Since its founding in 2000 and the opening of the first gym in Santa Cruz, California, USA a year later, CrossFit has gone from a counter-culture fitness fad done in garages, to a global training phenomenon with well over 15,000 affiliated gyms. CrossFit gyms – or 'boxes' as they're known to the initiated – can be found all over the UK, so finding a space to try it for yourself has never been easier. According to CrossFit's own interactive affiliate map, there are almost 700 CrossFit affiliated gyms in operation across the UK and Ireland.
Jump to:
- Is CrossFit Dangerous?
- What Is CrossFit, Actually?
- The Training Methodology
- The CrossFit Games
- When Are The 2024 CrossFit Games?
- Where Will The 2024 CrossFit Games Be Held?
- Is 65 Too Old For CrossFit?
- Will CrossFit Help You Lose Weight?
- How Much Muscle Can You Build with CrossFit?
- Does CrossFit Cause Injury?
- The Men's Health CrossFit Dictionary
- Training CrossFit at Home
- The Best CrossFit Workouts
If you're not convinced that a CrossFit gym is the right place for you to train, we totally get that – your local CrossFit box's Instagram posts of high energy workouts and heavy weights can appear intimidating to beginners – but for those willing to give it a go, the benefits of CrossFit are undeniable. Add to this that CrossFit prides itself on its 'scalability', offering regressions and tactics for any movement you're likely to tackle in a CrossFit 'WOD'– meaning 'Workout Of the Day'– a good coach can help you to cater the skill requirements and intensity of a session to your own abilities. It's not uncommon to see professional sportspeople completing WODs alongside new recruits, with the work simply scaled to match the abilities of the athlete (yes, that means you!)
Don’t believe us? Check out this study, published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, which found that after ten weeks of CrossFit, men with all levels of aerobic fitness and body composition were able to increase their VO2 max and decrease their body fat percentage.
Is CrossFit Dangerous?
The concerns about potential injuries from CrossFit training, particularly prevalent during its initial growth phase, continue to deter certain individual. Often critics will cite a lack of consideration for technique in favour of simply completing as much work, as quickly as possible. But box-owners and trainees alike are quick to point out that in good CrossFit gyms, under the guise of a qualified coach, risky form is quickly noted and movements are often scaled accordingly. Another factor that can be intimidating to outsiders is the confusion between CrossFit as a daily training methodology and CrossFit as a competitive sport, the pinnacle of which is the annular marquee event that is the CrossFit Games.
At the end of the day, just like any other form of training, how hard you push yourself is up to you, but fans of CrossFit will be quick to remind you that all formal sessions conducted in a box will be supervised by a qualified coach, something that can't be said for training alone in a commercial gym.
If you're still not sure what CrossFit is, we’ve compiled a complete guide to the fitness regime. Stick with this and you’ll be kipping (a variation on pull-ups, unrelated to naps, unfortunately) like a pro in no time.
What Is CrossFit, Actually?
CrossFit is both a style or 'methodology' of training and a competitive sport that incorporates strength training, gymnastics, cardiovascular conditioning, high-intensity workouts and often a muscle-building diet plan.
The Training Methodology
As a way to train and improve your fitness and health, founder and former CEO, Greg Glassman, created a set of guidelines to act as the founding tenets of CrossFit. Known simply as 'Fitness in 100 words', they are:
'Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat.
'Practice and train major lifts: deadlift, clean, squat, presses, C&J, and snatch. Similarly, master the basics of gymnastics: pull-ups, dips, rope climb, push-ups, sit-ups, presses to handstand, pirouettes, flips, splits, and holds. Bike, run, swim, row, etc, hard and fast.
'Five or six days per week mix these elements in as many combinations and patterns as creativity will allow.
'Routine is the enemy. Keep workouts short and intense. Regularly learn and play new sports.'
More succinctly, the definition, 'constantly varied functional movements, executed at a high intensity', has been used by CrossFit since its inception. Although recently a move to a more measured (and inclusive) 'executed at a relatively high intensity' has been seen.
