FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS:
What's the deal with the "Sweat Panda" name?
No, you're not the first person to ask us that. It's actually one of the more frequent questions we get. It's weird, we get it.
"Sweat" to us equals effort. Effort is all that we really care about and all that we ask that you give as an athlete. We don't care about how much you can lift or how fast you can go as long as you are putting in honest effort. The more effort you put forth, the faster your results will be. Give us effort, and we promise the same.
The "Panda" to us represents how people come in all shapes and sizes, and we love that! We want our gym to represent that. Not everyone is built the same and not everyone is at the same place in their health and fitness journey, and we embrace that. How boring would it be if everyone looked the same and did the same things?! We love that the panda is cute and cuddly, but at the end of the day is still a wild beast that is ridiculously strong!
We wanted this gym to feel like home for all types of people. We didn't want anyone to feel intimidated.
Sweat Panda. BOOM.
What can I expect from a CrossFit Class?
Foundations – If you’re interested in joining the regular CrossFit workout, we require that you attend our Foundations course first. The purpose of these is to teach you the nine foundational movements of CrossFit and all about proper form. No matter how experienced you are, these are valuable and worth the time. Even if you think you have perfect form on your squats, deadlifts and/or overhead presses, it’s amazing what can be fixed when you have a trained set of eyes watching you do them.
If you have never tried CrossFit before, feel free to come down to our "No Sweat Free Intro Class" to find out more, but this is how the classes are usually structured:
Regular classes: This is what you’re probably used to seeing or hearing about. A regular CrossFit class takes anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour. Everybody starts at the same time, there are instructors walking around helping out, making sure that you are using proper form and remaining safe, and everybody is supporting each other.
A typical class will be broken up as follows:
Dynamic warm up – not jogging on a treadmill for 5 minutes, but jumps, jumping jacks, jump rope, squats, push ups, lunges, pull ups. Functional movements, stretches, and mobility work that compliment the movements you’ll be doing in the workout that day.
Skill/Strength work: If it’s a strength day, then you’ll work on a pure strength movement (like squats or deadlifts). If it’s not a strength day, then you’ll work on a skill and try to improve, like pull-ups or jump roping.
WOD: the workout of the day. This is where you’ll be told to do a certain number of reps of particular exercises as quickly as possible (while still maintaining good form, or you’ll have a set time limit to do as many of a certain exercise as possible.
Cool Down and Mobility: After everyone has competed their workout, we will then do a cool down together which will usually include some mobility work to help improve your mobility.
Why is Sweat Panda more expensive than my gym?
Quite simply, we offer more and we are effective.
Results, attention, fun, community, care, knowledge, atmosphere, health, fitness, friends, events. You name it. MORE.
Each class at Sweat Panda is like a personal training session. Our coaches will spend time with you giving hands-on instruction and tell you how to modify or scale the workout so that you get the most out of every workout. We know your strengths, your weaknesses and your goals. We know what your favorite TV show is.
We do not just drop you in a gym with a bunch of machines and hope that you figure out a way to achieve your goals. Our knowledgeable coaches create and program workouts that will give you the most benefit in the shortest amount of time. Our programs will dramatically effect your health and body composition in a short amount of time. We are more concerned with results than providing you with amenities that will do nothing to improve your health.
Your typical gym bases their pricing model on the reality that approximately 67% of typical gym members will never use their memberships regularly (or at all). Those 67% subsidize the memberships of the 33% that actually do show up. SweatPanda cannot base our pricing model on the knowledge that most of our members will never show up however, because our members do show up. They love the workouts and show up everyday. If our members did not love what we were doing, we wouldn't be doing our job. To continue to provide that great service, we need to maintain a low client to coach ratio to provide our members with the most benefit.
At most gyms, personal trainers cost an average of $70-$90 per session, and that’s on top of your monthly gym membership. When you break it down, the daily cost of a monthly membership can be budgeted for if you take an honest look at your spending habits. For what the average person spends on coffee and bottled water each day you could afford your SweatPanda membership.
What is important to you? Make a small investment in yourself that will drastically improve your life.
Do I need to get into better shape before I start at Sweat Panda?
Short answer? NO.
We see people who have never stepped in a gym or done anything remotely athletic go from struggling to do a push-up or an air squat, to excelling at workouts and doing things they never thought they would be able to do in just a few months. Results like these are not the exception!
