CrossFit Community Week - Capital Jiu-Jitsu CrossFit

This morning I headed way out to Dulles, VA to met up with the good folks at Capital Jiu-Jitsu CrossFit; I had heard great things about the space there, so I was real excited to be able to see it for myself; there is nothing I like more than a spacious gym, with tons of awesome equipment!

It was a hike for me to get out there and a little out in the middle of nowhere from my point of view (granted, I don't know the Dulles area at all, so, that comment may be a little bias).  But strolling up to the facility I was already impressed.  It was a large end portion of a strip mall type of area, and was huge.  The Lobby was nice, filled with a ton of apparel (I got a sweet hat after the workout!) and the CrossFit space was directly behind it.  It had everything one needs for a perfect workout and then some.  They even had a great selection of tires, sandbags and slosh pipes (thick PVC filled with water or sand, love 'em!).

I was welcomed, shown around, and jumped right in (I came in about 5 minutes late).  I got a quick warm up on my own as I introduced myself, just some PVC pass throughs and some overhead squats, along with some hip openers and rotations to get the back loosened up.  The prescribed warm ups was: 10x OH squat, 10 x good mornings, 15 x ring dips, 10 x HSPU.

Then the workout started.  But before i get into that, I'll talk a little about how this affiliate works.  It is a bit larger in all aspects than most CrossFit boxes, with the addition of an entire MMA portion of the facility, the space is as large, if not larger than some commercial gyms.  They also have another location out in Old Town and this allows for their multiple coaches (six of them I believe) to move around a bit if they want to.  Todd Katz was the coach in charge at the time, and I was able to get some lunch with him and another athlete, Devin after our workout.  Now this place was almost the polar opposite of what I had experienced yesterday.  It was big, had larger classes, had no foundations type of class and was generally a lot more "free form" in comparison to the seriousness of yesterdays visit.  What it allowed for, was a much more diverse group of people, our session alone had Devin, myself, and three girls, all at very different fitness levels.  But we all had a great workout, pushed each other, and were able to scale very easily.  From talking with those other members, I hear nothing but praise about all the coaches and their ability to instruct for proper mechanics, and scale appropriately when needed.

The place just came across as a fun place to work out at, no matter what you ended up doing there, it would be finished with lots of smiles, lots of talking and socializing, and maybe a quick bite together afterward (great kebab place right near by).  The other thing I liked, was that they had recently held their own "CrossFit Games".  They had 30 some odd people compete and it sounded like their following was so supportive and energetic.  Clients travel from some pretty decent distances to get to the place, and the second you walk in there, you understand why.

Now for the workout:

This one was tough.  Mainly because of the amount of snatching I had done the day before, but for me, it was those damn toes to bar.  I just couldn't find a rhythm with them at all.  But Devin's energy, and Todd's pushing helped to keep me moving through the end.  I finished in 12:28 (the video says 12:22...that's a lie, sorry) and then hung around chatting with everyone before Todd and another coach performed the workout themselves.

I can tell you this: if I lived anywhere near this place, I would be there every day.  The space, the equipment, the people, the ability to get back into Jiu-Jitsu!  I'd love to get to meet some of the other coaches to get a feel for the different dynamics each one has in their classes.  I'll bet a month of regular classes there would get you an incredibly varied program, perfect for what CrossFit is all about.

Capital Jiu-Jitsu
23520 Overland Drive
Dulles, VA 20166
Tel: 703.651.5940

Tomorrow I'm off to Primal Fitness in DC.

Never Stop, GET FIT.

Josh Courage