Leon Sylvester, a YouTuber and founder of SoberClear, was looking for a new challenge and a new way of training, and was curious about the benefits of CrossFit. While CrossFit is not short on passionate advocates (not to mention naysayers), Leon, who has a background as a personal trainer, opted to try the program for 90 days to see for himself whether it was right for him and his fitness goals.
The training itself is “pretty awesome,” he says in his latest YouTube video, commenting he enjoyed how the workouts were split across compound lifts for strength training, and cardio and conditioning work, including jump rope, burpees, running.
“In my training in the past it’s always been squat, deadlift, bent over rows, pullups, that kind of stuff,” he says. “This training is different, it’s a lot more functional. You’ve got handstand pushups, gymnastics stuff, rope climbs, lots of clean and front squats. The training is a lot more broad, it’s not just about getting strong, it’s about cardio fitness, metabolic conditioning, strength, gymnastics, it encompasses a lot of stuff.”
At the beginning of the 90 days, Leon finds the workouts exhausting, and struggles especially with the cardio aspects. “The workouts at the beginning, I was dying,” he says. “I was just so out of breath, it was really, really, really hard.”
However, he soon discovers that the competitive leaderboard element helped him stay motivated, as he initially sets himself the goal of surpassing the person with the score above him, and then the person with the next highest score, and so on. “It pushes you to keep going harder, to keep training, to keep showing up,” he says. “I’ve spent so long training alone in the past, this was something new.”
After 90 days, Leon has found that his technique on certain moves, like the snatch, has improved a lot, as has his cardiovascular endurance. He also feels like he has more energy generally in his day to day life, and has even noticed that preexisting aches and pains in his joints appear to have gone away, possibly as a result of the extensive mobility-focused warmups.
The biggest benefit that Leon takes away from the 90-day challenge is that he has become genuinely enthusiastic about his training. “Sure, there are days where I don’t 100 percent want to go, but generally I look forward to going to the gym,” he says. “My motivation for training is probably the highest it’s ever been.”
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