If you walk into our gym any given day, you will see a pretty equal split of former athletes and people who had never stepped inside of a gym before they came here. People of all shapes, sizes, and fitness levels, just like we want it. In fact, the majority of members are really just trying to get healthy.
So no, you don’t need to be in shape to start. We're here to get you "in-shape", and starting at Sweat Panda will more than likely get you into the best shape of your life.
Can you get hurt doing CrossFit?
Short answer? YES.
Are these dangerous activities? NO
There is far more risk associated with NOT exercising than exercising. What are the long term physical consequences of not taking your health back and staying healthy?
There is an inherent risk of injury with any physical activity. I saw two girls break their arms (yes two) during a soccer game last week. I saw a woman twist her ankle walking out of Target. And while I'm ratting out other people, I have smashed my head getting in and out of my car more times than I can count. I'm not saying everyone is as clumsy as me, but you get the point I think.
The benefit of CrossFit and our exercise programs in comparison to other physical activities is that most injury can be prevented by good coaches and your own ability to listen to said good coaches. Proper instruction on how to safely pursue your fitness combined with your ability to leave your ego out the door will go a long way towards preventing any injury.
Our NUMBER ONE CONCERN at Sweat Panda is the betterment of your health and your life. A big part of that is keeping you injury free. Understand that the benefits of being active will far outweigh any risk.
What Is CrossFit?
The CrossFit can be simply described as performing “functional movements that are constantly varied at high intensity.” CrossFit is a core strength and conditioning program. The CrossFit program is designed to elicit as broad an adaptational response as possible. CrossFit is not a specialized fitness program but a deliberate attempt to optimize physical competence in each of ten following fitness domains:
- Cardiovascular and Respiratory Endurance
- Stamina
- Strength
- Flexibility
- Power
- Speed
- Coordination
- Agility
- Balance
- Accuracy
CrossFit is meant to be scaled and suitable for all ages and physical conditions.
Who is CrossFit good for?
Everyone. It’s true. Parents, college students, adults, teenagers, youth, many professional and elite athletes are all participating in the CrossFit Program. Prize- fighters, cyclists, surfers, skiers, tennis players, triathletes and others competing at the highest levels are using the CrossFit approach to advance their core strength and conditioning. The military and many law-enforcement and fire departments have also implemented CrossFit as their primary physical training program. The CrossFit program has also been used on the sedentary, overweight, and elderly and found that these special populations met the same success as those with more advanced fitness levels. We call this bracketing or scaling. If our program works for Olympic Skiers, the overweight, and sedentary homemakers, then it will work for you.
Typical Commercial Gyms vs. CrossFit
In gyms and health clubs throughout the world the typical workout consists of isolation movements and extended aerobic sessions (curls and treadmills). The fitness community from trainers to the magazines has the exercising public believing that lateral raises, curls, leg extensions, sit-ups and the like combined with 20-40 minute stints on the stationary bike or treadmill are going to lead to fitness and long term health. When you walk into any commercial gym you likely witness a sea of machines that come with no directions. Learning how to use them, when to use them, in what order, at what intensity is left for the individual member to guess and muddle through.
At Sweat Panda, we work exclusively with compound movements and shorter high intensity cardiovascular sessions. We've replaced the lateral raise with push-press, the curl with pull-ups, and the leg extension with squats. For every long distance effort our athletes will do five or six at short distance. Why? Because compound or functional movements and high intensity or anaerobic cardio is radically more effective at eliciting nearly any desired fitness result. This is not just our opinion, it is based on scientific facts. Our approach is consistent with what is practiced in elite training programs associated with major university athletic teams and professional sports. CrossFit endeavors to bring state-of-the-art coaching techniques to the general public and athletes who haven't access to current technologies, research, and coaching methods
CrossFit is also based on a team/group workout environment. Very different from the commercial gyms; there are very few open gym times and almost no traditional machines. The complete program is based around maintaining a low client to coach ratio and one of the most important characteristics is the fitness programming. Each member chooses a time that he/she can attend a scheduled class. All participants in that class warm-up together, work on skills together and perform the workout of the day. As a team, as a family, as a unit, they start and end the workout together. Pushing, encouraging, and helping each other along the way; similar to that of a professional sports team or military unit.
