America's North Shore Journal

Staff Sgt. Sab­rina Bar­ra­gan, 15^th Sus. Bde. ammo sup­ply sergeant and Brownsville, Texas, native does dips dur­ing part of a Cross­Fit train­ing ses­sion in the new Head­quar­ters and Head­quar­ters, 15^th Spe­cial Troops Bat­tal­ion, 15^th Sus. Bde. Cross­fit gym, Oct. 28. Photo by Sgt. Matthew Cooley

The Head­quar­ters and Head­quar­ters Com­pany, 15^th Spe­cial Troops Bat­tal­ion, 15^th Sus­tain­ment Brigade, com­pleted a gym in the com­pany area here in mid-Oct. specif­i­cally for CrossFit.

Cross­Fit is a high inten­sity phys­i­cal train­ing pro­gram the Army uses cre­ated by Greg Glass­man, a for­mer gym­nast, that com­bines strength and car­dio exer­cises in a cir­cuit train­ing format.

Mas­ter Sgt. Mar­cus Woody, a Moody, Texas, native and main­te­nance non­com­mis­sioned offi­cer in charge, along with Sgt. Mike Mar­tin, a Las Vegas native and ammo sup­ply sergeant, built the small gym.

The pair are the company's Cross­Fit instruc­tors and planned to cre­ate the gym here long before either arrived in Iraq.

"It's actu­ally bet­ter than I thought it was going to be," Woody said.

Woody explained that the com­pany sup­ported the idea from the begin­ning and said the room was larger than what they had hoped for.

He admit­ted that they would have set­tled for some­thing outside.

Cur­rently, the gym con­tains floor mats, a com­plete home gym, dumb­bells, a bar­bell and bench, two tread­mills, a dip and pull-up sta­tion, med­i­cine balls, and ket­tle bells.

Before receiv­ing new med­i­cine balls, a soc­cer ball was cut open, filled with sand, and taped up for use instead Woody explained.

Woody said he plans to hang a rope from the ceil­ing and get rings to hang from the pull-up bars. He also plans to have an out­side area for flip­ping tires and car­ry­ing full buckets.

"No money has changed hands at this point," he added, as every­thing has been donated, impro­vised, or brought from the U.S.

Keri Frank, a sys­tem inte­gra­tion man­ager for 15^th Sus­tain­ment Brigade and Lafeyette, La., native, lifts dumb­bells dur­ing part of a Cross­Fit train­ing ses­sion in the new Head­quar­ters and Head­quar­ters, 15^th Spe­cial Troops Bat­tal­ion, 15^th Sus. Bde. Cross­fit gym Oct. 28. Photo by Sgt. Matthew Cooley

"We can do about 80 per­cent of the work­outs with what we got here."

Why such a fuss about CrossFit?

"It works. It's high inten­sity," Mar­tin said.

"When you [lift weights], all you're doing is build­ing mus­cle, noth­ing else," he explained.

Cross­Fit is intended to make some­one health­ier all around and includes nutri­tion and lifestyle choices Mar­tin said.

Cross­Fit has two main cat­e­gories of work­outs: Heroes and Nasty Girls, named after heroes who have died while deployed and girl's names, he said. Hero work outs are the most challenging.

"Force mul­ti­plied by dis­tance over time equals power," Mar­tin said, explain­ing the Cross­Fit formula.

"We want max­i­mum power of output."

Sol­diers and even Army employed civil­ians work­out in the new gym with Woody and Martin.

"It's very intense. It's crazy. It's a good work­out," Staff Sgt. Sab­rina Bar­ra­gan, 15^th Sus. Bde. ammo sup­ply sergeant and Brownsville, Texas, native said.

Bar­ra­gan said that she started Cross­Fit at an NCO school and was the pri­mary rea­son she was able to score around 270 out of a pos­si­ble 300 on an Army phys­i­cal fit­ness test only four months after hav­ing a child.

Ken Pat­ter­son, a field sup­port engi­neer for 15^th Sus. Bde. and Bal­ti­more native had his own rea­sons for doing CrossFit.

"Every day is dif­fer­ent. You never get bored."

DVIDS