynecawla.org.uk/bmwl09.htm Sadly the results are an images, so you can’t search for names, but I’m 3rd from the top.
What I have to decide now, is what sort of workouts to do this week? Conventional wisdom is to take it easy the week before a competition and I certainly need to do that to give my neck time to recover. However I don’t want to do nothing either… hmmm decisions decisions.
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24.07.09
Posted in Crossfit Workout & Exercises, General Colin McNulty Stuff, Olympic Weightlifting at 5:58 am by Colin McNulty
EDIT: QuickTime Embed Plugin disabled, due to pre-downloading the content which caused the site to slow down too much.
Here are some awesome videos of the Crossfit Games 2009 that went on last week. A finer collection of athletes I’m sure you will not find. It should also answer once and for all, the issue of whether Crossfit’s programming of heavy weights, makes women big muscle bound freaks? I think you’ll agree, the lady’s competing here are all nicely proportioned. And remember, they have all come through regional qualifiers to get here, so they are all very accomplished Crossfitters.
(I’m using a new plug-in that embeds QuickTime .Mov files… I think I need a wider blog theme! It’s also a pain, as it expects you to know the resolution of the video before hand, which doesn’t appear to be information that’s readily available, so the player size and video size don’t quite match, that’s my fault.)
http://media.crossfit.com/cf-video/CrossFitGames09_Highlights.mov
Here’s another one:
http://media.crossfit.com/cf-video/2009CrossFitGames_Individualday2Sweet16.mov
For my personal training, this week has been a mixed bag. I worked up to three Snatches at 70kg on Tuesday at Aspire Fitness, which was exactly what I planned to do. But then Clean & Jerks on Wednesday all went Pete Tongue, and I failed at 95kg three times!
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15.06.09
Posted in Crossfit Workout & Exercises, General Colin McNulty Stuff, Olympic Weightlifting at 8:30 pm by Colin McNulty
Looking for a Crossfit friendly gym can be a frustrating task. When I was looking in London, I put together a long post on all the Crossfit capable gyms near Farringdon, London. It’s about time I did the same for Newport and Cardiff.
When I started working in Newport it was obviously one of my first jobs. Clearly it would be great to find a Crossfit friendly gym on my doorstep, but that was too much to hope for. I also didn’t expect to find somewhere in Newport so expanded my search to Cardiff from the off. Moving to a new town I did what everyone does now when looking for local information: I searched in Google and spent several days phoning and visiting gyms.
It’s probably worth listing here what makes a gym suitable for doing Crossfit? At least in my mind anyway, in rough order of my importance (obviously more of each is better), this is my list:
1. An Olympic weight lifting bar. Eleiko would be best.
2. A modest selection of bumper plates for said bar. By bumper plates, I mean rubber weight plates that don’t break the floor or themselves when dropped from over head.
3. A suitable floor to drop the bumper plates on, with enough surrounding space for safety. Basically, can I do clean and jerks, snatches, thrusters, push presses, shoulder presses etc?
4. A squat rack for back squats and front squats.
5. Somewhere to do deadlifts.
6. A rower, Concept 2 is preferred.
7. Somewhere to run, outside would be best, but treadmills are likely to be the norm obviously.
8. A pull up bar, stable enough and with enough room for kipping.
9. A selection of rubber dumbbells.
10. Boxes to jump on.
11. Medicine balls to throw at walls.
12. Walls to throw medicine balls at! Though I do hate wall balls.
13. None bouncing balls for ball slams.
14. A set of gym rings… yeah fat chance of that.
Armed with my mental list, these are the list of gyms I checked out:
- Peak Physique Gym, Rhymney River Bridge Road, Cardiff, CF23 9AF, 029 2046 2040
- I called, they didn’t have any Olympic lifting facilities.
- Newport International Sports Village, 01633 656656
- I called, seemingly a normal gym, the woman didn’t really get what I was asking.
- Sun Health, Risca Road, Newport
- I visited this small independent gym. It had a lot of potential but was quite cramped with no possibility for olympic lifting.
- Daves Gym, Cardiff, 029 2046 0232
- Again I called, they didn’t have any Olympic lifting facilities.
- The Welsh Institute of Sport, Sophia Gardens, Cardiff, CF11 9SW, 0845 045 0902
- A large complex, but the gym is split between 2 cramped rooms. There were olympic lifting platforms there, but there wasn’t a lot of room and not very Crossfit friendly.