The CrossFit Games
The CrossFit Games is a sporting event designed to whittle down a pool of the world's most well-rounded athletes, before bringing them together to compete head-to-head across a series of varied fitness 'tests', to be crowned the Fittest Man, Woman or Team on Earth.
'The Games were created to fill a void,' reads CrossFit.com. 'No other true test of fitness existed. From Ironman triathlons to the NFL, all other athletic events neglected to accurately test fitness. Even decathlons, while testing a relatively wide range of abilities, missed vital components of physical fitness.'
The competitive season is split into three stages. The first stage is the CrossFit Open, which is a three-week, online competition generally held in late February and early March every year. This is a mass participation event, open to members of the public. Over 300'000 athletes took part in the 2023 Open, making it one of the largest sporting events in history.
Workouts are announced on Thursday evenings GMT, with scores needing to be submitted by 1am on Tuesday. In order for your score to be valid and appear on the global leaderboard, you have to complete the workout at a CrossFit affiliate with a registered judge and/or video yourself. Crossfit provides training courses for judges, and also enforces strict guidelines for those submitting videos, in order to ensure fairness across the huge event.
After the Open has been completed, the top 10% of athletes in each of their seven regions advance to the Quarterfinals. The regions are Africa, Asia, Europe, North America East, North America West, Oceania, and South America. Although also an online format, this filtered field of higher-performing athletes are set more challenging workouts, requiring advanced skills, better conditioning and superior strength.
The top 40 individual men and 40 individual women from each region will be invited to compete at the CrossFit Semifinals. These have historically been three-day events, normally with two or three workouts per day, designed to select for the most elite athletes, with 40 qualifying for the CrossFit Games.
When Are The 2024 CrossFit Games?
The 2024 CrossFit Games will take place from 8th-11th August. As initiated in the 2023 season, to ensure proportional representation from around the globe, a 'strength of field' calculation will be applied. Calculations will be made using the top 100 athletes based on the previous two years of competition results, and extra spots to The Games will then be made available by region. 17 additional places will be opened, on top of the 23 automatic entries achieved by athletes finishing in the top positions from each region. This brings the total number of qualifiers to The Games to 40 individual men and women. 38 four-person teams, comprising of two male and two female athletes, will also qualify.
Where Will The 2024 CrossFit Games Be Held?
In a major move by Crossfit HQ, the 2024 Crossfit Games will be held in the Dickies Arena, Fort Worth, Texas. 'Fort Worth is a proven destination for high-profile events, and we’re excited to add to the growing number of sports and entertainment options at the state-of-the-art Dickies Arena,' says CrossFit CEO Don Faul. 'Love of sport is in the DNA of most Texans, and we can’t think of a more enthusiastic audience for the Games.'
With a gargantuan event floor of almost 30,000-square-foot event floor, it's predicted that the stadium will host up to 10'000 CrossFit fans across the Games weekend.
Although the move hasn't come without its criticism, CrossFit General Manager of Sport and Education Dave Castro says, 'The move to Fort Worth is the first step for where we want to take the CrossFit Games... Just as we expect our athletes to adjust during competition, we’ll need to do the same as we rethink our execution so that we can bring the Games to not only more cities in the United States, but also consider expansion overseas.'
The inaugural CrossFit Games took place at Castro's family ranch in Aromas, California, in 2007. It featured no qualification process and around 70 athletes turned up to compete. After several years at the StubHub Center in Carson, California, the CrossFit Games moved to The Alliant Energy Center in Madison for the 2017 competition. In 2020 due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Games were once again hosted at their original Aromas location, although only 10 athletes were invited to compete and spectators were not allowed.
Is 65 Too Old For CrossFit?
