As I mentioned in my last article, the holidays are fast approaching. This time I’ll give you a list of things that won’t be a waste of your money — things every CrossFitter should have.
A Pull-up Bar
Even if you don’t have your own garage gym, you can do pull-ups at home. There are many different types of door-mounted pull-up bars you can buy, from a simple bar for about $20 to the more complex models which allow for different, wider grips which can range up to about $80. You can kip with these if they’re mounted securely enough, but read the reviews to make sure you’re getting a good one!
Stopwatch
This one’s a no-brainer: Every CrossFitter needs a stopwatch! Wristwatches have gone out of style recently because most people will just look at their cell phone for the time, but nobody works out with their phone at hand. A good wristwatch with a stopwatch function, lap timer, and countdown timer is a necessity for CrossFitting.
Abmat
As if you’d do sit-ups without one.
A Zone Cookbook
Healthy eating is just as important as exercise, whether you’re trying to lose fat, gain muscle, or both. There are at least a dozen books on the subject on Amazon alone.
Weights (Kettlebells, Dumbbells, Olympic bar and weights)
Weights are absolutely necessary for CrossFit. If you’re short on space, a set of adjustable dumbbells is the bare minimum. You can do kettlebell swings with a dumbbell, and you can do a variation on most barbell lifts with dumbbells; in fact it generally requires better balance since each weight is completely independent.
Video Camera
I do CrossFit in a converted warehouse gym, and I have the luxury of having a trainer there to yell at me about my form all the time. If you’re lifting by yourself, a video camera with a tripod is very useful. Set it up, do a few reps, and play it back to see where you’re falling short. Digital video cameras are much more accessible than they used to — the Flip cameras are as low as about $150 for an hour of recording time which should be more than enough to record any single CrossFit workout; just copy the clips you want to keep to your computer when it’s full.
Medicine Ball
If you’re just starting out, these are good for practicing your squats; wallballs are also a component of a lot of CrossFit workouts.
C2 rower
This is on the more pricey side but it’s well worth it. For $900 (a bit less if you’re getting a used one) you get the one machine I have ever seen a CrossFitter use. These rowers are ergometers; that is, they measure exactly how much work you are doing and your power output while you row. It’s also a great alternative to running if you tweak an ankle or the weather’s bad for running.
I know I’m going to appear ungrateful or perhaps even rude, but instead of posts like this on the blog, I’d really like to see you stick to machinery stuff telling us what you are going to do, or better still, what you have done to make the site work better. There are heaps of sites out there with this sort of information, but there is only one Beyond The Whiteboard. For some reason development seems to have run out of puff for the last couple of months. Maybe that’s inevitable because you set off at such a pace to begin with, but there are heaps of suggestions on the feedback engine that could be implemented with little or no programming skill.
Please don’t take this criticism the wrong way. I’m a big fan of BTW. But I’d be upset if I thought you had lost interest in keeping this cutting edge.
Matt T
@Matt
We tend to blog about whatever we talk about in the office that concerns Crossfit or Beyond The Whiteboard. If you want to only keep up with site updates I would recommend watching the feed for that categorey. Also, we haven’t stopped working at all. In fact, we are doing a lot more. Some of our changes were in server side code that a user might not see right away and others were in UI changes, like auto-complete. We have not lost interest whatsoever. In fact, all of us moved in together so we could work on the site full time. Feel free to email me personally if you want to discuss things in more detail. moe@beyondthewhiteboard.com
Thanks Moe. Good to hear. 🙂