Crossfit Fuerza, Medellin, Colombia

Crossfit Fuerza is located off of Las Vegas ave and very easy to find on the 3rd floor of a building. (first task: Climb 3 flights of stairs!) I don’t know if I have mentioned this before or not, but all of Colombia has these things called “street signs”. Something that is foreign to other parts of Latin America. I never realized how much I depend on them until I got here.

Anyway- Fuerza also does boxing and other mixed-martial arts, so they have divided the box into 2 sections: Crossfit (open space with boxes, bars, racks, etc. and a boxing ring. Along the back wall is a faux-grass patch where warm-up runs are done.

I was pleasantly surprised when I walked up and found pistols on the board! PISTOLS! I haven’t seen that in a WOD since… uh… ever? Especially for a gym that has only been open for about a year and has a lot of newbies. They had a ton of scaling options and I was even asked about handstand pushup scaling/sequence options. (Always happy to share what I’ve learned!)

The WOD that I participated in was in 2 parts:
The first was a “EMOTM of 3 wall-climbers”. This is when you are in a pushup position with your feet against the wall, and then you climb up the wall with your feet until your belly touches the wall. Then climb back down. Sure, seems easy. Try doing this for 10 minutes. I was a sweaty mess after minute 4. My shoulders started giving out at the end. The next day I couldn’t scratch my head. AWESOME!

The next part was 4 rounds of:
Run 500 meters (this was only difficult because their grass-patch is about 30 meters-ish. This meant that I had to do math. Which I’m terrible at.)
10 box-jumps
20 double-unders (they were practicing double-unders this week.)
30 supermans.

Aside from the 6 people doing the wod were a bunch of guys doing a lot of random skill/strength training, which is always inspirational. It reminded me of a play-ground where one kid says “oh yea? Look what I can do!” and then the others trying to do more (but in a safe way). It’s a great encouraging environment with a big following.

If you’re in the neighborhood and want to check out a box that has a lot going for them, check out Fuerza.