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CrossFit Ireland First Impressions

22:57 Mon 17 Aug 2009
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I made it to CrossFit Ireland today, eventually—it wasn’t that easy for me to find it, and I probably should have watched their driving video rather than just using Google Maps. As I’ve stated before, Irish signage is terrible, and I shouldn’t have expected that it would be easy to identify the Hibernian Industrial Estate.

I did find it in the end, and even managed to just about be on time.

Amusingly enough, no regulars were present as they were recovering from a CrossFit-related trip to Cork, so there were only three people taking the class—and all of us were visiting from the US. (N.B. I had never met the others before arriving there.)

The gym is split between a larger padded area (which seemed to be in use for kids’ MMA while I was there) and a smaller area for CrossFit. The usual CrossFit equipment of pullup bars, weights and racks, jump ropes, and boxes were all present. They seem to have figured out how to use the space very efficiently.

Our instructor was Will, who took us through a warmup, twice, that was well-rounded: pullups (assisted pullups in my case, the first time I’ve ever used the rubber band for those); shoulder extensions; overhead squats (unweighted, using a plastic bar); situps; pushups; some stretches.

After that we did 5-5-5-5-5 Front Squats. I’m not too experienced with that lift, and so more or less everything I did was a new personal best. I have trouble with shoulder/wrist flexibility on that one, and am still at the point where technique is holding me back a lot more than strength with it. I worked around some slight pounds/kilograms confusion, and my sets were of 45 pounds, 56 pounds, 67 pounds, 89 pounds, and 111 pounds.

After a short break, we did a quick metabolic conditioning workout, which was five rounds of 15 double unders and 10 pushups. This took me the distressingly long time of 5:45—I don’t think I’m representing CrossFitKMSF too well! The double unders were fine, but pushups are still a weakness for me.

My summary of CrossFit Ireland after one session there: the space is fine, the people are friendly, the equipment seems good, the instruction seems good, and they’re happy to have visiting CrossFitters there.

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