Emphatically, no. Certified coaches at affiliated gyms should be able to provide safe scaling options for members of any age, allowing you to get the same stimulus from the day's workout as everyone else. In fact, for the fully committed, there are even masters divisions in competitive CrossFit for those 35-65+, culminating in The CrossFit Games Masters Division held at the Birmingham Jefferson Convention Center at the end of August, 2024. As of 2024 a new division for athletes aged 70+ is also being trialled.
Not just looking to appeal to those of us greying on top a little, CrossFit also has a division for teenagers aged from 14-17.
The CrossFit Games also makes efforts to be incredibly inclusive with its adaptive divisions including, vision, intellectual, seated with hip functions, seated without hip function, short stature, multi extremity, lower extremity and upper extremity. All have the opportunity to compete to be crowned the Fittest on Earth.
Will CrossFit Help You Lose Weight?
Yes, but with the usual caveat: if on average you burn more calories than you consume, you will lose weight. The varied and intense nature or CrossFit can definitely help you land on the desired side of that inescapable equation, especially if you pay heed to the nutritional guidance offered in the aforementioned 'Fitness in 100 words'.
A study published in the International Journal of Sports and Exercise Medicine saw 27 everyday CrossFit athletes (not the competitors you see at the Games) randomly assigned to either train CrossFit for 6 weeks while restricted to a low-carb keto diet or to train 6 weeks of CrossFit while sticking to their regular diet. They found that people who combined CrossFit with a keto diet significantly decreased weight, body fat percentage and fat mass.
But don't let that study make you think that you have to adopt the keto diet to see results from CrossFit. Remember, the diet suggested by CrossFit is to 'eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar.' Or, in other words, a balanced diet.
All that being said, if your goal is weight loss, it's key to remember that whatever types of foods you do eat, it always comes back to calories in vs calories out.
'People need to learn to balance their energy balance first,' says Josh Schouten, founder and trainer at Hackney-based CrossFit gym, Momentum Training. 'So not necessarily worry about any type of diet, it's literally just trying to get the energy expenditure and the energy consumed balance right first, rather than trying to go down the line of one particular diet.'
How Much Muscle Can You Build with CrossFit?
According to American strength training coach Mark Rippetoe, 'CrossFit has provided more people with access to barbells and the motivation to lift them than any other single factor in the past hundred years.'
Clearly, if you pick up a barbell often enough then you're going to build muscle, but can you build more muscle with CrossFit than you can with a traditional bodybuilding regime?
A study published in the International Journal of Sports Physical Therapy, which looked at the benefits of both functional and traditional strength training, found that in men 'there were no differences in improvement between the training protocols'.
If you're looking to build muscle, it doesn't really matter whether you pick up a barbell in a traditional gym or in a CrossFit box. Although it does seem likely that bodybuilding style training, more focussed on building muscle as a primary goal will get you their faster.
Still, if you're worried that all that conditioning work in CrossFit will hurt your gains, don't worry, it won't. Research conducted at the Department of Health Sciences at Mid Sweden University showed that adding cardio to a leg-strengthening programme actually increased muscle size, rather than reducing it.
Does CrossFit Cause Injury?
Many commentators, including renowned martial arts trainer Firas Zahabi, have noted that CrossFit focusses too heavily on chasing fatigue, which some say can leave you open to injury.
How likely you are to get injured though essentially depends on how hard you’re hitting it and, naturally, your form. You can’t work at full throttle day in day out, whatever your training method, so to avoid injuries a considered training programme is key.
'What we do here is we educate the clients and say if you come in and work really hard on this day, the next day you can still come to the gym, but we have to then back it off, so it might just be an easier day. Let's say on Monday you might work really hard, 90 per cent, so then if you come in on a Tuesday you might only be working at 60 to 70 per cent, so that you're not smashing yourself on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday,' says Schouten.
'You're taught to have a day off here and there. We teach them that it's OK to work hard at some point, but you can't work at 90 per cent, 4 days in a row.'
But is CrossFit really more dangerous than any other sport? Research published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research concluded that 'injury rates with CrossFit training are similar to that reported in the literature for sports such as Olympic weight-lifting, power-lifting and gymnastics and lower than competitive contact sports such as rugby union and rugby league.'
