CrossFit attracts hardcore devotees of old-school workouts

MERRILY PORTER'S ALARM GOES OFF AT 5 A.M. on a muggy morning in mid-May. As she makes her way to the CrossFit Central location in Austin, Texas, a light drizzle reflects off her headlights. Inside what looks like an old auto garage converted into a torture chamber for fitness -- with dumbbells, medicine balls and various other workout equipment scattered across a rubber-matted floor -- Porter joins seven classmates (four women and three men, including myself).

The CrossFit trainer, Michael Gregory, is a towering 26-year-old with ample amounts of upper body muscle. He wears his hat turned backward, sports a red goatee, and is trailed closely by a puppy pit bull, Bella. "Fast feet," he says, and we begin our warm-up.

With nearly 500 affiliates worldwide and a Web site attracting thousands of hits per day, CrossFit training is among the fastest-growing fitness trends in the country. The concept, which combines a unique and hardcore workout methodology with a business model based on giving much of it away for free, was first conceived by a former gymnast, Greg Glassman, in 2001.

At CrossFit.com, Web users find daily workouts, complete with instructional videos on how to properly perform each movement. In the comments section below each workout, users post their completion times, ask questions about proper technique, or simply write, "Ouch."

CrossFit affiliates, such as the one I'm attending, pay a pittance, only $1,000 per year, to become part of the CrossFit brand. However, each affiliate must use trainers who've achieved CrossFit certification, and create a Web site that links back to CrossFit.com. Trainer certification seminars sell out nearly as soon as they're scheduled.

These dual fitness communities, virtual and physical, have fostered CrossFit's expansive growth. But it's the actual workouts, and the results they produce, that explain its booming popularity. "The ultimate goal is to build a well-rounded athlete," Gregory says of the CrossFit philosophy.

Each class, which ranges from 30 minutes to 1 hour, incorporates aspects of stamina, endurance, strength, agility and more. The workouts are based entirely on functional movements--meaning, the way the body is meant to be used in real life applications--and keep the athletes in constant motion, providing an intensity that leaves them drenched in sweat and gasping for air. Furthermore, no CrossFit class is the same. "They don't have a clue what they're going to do when they get here," Gregory says.

Porter, 49, represents the peak of what CrossFit training can achieve. When she attended her first CrossFit class a year ago, she was 20 pounds overweight and suffered from lower back pain. She was lethargic and always looking for an opportunity to nap. She found emotional comfort in food, rather than nourishment.

Today, Porter is 30 pounds lighter. Her back pain has disappeared. She sleeps better and has changed her eating habits. She ran her first 5K this year and plans on completing a half-marathon.

"Because CrossFit tracks quantitative fitness gains, it satisfies Type A personality types like mine," says Porter, an attorney who had never stuck with a consistent exercise regimen before CrossFit. "You can see over time that you've improved. Even at my age, the improvements can be small, but you can see they're there."

After we finish our warm-up of side twists with a medicine ball, push-ups, jumping jacks, running drills, and a quick  jog, Gregory gives us the day's prescribed workout. Each signature CrossFit workout has a name; many of them named after notorious hurricanes.

This one is similar to the workout known as Linda, and involves a set of barbells -- 30 pounds for the men and 20 for the women -- and a medicine ball. We'll do deadlifts, shoulder presses, and cleans, moving fluidly from one exercise to the next in decreasing sets, from 10 to 1. The medicine ball, positioned behind our feet, keeps us from dropping too far down at the bottom of the clean motion.

Part of the CrossFit ideology is that there's no shame in scaling down the weights and varying the movements of the exercises to accommodate different ability levels. As an avid cyclist with chicken wings for arms, I'm told by Gregory to use 15-pound dumbbells. He then studiously watches the group as we move through the regimen, offering my classmates and me encouragement and making sure we're using proper form.

Matt Kerwick, 45, says when he started doing CrossFit five months ago he used the 15-pound barbells too. Now he's impressively throwing 35-pounders over his head, and although he's the last in the class to finish the workout, stopping Gregory's watch at roughly 16 minutes, his ripped biceps and bulging shoulders prove he's not slacking.

Kerwick says before starting the CrossFit regimen, his exercise routine consisted mostly of, "running around the neighborhood." Over time, Kerwick found his low-key approach to exercise wasn't keeping up with the aging process.

Unlike Porter, Kerwick says he's not the type of person who typically responds to a structured exercise regimen. But he has since bought into what CrossFit calls the "Sport of Fitness," in which the athletes are constantly challenged to improve--not just maintain. Kerwick's goals have shifted from simply avoiding injury and losing weight, to achieving specific CrossFit performance marks and increasing his body composition by losing fat and gaining muscle. "You're never going to get to a point where you come in and say this is easy," Gregory says. "We've got guys who've been doing this for six years and are still advancing."

As the sun starts to rise, we finish with five sets of 20-yard "quick sprints" and a light stretching session. Sally Tompkins, 46, says doing the pre-dawn workout--even though CrossFit offers classes in the afternoon and evening--gets her in the office by 7:30 a.m. "I work for the state managing a division of 100 people and have teenaged children," she says. "My daytime hours aren't my own."

Tompkins finds CrossFit's communal feeling and competitive vibe, against herself and her younger classmates, help keep her motivated. "There's a certain type of person who gets up at 5 a.m. to work out," she says.

Although she had never been religious about exercise, Tompkins has stuck with CrossFit for two years. "My goal is to grow old gracefully," she says. "I'm probably healthier now than I was in my 20s."