Grid (that’s competitive CrossFit) championship pulls up to Anaheim on Sunday
This is a CrossFit class at Cave Cross Fit. The competitive version of the workout regime is called Grid.
Is it a workout — or a sport?
The CrossFit debate raged for years. After all, CrossFit became a sensation by turning barbell lifts, rope climbs, pull-ups and medicine ball throws into timed workouts, which led to people competing over the Internet; in 2007 the best met in person at the CrossFit Games. But for many, it wasn’t until teams of buff-bodied people in matching uniforms began dead-lifting and rope climbing and walking on their hands in two-hour matches with flashing scoreboards and thousands of screaming fans and TV cameras that it became undeniable:
CrossFit is now a sport. In fact, it’s a team sport. But it’s not called CrossFit. It’s called Grid, named for the layout of the playing surface.
Telecast by NBC Sports, the National Pro Grid League includes eight city-based teams, each with seven men and seven women. Most are CrossFitters, with a few gymnasts and heavy-weight specialists. Two teams, such as the Los Angeles Reign and the Phoenix Rise, go head-to-head on a rubberized, basketball-sized grid dominated by a massive jungle-gym apparatus, festooned with pull-up bars and climbing ropes. Over two hours, they race through a dozen CrossFit-style workouts that consist of three or four exercises stacked in CrossFit’s traditional rapid-fire style. As they lift, grunt, and climb, a running total of the teams’ times flash on the monitors. The team that completes everything fastest wins.
Is watching a bunch of Amazon women and men race through activities that most of us still think of as exercises entertaining?
L.A. and Phoenix met at the Anaheim Convention Center on Aug. 23. Seconds apart as they made their way through the exercises of the final Sprint Relay event — heavy medicine-ball carries, overhead walking lunges, chest-to-bar pull-ups, and thrusters, they came to the last three events. The crowd was on its feet as competitors approached the first of those, the rope climb.
The ropes dangled nine feet off the ground — not a problem for the two tall Phoenix climbers to grab and climb up and down three times. But one of the L.A. climbers was only 5-foot-8; try as he might, he could not cleanly grasp the bottom of rope. By the time L.A. finished the succeeding back flips and snatches, Phoenix had cracked the champagne bottles.
The crowd’s roar spoke volumes.
The 2015 championship will be held at the Anaheim Convention Center on Sunday. For clips of matches, go to www.npgl.com.
ALSO:
From the archives: For CrossFit fans, it’s as much a state of mind as a style of exercise
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