Two thousand, six hundred.
That's the number.
2,600 early mornings
2,600 whiteboard briefs
2,600 warm ups
2,600 workouts
2,600 cool downs

2,600 times, our main woman and mother of CFA, Carmel McCann, has attended CrossFit Anam
For context, CrossFit HQ emailed us very recently to let us know that a man in his 70s in America had completed his 1000th CrossFit session. Very impressive!

Of course, this made us think of Carmel and we couldn't help but wonder how many sessions she'd completed. After a little bit of digging, we pulled together her numbers and there we have it. 2,600.
Yer man in America has a bit of catching up to do!

In 2013, when we first opened, Carmel had just turned 61 years of age. For an average of 5 classes per week, for 11 years on the trot, Carmel has now hit a record of 2600 classes, just this week
When it's broken down, that is an unbelievable statistic, especially when you factor Covid closures into it
She is now 72, and not only is she fitter than she's ever been, she's fitter than most people we know and showing absolutely no signs of slowing down!

We've preached this before but, CrossFit = Longevity. There is no doubt about it.

We hit another milestone this week too - for the first time ever, we had three generations taking part in the same CrossFit class.
Carmel, Eilis and young Alice!

It just so happens that 2,600 is also the exact number of grandchildren that Carmel has, so we've no doubt there will be plenty more of the 3rd generation joining her for workouts very soon
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Thank you for your loyalty, commitment, hard work and good examples, Carmel.
CFA would not exist without you, literally!

NEAT Stands for Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis - it’s just a long title to represent the energy your body uses outside of planned exercise (gym / sport).

NEAT is really important to help you maintain good health - the more you move your body the more you maintain healthy function.

“What you don’t use, you lose” 

Depending on your individual goal, NEAT can play a big role, but most importantly it has a benefit on health.

We like to consider our programs as an opportunity to improve your strength, power, speed, balance, fitness and in hand, your overall health. But over and above this, moving your body constantly thoughout the day is a great tool for great health.

How can you increase your NEAT?

Walking, gardening, housework, running around after kids, parking further away, taking the stairs instead of the lift, using your watch to send a 'movement alert' if you've been sitting idle for too long, or anything else that uses energy without it being overly structured or planned is an excellent way to keep your activity levels high and increase your NEAT.

Tomorrow is a new day! Get active!​

Sleep is essential. It is literally just as important to our bodies as eating, drinking and breathing and without sufficient amounts of it, our mental and physical health deteriorates.

Here's some examples of the positive impacts good, consistent sleeping habits can have:
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• Boost Your Immune System.
• Help Prevent Weight Gain
• Strengthen Your Heart
• Increase Productivity
• Increase Exercise Performance
• Improve Memory and brain function
• Better Sleep = Better Mood

The four stages of sleep are also very important to understand:

Awake- self explanatory

Light sleep
This is the second stage of sleep after being awake. Our muscles relax, respiration slows down, heart rate decreases and body temp drops.

Deep sleep
Our blood pressure drops and our bodies start to promote growth and repair. You can already guess how important this stage is. The blood flow increases to our muscles and growth hormone is released. Tissue growth and cell repairs then take place. This is also the stage where our brains flush any waste.

REM (rapid eye movement)
This is the final stage of the sleep cycle before wakening up and all of the above is repeated to some extent. Our respiration and heart rate increases, body temp control switched off, muscles become almost immobile due to vivid dreams and our brain activity accelerates, benefitting our memory, learning and problem solving.

For most adults, the recommended average daily sleep is between seven and nine hours. Anything less than that and you are shaving off vital periods of the sleep stages.

There's a common myth that you can adapt to chronically restricted sleep, but there's no evidence to suggest that the body will functionally adapt to sleep deprivation.

Therefore, if you follow any fitness "influencers" who claim getting up at 4am is more beneficial than "sleeping in" to 7am, be very careful about absorbing that information.

So we would recommend not rising at 4am to "smash the day" if you aren't able to be in bed sleeping by 9pm. 

Remember, your body needs sleep to recover. If you are consistently lacking sleep, you will be tired, grumpy, stressed, anxious and you will really start to feel like you are making absolutely zero headway with your training and fitness.

We want the opposite of all those feelings for our members!!! There's a lot more to be said for a good night's sleep, but for now, time for bed folks...zzzzz

Whether we like it or not we are all getting older and have to deal with the physiological and psychological changes associated with the aging process.
Fortunately, we have significant control over how much those changes will impact our quality of life and with regular, intelligent training we can push them as far into the future as possible.

We all want a life well lived after all.

Although the term ‘Masters’ is generally used to refer to older athletes, in CrossFit, the first Masters age division starts at 35. With this definition, a large percentage of our members are Masters and are therefore reaping the benefits of their training.

According to research, compared to their non-training peers, Masters athletes display increased testosterone, lower blood pressure, increased cardiovascular respiratory endurance (Hayes et al., 2013), increased strength, greater muscle mass, greater bone density (Powell, 2005), better mobility and balance, better spinal function (Wright, 2012) and better brain function (Zhao et al., 2016). Lifelong exercise may also be the key to reducing the risk of dementia (Brown et al., 2017).

Basically Masters athletes have better bodies and better brains! 

Sounds to me like fitness is as close to the fountain of youth as you can get. ​