As we mentioned before, one of the biggest problems with commercial gyms is the lack of training and knowledge passed on to the client. Teaching correct form and technique from day one and educating all members on how to perform every movement they will encounter in the CrossFit environment can mean the difference between an injury and a forever healthy and limber athlete.
This education of proper form and technique will be offered through our mandatory Foundations Class.
What is the CrossFit method and how is it different?
The CrossFit method uses the following model the help develop peak overall health and fitness:
- Diet: lays the molecular foundations for fitness and health.
- Metabolic Conditioning: builds capacity in each of three metabolic pathways, beginning with aerobic, then lactic acid, and then phosphocreatine pathways.
- Gymnastics: establishes functional capacity for body control and range of motion.
- Weightlifting and Throwing: develop ability to control external objects and produce power.
- Sport: applies fitness in competitive atmosphere with more randomized movements and skill mastery.
Courtesy of CrossFit, Inc.
Are all CrossFit gyms the same?
In a word, NO, and thank goodness for that. You want to be in an environment that you feel comfortable in; an environment that you want to go to every day. That may not be this gym, and that's okay! We will happily point you in a direction that may be a better fit. At the end of the day, we want you going somewhere that is going to get you excited to get the gym every day, whether it's here or not!
There are over 12,000 CrossFit Gyms worldwide. Given the sheer number of CrossFit gyms, just like anything else, there are bound to be some good ones, and bad ones. They are not franchises. They are not like Planet Fitness or 24 Hour Fitness and are not required to run a certain way. This can be a wonderful thing or it can be a terrible thing. Not all CrossFit gyms deliver the same level of quality to their members. Unfortunately, sometimes someone will get a bad vibe from a gym or have a terrible experience and give up on CrossFit altogether thinking that all gyms are that way. Each coach has their own style that may not agree with your personality.
Before you let a bad experience at one gym give all gyms a bad rap, I suggest that you attend a class at different gyms in your area. Find the one where you feel the most comfortable and you get the sense that the coaches truly care about your well being; try it out for a while. In our experience, it takes people two to three months to start to see the benefits of CrossFit so give it a fair try for a few months before you decide whether or not it’s for you.
Again, our primary goal is to provide you with better health, better fitness. We will do everything we can to get you healthier and get you to understand that we truly care. But in the end, we have no contracts, so if you give us a try and it just doesn't feel like the right fit, we get it. We'll try and help find you somewhere else to pursue your health that may be a better fit for you. There are plenty of options and we are just one. We believe we are the best option, but we fully understand that we may be biased.
What if I don't like competition?
Great! The reality is that there are people at the gym that will be very concerned with posting the best time of the day, finishing the workout faster, or lifting more than the next guy or gal, which is a fantastic motivating tool. You know who those people are? Competitive people. If you are competitive, that's great! If you are not competitive, that's great too!
Really the only thing we care about is your individual effort. However, that is the only thing that we as coaches cannot provide you with. Sure we can encourage you and try to push you as much as possible but at the end of the day you are the only one that can provide effort. So do we care if you finish your workout before Jim or Sally, or lift more than Bob? Honestly, could not care less. What we care about is if you improved from yesterday, or lifted more than you did 3 months ago. That means you are improving YOUR individual fitness, and that is what we care about.
We'd be lying if we said that a little competition isn't going to help you improve your health. You will find that working out with your friends will probably get some of those competitive juices flowing (maybe you didn't even know they existed before). Working out in a group will give you that little extra push that you can't get working out all by your lonesome. That extra push is going to come from the support and encouragement you get from your classmates and coaches as well as that little spark you may get from nowhere trying to best your friend at the workout. You will become friends with the people you work out with, and a little good natured competition will transform into great results and an even better time.
Personally, I grew up playing sports and with an older brother. My life has always been about competition. Not obsessive, "I have to win" competition, but I always have a blast competing; it bonds people and it helps push me to be better. For me, so having a “score” for the workout each day and competing with the person next to me absolutely appeals to my competitive nature and pushes me to work harder than if I were just working out alone. If you are not like however, that's fine too.
We have trained people of all ages and fitness levels. Athletes and people that just want to be able to get off the couch by themselves. Most people come to the gym to become a healthier version of the person they were yesterday. These are the types of people that make up the core of the CrossFit community and the core of SweatPanda.