The Men's Health CrossFit Dictionary
CrossFit gyms are friendly places, but sometimes it can seem like the CrossFit community is speaking a different language, and if you’re not familiar with the sport’s various acronyms and words it can quickly get confusing. To get you started talking the talk, we’ve broken some of the most common and popular terms down for you.
One read of this and you’ll never have to ask what a WOD is ever again.
WOD
A workout of the day. Originally these were the workouts posted daily on CrossFit.com, but it's more likely you'll now hear any CrossFit workout referred to as a WOD. Wondering why some of the 'benchmark' CrossFit WODs have women’s names? One theory is that this follows the US Weather Service's convention for storms, but according to the CrossFit journal, 'anything that leaves you flat on your back and incapacitated only to lure you back for more at a later date certainly deserves naming.'
EMOM
Standing for 'every minute on the minute'. A type of interval workout where you perform a certain number of reps at the start of every minute for a set amount of time. Once your reps are done you rest for the remainder of the minute.
AMRAP
Standing for 'as many reps (or rounds) as possible'. A series of exercises completed in circuit fashion, as many times as possible within a specific period of time.
Metcon
Metabolic conditioning or ‘Metcon’ is typically a more high intensity workout. While a Metcon may include elements of weightlifting, gymnastics and machine sprints, these are generally performed with minimal rest to tap into one of the body's energy systems. A classic example from CrossFit is the workout “Cindy”, which is an AMRAP of 5 pull-ups, 10 push-ups and 15 squats repeated for 20 minutes, aiming to accrue as many reps as possible.
Kipping
A gymnastics technique that allows CrossFitters to complete more reps in less time of movements like pull-ups, muscle-ups and toes-to-bar by utilising precisely timed momentum.
RX
When a WOD is performed RX it means that it is completed exactly as written, without scaling the weight, or any movements. Some examples of weights generally considered to be RX for men in Crossfit would be 22.5kg dumbbells and 24kg kettlebells, as well as jumping to a 24 inch box.
DOMS
Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness. The tight sore feeling you experience in your muscles following a tough workout, although nothing to be concerned about, these may be a sign that you're not full recovered and should not be confused with the pain of actual injury.
Rhabdo
Short for Rhabdomyolysis, which is a condition that occurs when muscle cells burst and leak their contents into the bloodstream, usually through pushing too hard in a workout. Although this should (obviously) be avoided at all costs, it can result in major sickness and even death. In the early days of CrossFit, a mascot like figure named 'Pukie The Clown' or 'Uncle Rhabdo', was often depicted on box walls. This could go a long way in explaining where CrossFit picked up its 'devil may care' reputation from.
How to Choose the Right CrossFit Gym for You
Firstly, you need to choose the right CrossFit box, and that can be a little more complicated than it seems.
Because most CrossFit boxes pride themselves on being a community not just a gym, you’ll find it hard to make a decision about whether a box is right for you by just looking it up online. The internet has given us many wonderful things, but the ability to know what a community of CrossFitters is actually like isn’t one of them, yet, so to pick the correct box you actually need to visit it, speak to the owners, and maybe even other members of the gym.
'I think the best way to get the feeling of what the gym is actually like and the ethos of the gym is actually to walk through the front door, even though it might be a little bit intimidating, just to step through the front door, make an appointment and see one of the coaches that works at your local CrossFit gym and go from there,' says Schouten.
Remember that you're not just joining a gym, but a community, so the people you train with are going to be as important as the facility itself.
Training CrossFit at Home
If it doesn’t sound like the box is for you, there’s still no reason to miss out. You can train CrossFit the old-fashioned way and do it at home, with minimal equipment, but this option comes with its own risks, so if you’re new to the training programme you may want to graduate to working from home, rather than beginning your CrossFit training there.
'I would say is it's probably not a great place to start. [I’d advise] starting at a CrossFit gym or with a trainer so you can get the education and the information first.' says Schouten.
