Crossfit

I still do not have an anterior cruciate ligament, but with the suturing of the collateral ligament and some training the knee is surprisingly stable. As anyone can understand, the idea of keeping up with the young elite judoka at our club came to nothing. For this year anyway. Instead I have two gym cards, and I who have always considered gym-training the most boring training conceivable. Even worse than running, or even swimming.

First I have the subsidized membership at the hospital gym. It is a decent gym, mostly machines and a very cramped space for free-weight lifting. On the other hand it is easy to patch on 20 minutes of lifting before or after work (important), and they have a sauna (very important).

Second, an old friend of mine has started a crossfit gym in Uppsala, surprisingly named Crossfit Uppsala. Apparently it is the new hip thing for athletes to do, and the gym is also really good as far as crossfit-gyms go. When they started, some two (or three, even four) years ago, I shot some pictures for them. To my great satisfaction they still use them on their homepage.

Björn, combining single-handed push-ups with correcting his spectacles. I do not think they use this one on their homepage.

Now they have over a hundred members and sell training-equipment to other gyms. The training is very varied and usually done in smallish groups with a leader (who may, or may not, drink coffee incessantly). If you are interested in more details about cross fit there are easily thousands of dedicated sites, just google it. Suffice to say I find it quite entertaining now that I cannot do judo for a while.

Strength-wise I am as strong as I ever was. Today we did back-squats and my new personal best is 100kg. Quite good for not having an anterior cruciate ligament. Endurance-wise I was almost back before the influenza-epidemic hit, now I have some more catch-up to do. The knee is not stable enough for full-contact judo, but as soon as I get my surgery (not counting the following six months of rehab) I will be all set.