Crossfit Fogo (Austin, TX)

I recently went to Carnaval in Austin, which is a giant costume party with a ton of half-naked people all listening to cumbia music and doing a conga line through the hordes of people. Fun times! Besides the band there was also a bunch of Capoiera fighters/dancers in between sets and off in corners showing off. Apparently those dancers were from Capoeira Evolucao’s/ Crossfit Fogo’s Studio!

Part of my personal goal of 2014 is to get enough core strength to do this:

Spoiler/confession: I have a long way to go. :-

So I went to Fogo Crossfit expecting a new crossfit experience- one based on calisthenics- and I wasn’t disappointed. The WOD was a twist on an old favorite: “Deck of Death”- but everyone got their own deck and got to cycle through the hell/death/deck on their own pace. (I appreciate this!)

The 4 elements were

• Burpees,
• “hard-core situps” (kinda like a reverse burpee: with a weight above your head, you lay down on the ground, do a situp/stand up and put the weight over your head).
• jumping lunges
• ball slams
• 100 mountain climbers when you hit a joker

The class was small (4 athletes plus 1 coach) and the gym itself has hard-wood floors and a full-wall mirror (used for the Capoeira class) along one wall and a beautiful mural on the other. It’s a slightly smaller space, but for the amount of people that are there for crossfit, it’s perfect.

(Note: They are moving this summer to a much larger location, which I hope to see someday! Individual sections for Crossfit, Capoeira and Yoga!)

In probing the coach, she admitted that this box has a does a lot of creative movement lifting. Like “bent over press”
and doing hellacious workouts on Thursdays. (like 10 burpees, EMOTM for 30 minutes).
/wrists
I will give them credit, though, it seemed that the most important thing that they focus on is technique and form. The head coach (Brian) will work with you and stress getting great/perfect technique before you are allowed to move up in weight- which is really refreshing.

They also really encourage you to get “whatever you want” out of your workout. Do you want to be faster? Do you want to be stronger? Do you want more of a cardio or weight-lifting workout, today?” It’s up to you to scale it however you want to and set goals for yourself.

The coach that I trained with was Kelly- who was a ray of sunshine and happy to answer all the questions that I pestered her with. Alex, the owner (and the coach of Capoeira) also had an infectious happy attitude and just wanted to make people happy and healthy (using any exercise he could). After my Deck of Death, though, I couldn’t move, let alone do another class that required coordination- so I’ll be joining them again for the (free-first time) drop-in Capoeira class.

For those who don’t know what Capoeira is, here is a video. It’s basically martial art fighting, but without touching the other person while looking graceful.

If you are looking for something different than your average crossfit/work out regime and want to feel like a graceful badass, I would highly recommend checking these guys out! 🙂