Attending a CrossFit box, even for a short period of time, is an easier way of introducing yourself to the training programme, its movements and proper technique. Remember that without correct form some of CrossFit’s heavier moves can put you at risk of injury, so it’s always better to have someone there who knows what they’re doing
For those still looking to tackle WODs from the (dis)comfort of their own garden or garage, we've compiled a list of the best Crossfit workouts to perform at home.
The Best CrossFit Workouts
We've compiled a list of all of our favourite CrossFit workouts and WODs here, but here are some of the most famous (or infamous) workouts Crossfit has produced:
Cindy
This is an AMRAP workout, so complete as many rounds as possible in 20 minutes of:
- 5 pull-ups
- 10 push-ups
- 15 squats
Mary
Another AMRAP workout. Complete as many rounds as possible in 20 minutes of:
- 5 handstand push-ups
- 10 one-legged squats, alternating
- 15 pull-ups
Chelsea
This is an EMOM workout, so perform the sequence of exercises every minute on the minute for 30 minutes:
- 5 pull-ups
- 10 push-ups
- 15 squats
Nancy
Complete the following two exercises five times taking rests where necessary. Your time is determined by how quickly you can complete five rounds:
- 400-metre run
- 15 overhead squats
Murph
An example of CrossFit's Hero WODs, which are name after servicemen or women who have given their lives in the line of duty. Warning, this one isn't for the faint-hearted. Work your way through all of the following moves for time, breaking each exercise up as necessary but only resting enough to keep your form sharp:
- 1-mile run
- 100 pull-ups
- 200 push-ups
- 300 squats
- 1-mile run
The Biggest Misconception about CrossFit is…
Speaking on the Nike Trained podcast, three-time CrossFit games champion Mat Fraser said the biggest misconception about CrossFit is that you have to be at his level to give it a go. This is plain wrong. 'You can scale it for any ability,” said Fraser. “I think that’s a big thing to make known.'
CrossFit can be done with just your bodyweight, or with lighter weights, so everyone is able to do something right from their very first class.
'It's not necessarily a place where you have to be of a decent level of fitness before you come,' says Schouten.
'We tailor the sessions, so just because the programme is written on the board, doesn't mean we expect that person to come in the first time and complete the whole thing. They might not complete all of the work and they'll get done what they can. It depends on the individual, so the coach will generally go through and try and prescribe something that's suitable for them on the day, whether it's their first session or they've been here for three, six or nine months. The more someone comes, the more the coaches will know the level that they're at.'
Daniel is Men’s Health UK’s deputy digital editor. He’s a writer and editor with a decade’s worth of experience covering health, fitness, tech and sports. In his time at Men’s Health, he’s written about everything from Black men's mental health to The Rock's cheat days and has logged training time with NFL footballers, Olympic gymnasts and the British Army. In his spare time he enjoys fitness of all kinds, from deadlifts to long runs, and is always on the lookout for his next challenge.
David Morton is Deputy Editor at Men’s Health, where he has written, worked, edited and sweated for 12 years. His areas of particular interest are fitness, workouts and adventure.
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With almost 18 years in the health and fitness space as a personal trainer, nutritionist, breath coach and writer, Andrew has spent nearly half of his life exploring how to help people improve their bodies and minds.
As our fitness editor he prides himself on keeping Men’s Health at the forefront of reliable, relatable and credible fitness information, whether that’s through writing and testing thousands of workouts each year, taking deep dives into the science behind muscle building and fat loss or exploring the psychology of performance and recovery.
Whilst constantly updating his knowledge base with seminars and courses, Andrew is a lover of the practical as much as the theory and regularly puts his training to the test tackling everything from Crossfit and strongman competitions, to ultra marathons, to multiple 24 hour workout stints and (extremely unofficial) world record attempts.
You can find Andrew on Instagram at @theandrew.tracey, or simply hold up a sign for ‘free pizza’ and wait for him to appear.