After my visit to CrossFit Burn, I turned the car towards San Francisco for my next two visits for the day. I got into the city and pulled into the heart of downtown and found a spot outside of CrossFit KMSF. I must say, next to San Francisco CrossFit I would say this one was the most unique of all my visits. So, ladies and gents, welcome to “the basement”!
The main sport CrossFit KMSF is located within is actually a pretty well-known training center in the city. Krav Maga is the man focus in the facility, but plenty of other classes take place inside their doors. When I left, I was super excited to see a huge group of people getting prepped for a TRX class in their main training room. As an avid promoter of this training tool, I thought it was so cool they utilized it with such a large group. And while I have never personally taken a Krav Maga class, I know quite a bit about the Israeli self-defense method and hold it in very high regard.
To get to the CrossFit within the facility however, you must walk through the man floor hallway, past the couple huge training rooms, down a narrow stair well and into a very narrow hallway. You pass a couple smaller training rooms and then turn left into a room about 600-800 square feet in total space. The ceilings are low, half the floor is concrete, the other half is super worn carpet. There’s a makeshift pull up bar on both sides of the ceilings support beams, four sets of rings strung up from DIY braces up there as well. Just inside the door was a decent stack of bumper plates, and back towards the far end of the room were a few beat up squat racks and a GHD. Yeah, this place was about as thrown together as you could possibly imagine, shoot, my old Garage Gym back in Maryland had more total equipment in it. But I’ll tell you what, the coach, the athletes, the workout, the energy; holy cow did this place rock!
Everyone who was there warmly greeted me, and I found it very easy to talk with anyone throughout my time there. Kat, the head coach and veteran CrossFitter in this awesome communities short life so far was super open and welcoming to me. I had a great time talking with her before and after our workout and was so intrigued by how her place was put together. She is a level 2 coach, she has been seriously involved in CrossFit much longer than most people have even heard about it. And here she is, in the basement of a self-defense center, in the middle of San Francisco just doing her thing. There was something so simplistic and respectable about how she ran her spot and I was reminded of a discussion I have had with training buddies in the past: you don’t need a fancy gym to have a good business, all you need is a good coach and good programming to have an awesome following. And when the athletes start rolling in, they will stay, and they will spread the word. The athletes I met that came through the doors seemed like good, serious, dedicated fitness junkies. I mean it’d be tough to imagine a snooty old lady walking into a basement gym and not walking away in disgust. No, the people who came and stayed were people who understood that it’s all about the training. These people were so proud to be a part of that gym, it was inspiring.
Similarly to CrossFit Burn, the early evening class was understood as a little more free-for-all than others as it was that shaky after work time for most of the athletes. Because of that, we all just got warmed up on our own, and the workout was performed in heats.
The Workout:
10 rounds of:
10 deadlifts 135#
10 push ups
God my poor arms. Already completely destroyed, my shoulders needed a real good warm up before attacking 100 push ups. A group of us got a couple laps around the block (always fun to run around a city around rush hour!) and then set up for the workout. I went in the second heat and had a sub-5 minute goal in mind for this one. Well, that crashed around the 6th round. I was able to go pretty much unbroken until then, but around the 60th push up my arms just had nothing left. I was able to get all the deadlifts like it was nothing, not even a pause on any of them. But with the struggling push ups I ended up rolling across the finish line at 6:20. A couple heats later there was one guy who crushed it in sub-4!
I hung out for a while talking with Kat and a handful of other people. It was real cool to see how people just sort of seemed to keep rolling in. Such a uniquely different CrossFit gym for sure, and it was a great one despite all their seemingly obvious setbacks. The fact that I had to rush out of there to get to my next visit was a bit of a bummer for me actually, I really liked hanging down there with everyone. Oh well, I guess I’ll have to head back there soon!
The main sport CrossFit KMSF is located within is actually a pretty well-known training center in the city. Krav Maga is the man focus in the facility, but plenty of other classes take place inside their doors. When I left, I was super excited to see a huge group of people getting prepped for a TRX class in their main training room. As an avid promoter of this training tool, I thought it was so cool they utilized it with such a large group. And while I have never personally taken a Krav Maga class, I know quite a bit about the Israeli self-defense method and hold it in very high regard.
