CrossFit Retribution looks like it was built by the Soviets during the Cold War.
The facility, located on John Street in Westminster, has heavy, iron weights and cold, hard cinder block walls. It does not have treadmills, a juice bar, cable machines, rows of televisions or frills of any sort.
It's not the type of place where you listen to your iPod, go on the elliptical for 20 minutes, talk to your friends and watch some TV before heading home from your "workout." CrossFit disciples lift weights, run fast and jump high every single workout, because if they're not working out hard, there's no reason to show up.
The gym looks and feels like it was built to do one thing: make people the strongest they can be. Unfortunately, the environment can intimidate people into thinking that they have to be in great shape before stepping into the gym, according to Beau Bryant, the owner and head trainer at CrossFit Retribution.
"I seriously want the out-of-shape person with the health problem," Bryant said. "Every person that walks in here, I change that [unhealthy] lifestyle, I change how they think of food, I change how they think of working out, I change how they think about strength.
"They become happy, healthy and they look physically different."
Any inkling of intimidation I was feeling was lifted the moment I was introduced to the people I would be working out with for the next hour. Every one of them, including men in their 20s and women in their 50s, introduced themselves and talked to me for a bit. I told them I was going to be working out with them for the next few weeks as part of my blog, "80 Pounds to the Promised Land."
I told them that my workouts at CrossFit are an attempt to show people, no matter their weight, that they can get healthy if they just make a commitment to themselves. As it turns out, that is the same message behind CrossFit Retribution.
CrossFit is a strength and conditioning program. The program, which has developed a cult-like following, is used by thousands of gyms, mostly in the United States. Bryant, who looks like a more slender version of cage fighter Randy Couture, has adapted the program to focus on weight lifting movements like the squat, bench press and dead lift to improve peoples' overall strength, power and flexibility.
At the beginning of every workout, Bryant and his trainers, including his wife Angie, taught me the basics of how they perform the lifts. They were patient as they had to correct years of bad form. The lifts are done in short repetitions, nothing more than five.
"We want to [identify] what exercise uses the most muscle mass through the longest range of motion," Bryant said. "Our philosophy here is that if you're not squatting, pressing, dead lifting, you're wasting your time in the gym because those movements lend themselves so well to what you do outside of the gym."
Though Bryant and his staff focuses on weight lifting, CrossFit Retribution isn't filled with a bunch of meat heads that can't bend their arms. CrossFit clients are fit or in the process of getting fit. They are old and young, skinny and chubby, women and men.
Combined with lifting is high-intensity conditioning that improves endurance and enhances the strength gained from lifting weights. My first conditioning workout on Monday involved running 300 meters, jumping up on a box 15 times and picking up and throwing a medicine ball against the ground 15 times.
I worked with a partner, a Marine named Jay. I was running 300 meters while he was resting. He was jumping on the box while I was resting. We each did the exercises three times in a span of 20 minutes.
The next workout, on Tuesday, involved me doing pushups, then ab crunches while throwing a medicine ball against a wall then jump rope. After doing three repetitions of each exercise, I increased to six, then nine, then 12, then 15 and finally to 18. In total, I did 189 repetitions in 10 minutes without stopping.
Wednesday's workout proved to be the most difficult. We had to run 200 meters, swing a kettle bell 10 times, do 10 pullups and then 10 broad jumps. We rested for a minute at the end of every cycle. Everyone else in the group, which was mostly made up of women, had to complete the cycle five times. Bryant took mercy on me and only made me do four cycles.
It was a timed workout, which meant that if you wanted a good time you had to be the person driving yourself. There were people that I had never met high-fiving me, telling me "Good job" and pushing me to keep going. I completed four cycles of the exercise in 16:52.
After each workout this week, I was dripping in sweat and panting. I was physically spent. It is one of the best feelings of my life.
Competition is a hallmark for the gym. After you're done working out, you write how many repetitions you did on a large blackboard that takes up an entire wall. The thinking behind that, Bryant said, is that you can see how other people are doing and get motivated to work out harder.
People working out in the morning may never meet the people who work out at night, yet they are still inspiring one another to push harder, Bryant said. If I keep working out hard, he said, I may be the one inspiring someone to push for that last repetition.
"It's about having people around you who are like-minded," Bryant said. "Everybody is doing the same workout, they're going through the same pain and they support each other through that."
The father of two has a difficult job. He has to be part-drill sergeant, part-coach, part-psychologist and part-motivational speaker. Bryant has a very special skill that allows him to motivate people, pressing them to their limits without pressing them too hard.
His ability to motivate and drive people is important because it leads people to begin developing self confidence in their own abilities. By the end of the first workout, I was convinced I could do better and was excited for the upcoming workouts.
"Your competitive nature is going to come out, even though, in here, you're just competitive with yourself," Bryant said. "When there's 12 other people jumping on boxes and you want to take a break, but that person's not, you keep going."
Teamwork is just as an important factor as competition in CrossFit. It became abundantly clear to me that the people I was working out with treated each other more like family than they did workout partners. Each knew each other very well, often taking time to ask about spouses, kids or jobs between sets.
The people I have worked out with have been in all shapes, sizes and ages. I saw women throw 100 pounds over their heads like it was nothing and men bench press impressive weights. Bryant said anyone of any age or physical strength can benefit from CrossFit, and I believe him.
The group pushes one another during the workouts, trying to get the most from each person, Bryant said. The people you work out with hold you accountable when you skip a session, he said.
But most of the time, people participating in CrossFit don't miss workouts. Most people, he said, dread having to go to the gym and get on a treadmill, Bryant said. People participating in CrossFit, however, are excited to come to the gym, so much so that they're clogging up the gym's website in the morning to find out which workout they're going to be doing that day, Bryant said.
Many people come to the gym with goals like "I want to lose 25 pounds" or "I want to be in better shape," Bryant said. Rather than focusing on physical appearance goals, Bryant said he tells people to choose a performance goal such as doing a pull up or being able to lift a certain amount of weight.
"The performance goals become what they seek and the physical change happens because of the performance goals, instead of the other way around," Bryant said. "It just seems to work that way."