- Elite Fitness, Unit 2, Fairwater Industrial Estate, Norbury Road, Cardiff, CF5 3AU, 029 2055 5272
- This gym had potential, especially with 2 Avanco oly bars, but both were rusty and very obviously bent, which was a real shame. Their video motion capture setup was cool though.
- Train Station 2 (TS2), 14-15 Curran Road, Cardiff, CF10 5NE.
- Aspire Fitness, Sanitorium Road, Canton, Cardiff, CF11 8DG, 02920 23 55 23.
It’s worth mentioning the runner up first, which was Train Station 2 in Cardiff. TS2 has a lot of room and uniquely a 90m running circuit round the outside. It’s also allegedly the home of Crossfit Wales, which is a slightly ambitious title, especially as when I went to see the place, they weren’t doing any Crossfit classes. That’s actually changed now, and I know there is a Crossfit class being run on a Saturday morning, by a certified Crossfit instructor called Dav. I’ve got his number if you’re interested.
However I decided against Train Station 2 primarily because of the oly bar and plates. Whilst possibly adequate, there wasn’t a proper lifting platform and I was concerned about dumping the bar on the 1st floor. Having seen many places by now, I was thinking I’d been spoilt by Crossfit Manchester’s dedicated lifting platforms.
That was when I found what is undoubtedly the best gym in Cardiff to do Crossfit. I’ve mentioned it before, it’s Aspire Fitness on Sanatorium road. I should put the record straight right now: when I mentioned them before I called them a “Globo Gym”. Now when I said that, I meant that they appeared (at least to my inexperienced eye) like most other “normal” gyms out there, and not like a sparse Crossfit gym. I didn’t mean to allude to them being part of a large chain, they are not and the benefit from the very friendly small business atmosphere they have. What really sold me on Aspire however, was the brand new Eleiko oly bar they had, and the very nice personalised lifting platform in the corner.
At the time I looked, they had some dodgy Apollo bumpers that were falling apart (Apollo bumpers do appear to be rubbish):
But they assured me that they would maintain a decent set, and true to their word, they now have a full set of good quality York bumpers: 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25kg:
Off my shopping list of requirements, Aspire Fitness cater for very nearly everything else as well as the Olympic bar and bumper plates. They have 4 power cages (I think they’re called) for doing squats in, plus a free standing squat rack. They have plenty of weight and space for dead lifts; 2 Concept II rowing machines; I think 8 treadmills; a selection of variable sized boxes to jump on; room for floor work like press-ups (push ups for the Americans), skipping etc.
Each power rack also doubles as a pull up station, by hanging on the horizontal bars at the top. They are even cunningly designed for just such a use. The designers were so nice, they thought they’d be really helpful: the knurled the bar! I strongly suspect that most people (like I hadn’t) have never tried kipping pull ups on a knurled bar… take my advice… don’t! It will rip your hand to shreds. Fortunately the second bar at the top, whilst painted with a rough finish, is not knurled and is usable, you just have to move the bar out of the way and put it on the floor.
So pretty much the only thing Aspire don’t have, is a set of gym rings and a selection of medicine balls. They also suffer the ailment that most normal gyms suffer, it’s called mirror-itis. There are far too many mirrors for my liking, but to be fair, they are by no means everywhere and I strongly suspect that just 1 mirror, would be too many for my liking!
However there is really only 1 place to do wall balls, and even then I need to move the bin, fire extinguisher, and ensure no one is using the power rack next to it. There’s no ball slam facilities either. I tried once with one of the heavy basket balls they had, nearly knocked myself out!
Oh yes, they also have an assortment of mysterious devices, contraptions and machines which I stay well clear of, but again, not too many as most gyms have. And as you can see, if you’re prepared to go a bit later, it’s pretty quiet too. This photo was taken about 20:45 :
The point I’m making is that nothing but a dedicated Crossfit gym is going to be 100% perfect for Crossfit, and even then, not always. Aspire is not perfect, but I’d put them 90% there on my “Crossfitoscale” and that last 10% can usually be subbed, as most Crossfit elements can be, e.g. sub wall balls for empty bar thrusters.
So if you’re looking to do Crossfit in Cardiff, or even Newport which isn’t that far away, Aspire Fitness is where I’d recommend you go. They are reasonably priced, but you should measure these things on value, not just price. If you are going to go, say hi if you see me, I’m most often there on a Tuesday and Wednesday around 5-6pm. Or let Pete (one of the owners) know you found them through this blog. Oh and one more thing, if you do see me, don’t hog my oly bar! 
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