On Friday, a small group of fellow fitness bloggers and I were given the pleasure of attending a cool retreat with Reebok at their main headquarters in Canton, MA.
It was an awesome day and a great look into Reebok as a brand, as well as an introduction to CrossFit, which Reebok has partnered with. First up was an introduction to the brand.
I was really impressed by the company as a whole — their goal has been to make fitness into more of a FUN experience, hence the CrossFit partnership. Being healthy doesn’t mean being at the gym bored by yourself — they are all about building community and having a good time while exercising. Apparently Reebok has done such a great job instilling this sense of fitness as fun in their 1,100 employees that the Reebok community has lost over 4,000 lb total over the last year! Amazing, huh? I love their “fitness as fun” approach — very much one that I preach, as well!
Their headquarters is fitness central. There is a track that runs around the building:
A multi-level gym with all sorts of equipment and playing courts, and they also have their very own CrossFit box (e.g. gym — CrossFit gyms are called “boxes”), called CrossFit ONE.
This box is unique in that it’s only for Reebok employees, and they really take advantage — apparently 450 (nearly 50%) of their employees belong to the box!
After our introduction to the brand in the morning, we headed over to the Reebok CrossFit ONE box to check it out for ourselves and get in a workout, all decked out in Reebok gear (that they sent to us before the event). Cool that they have a line of apparel dedicated to CrossFit! I especially loved the CrossFit Performance Capri that they sent us — SO comfortable and I’ll be wearing these all the time. We were wearing the RealFlex Transition shoes, which I also really loved and will be getting a lot of use out of — not really for running (well, maybe short runs), but for cross training.
I was really excited to see what CrossFit is all about — I’ve heard so much about it!
The gym was HUGE!
Before starting, we got an introduction to CrossFit from our trainers for the day: Caleb Diebolt, and Austin Malleolo, pictured below, who was a top finisher in the CrossFit Games in both 2010 and 2011. He’s also the head coach of Reebok CrossFit ONE. Pretty cool to have him teaching us!
We also got a tutorial on proper squatting form, and how to properly do the kettle bell swings and pull ups that would be part of our workout.
And then, it was time for our workout. Exciting! “WOD” stands for Workout of the Day:
Everyone paired up in teams and got ready to rock. My partner: Tina!
Team handstands? Obviously.
Here we are all lined up to start the first relay run. One partner went first, then tagged the other person to go.
Run, run!
Once both Tina and I had run the 200 meters, we raced over to the kettle bells and got started — the 45 kettle bell swings were combined, so she would do 10, then I would do 10, etc. until we reached a collective 45.
We finished with 24 pull ups (12 each) — we were instructed how to use stretchy bands to make them more manageable. 🙂 Tina is hardcore and used a thinner band (and also used a much heavier kettle bell — she’s been doing CrossFit for awhile now!), which made it harder!
And then… repeat a second time, and a third time! Tina and I came in 2nd place — just barely beat out by team Julie & Courtney. Awesome job, ladies! 🙂
What a FUN workout! I loved CrossFit; I’m all for workouts that are more team/group based. So much more fun and motivating!
Stay tuned for part 2 of our adventures at Reebok — this post is getting a biiit too long!
Are you a CrossFit-er? I’m going to look into some of the boxes around here!
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