CrossFit is an excellent way to keep fit and healthy. With sessions lasting up to 30 minutes, it’s a perfect mix of short but intense periods of movement which gets your heart to work hard and your body to sweat. With the aim of enticing you to participate, these exercises are simple yet challenging and provide ample motivation and competition v yourself and others that’s sure to get you hooked. Time to queue the Rocky soundtrack on your playlist and take a whizz through our Top 5 CrossFit Exercises!
1. Burpees
Simple but effective. Burpees are simple yet challenging enough when performed with maximum tweaks incorporated. For this exercise, the goal is for you to do as many as you can in a given time frame. This workout is effective for beginners and veterans alike providing an inbuilt incentive and motivation to improve on the numbers you achieve!
2. Bodyweight exercises
These exercises are all about using your bodyweight as resistance. Performing these will provide a challenge over and above your base levels of strength and conditioning. With no equipment needed these exercises are an excellent way to warm up, get started and get your heart rate pumping. Such exercises that can be performed include; air squats, sit-ups and of course, push-ups.
3. Kettlebell swings
Kettlebell swings are excellent for working your muscles all-round. From strengthening your core to your shoulders, quads, hamstrings and back, this effective movement will provide a challenge for many of your muscles, resulting in all-around results.
4. Butterfly Pull-ups
These give you explosive power in your upper body, working a number of muscles within your back, shoulder and arms. Including this workout within a program of lower body exercises will ensure your entire body gets hit with movements stimulating all major muscle groups. The inclusion of this exercise can be further developed via grip placement with wide and narrow grips offering different resistance challenges. A ‘wide grip’ will focus more on your lateral muscle movement whereas a ‘narrow grip’ will focus more on your bicep and arm movements. The inclusion of this exercise is sure to throw the gauntlet down at you, however, the improvements you’ll see will be extremely gratifying!
5. Deadlift
The deadlift is ‘trending’ as an increasingly popular exercise to perform due to its ability to work all your major muscle groups in a single rep, saving time that it seems we have less of these days! Not only do the benefits include a good thorough workout, but also it greatly affects your posture enabling you to consciously keep a far straighter back long after you’ve put that barbell down. This, of course, carries through to practically ALL your many activities outside of the gym so you can’t really go wrong with this one!
Whatever your level of fitness, CrossFit makes it easy for you to get involved with its exercises thanks to its simplistic but challenging nature. The importance of keeping fit and healthy is obvious, but for those who lead a busy lifestyle and for those of you who are just starting out, CrossFit allows you to perform at your maximum intensity resulting in an enjoyable workout that’s tailored to you. Click here to see more great exercises from AthleticMuscle. What are some of your favourite CrossFit exercises? Let us know below or @KeepfitKingdom !