To get to the CrossFit within the facility however, you must walk through the man floor hallway, past the couple huge training rooms, down a narrow stair well and into a very narrow hallway. You pass a couple smaller training rooms and then turn left into a room about 600-800 square feet in total space. The ceilings are low, half the floor is concrete, the other half is super worn carpet. There’s a makeshift pull up bar on both sides of the ceilings support beams, four sets of rings strung up from DIY braces up there as well. Just inside the door was a decent stack of bumper plates, and back towards the far end of the room were a few beat up squat racks and a GHD. Yeah, this place was about as thrown together as you could possibly imagine, shoot, my old Garage Gym back in Maryland had more total equipment in it. But I’ll tell you what, the coach, the athletes, the workout, the energy; holy cow did this place rock!
Everyone who was there warmly greeted me, and I found it very easy to talk with anyone throughout my time there. Kat, the head coach and veteran CrossFitter in this awesome communities short life so far was super open and welcoming to me. I had a great time talking with her before and after our workout and was so intrigued by how her place was put together. She is a level 2 coach, she has been seriously involved in CrossFit much longer than most people have even heard about it. And here she is, in the basement of a self-defense center, in the middle of San Francisco just doing her thing. There was something so simplistic and respectable about how she ran her spot and I was reminded of a discussion I have had with training buddies in the past: you don’t need a fancy gym to have a good business, all you need is a good coach and good programming to have an awesome following. And when the athletes start rolling in, they will stay, and they will spread the word. The athletes I met that came through the doors seemed like good, serious, dedicated fitness junkies. I mean it’d be tough to imagine a snooty old lady walking into a basement gym and not walking away in disgust. No, the people who came and stayed were people who understood that it’s all about the training. These people were so proud to be a part of that gym, it was inspiring.
Similarly to CrossFit Burn, the early evening class was understood as a little more free-for-all than others as it was that shaky after work time for most of the athletes. Because of that, we all just got warmed up on our own, and the workout was performed in heats.
The Workout:
10 rounds of:
10 deadlifts 135#
10 push ups
God my poor arms. Already completely destroyed, my shoulders needed a real good warm up before attacking 100 push ups. A group of us got a couple laps around the block (always fun to run around a city around rush hour!) and then set up for the workout. I went in the second heat and had a sub-5 minute goal in mind for this one. Well, that crashed around the 6th round. I was able to go pretty much unbroken until then, but around the 60th push up my arms just had nothing left. I was able to get all the deadlifts like it was nothing, not even a pause on any of them. But with the struggling push ups I ended up rolling across the finish line at 6:20. A couple heats later there was one guy who crushed it in sub-4!
I hung out for a while talking with Kat and a handful of other people. It was real cool to see how people just sort of seemed to keep rolling in. Such a uniquely different CrossFit gym for sure, and it was a great one despite all their seemingly obvious setbacks. The fact that I had to rush out of there to get to my next visit was a bit of a bummer for me actually, I really liked hanging down there with everyone. Oh well, I guess I’ll have to head back there soon!
CrossFit KMSF
1455 Bush Street
San Francisco, CA 94109
415-921-0612
info@kravmaga-sf.com
Great site and recourse from one of the athletes!
Diane Sanfilippo
www.BalanceedBites.com
Post are coming, hate that there’s such a delay between visits and posts, but I an only edit these things so quickly! I’ll have them up soon enough!
Never Stop, GET FIT.
Josh Courage
1455 Bush Street
San Francisco, CA 94109
415-921-0612
info@kravmaga-sf.com
Great site and recourse from one of the athletes!
Diane Sanfilippo
www.BalanceedBites.com
Post are coming, hate that there’s such a delay between visits and posts, but I an only edit these things so quickly! I’ll have them up soon enough!
Never Stop, GET FIT.
Josh Courage
RSS Feed
