So yesterday morning at 8am I signed up for a small class of around 6 to 8 crossfitters and made my way via the VERY efficient LA transit routes to Studio City (just near Universal City) to attend a fairly new gym called Crossfit Horsepower.

And before anyone asks how I found this place – okay I heard about it when I saw these pictures here 😛

Okay so I found the place via my interest in Supernatural – who cares? 😛 The point is, it’s a gym and I went and I ended up very sweaty and feeling like I’d done a right proper workout. Also I did Crossfit training for the first time and I really liked it. It emphasises using form and muscles that you use everyday and fixing poor form that we use unconsciously every day. The instructor’s name was Meredith – no taller than me, possibly even shorter but there was nothing but strength in that body 🙂 She introduced herself to me and about 6 others (all males of different shapes and fitness levels) and explained about how she came to be in crossfit and what the general ethos was around it. The only machines in this gym were the rowers. No treadmills and no weights machines. Barbells and weights and dumbells yes, along with kettle balls and medicine balls but that was where traditional gym items ended. The rest of the gym was filled with all sorts of stuff and reminded me of a gymnastics area.

We started off with squats. Meredith making us use medicine balls to ensure we had good form. Those are good for me. I’m a fan of squats I must say. Next we did the humble push up. I am not a fan of the push up. Mostly because I get frustrated my muscles don’t cooperate when I want to do them multiple times. Yes, yes more practice, less weight it will all come together. *sigh* Then we went to the burpee. Now I’ve been doing burpees since November last year. Turns out what I have been doing is a modified version of the burpee because the true burpee combines a full push up with a squat jump. I was never ever a fan of burpees, I have now developed an intense dislike to go on top of that lack of fannishness. Urgh. Then I learnt for the first time how to swing a kettle ball. Form is SUPER, VERY, TOTALLY important here or it’s known as the Kettleball Lower Back Wrecking Swing. I got the hang of it with Meredith’s help. Haven’t done it enough yet to form an opinion on it. Then we got the rowing machines out. I like rowing 🙂 she had us do a couple lots of 200m so she could see our form and was satisfied with it. So this took around 40 or so minutes. One of the good things about Crossfit is that with the high intensity of it you only train for short bursts and yet still feel like it took an hour. She set the clock for 8 minutes. Set the round as 150m row, 10 squats, 10 kettleball swings, 5 burpees. We had to get as many rounds as possible in within the 8 minutes. We all started on the rowers – she put some tunes on loud (specially selected clearly) and then yelled Go. I managed to get through three rounds plus an extra row. And felt drained at the end of it. We did a proper cool down using polystyrene cylindrical rolls of torture (it’s like your own personal trigger point physio digging in almost) and just relaxed.

The whole session cost me 0$ since the first session is free (they want you to sign up for more obviously) and they even knew I was travelling. Apparently if I wanna go again it’s just a $20 drop in fee for a class. It was well worth the subway and bus out there – took me a half hour. So I grabbed a teeshirt and took some pics so I could prove to my trainer back home that I’m doing stuff! Totally hope to do some more in the near future.

After a quick shower back at the room and then an omelette at Denny’s we headed off on a an hour long bus trip to Santa Monica Pier. My Nikon D5100 has packed it in sadly so I ended up using the canon pocket digital. Looks like I’m gonna have to get that one replaced under warranty and will need to get a new one in the meantime.  We did the whole Pier this time and took a nice Beach walk down to Venice beach front.

Partial Pier and Beach shot.

The weather was perfect today, it’s nice when you have an ozone layer to dull the bite of the sun somewhat, combined with the chill breeze coming off what must be pretty cold water and being out in the sun was very, very nice.

Even the Pier needs protection.

Had to grab this one – Dean Winchester would totally approve. So long as the pie was good of course.

This store was AMAZING. One of the first Venice Beach front stores we came across and what these artists do with scrap metal is astounding.

Phenomenal art – seriously would have considered some if luggage space was not a priority.

Venice Beach – home of the original Muscle Beach gym where Arnold supposedly worked out. Was glad to see that there were some females out there doing the weights.

You’re kinda on display for everyone too. Which I guess is a big motivator really to not slack off.

Venice Beach is definitely a fascinating place to walk down. With the Good Year blimp trundling by overhead, the art and the busking rappers, the different kinds of sun loving people populating the area it makes for an eye catching experience.

We followed it up with a trip downtown, where we had a meal at The Yard House (see Tim’s blog for the food details on that one:http://2012usacanada.blogspot.com/

We followed it up with the movie Ted and yeah it was funny, but Tim’s rant on his blog pretty much sums up my feelings on the small children in the audience. And I mean small. It was like parents thought since it had a talking teddy in it then that negated their need to worry about any other inappropriate content. Unbelievable.