While in New York for the weekend, I dropped in for a workout at CrossFit Hell's Kitchen in Manhattan. I wanted to stop by the closest CrossFit gym to our hotel, since we had plans all weekend. It served it's purpose and I got my workout in.
I dropped in for the 9am class on Saturday. I have no idea who the coach was. There were a couple other out of town visitors and they had no idea who the coach was either. Gym members were pretty reserved and coaches, even more so.
- Warm Up: Tabata DU, 20 PVC pass throughs, 10 PVC OHS, Duck Walk w/ PVC overhead, Tiggers w/ PVC overhead, Sideway tiggers w/ PVC overhead, 10 OHS w/ bar, 30s hold @ bottom of OHS, 45s hold @ the bottom of OHS while moving around
- Barbell Gymnastics:
- 5min to build to a HS High Hang Snatch
- Every 45s for 5min: 1 High Hang Snatch @ heavy
- Workout: Partner WOD, 10 rounds for time, 1 partner does below while other hangs from a pull up bar. For every drop from the pull up bar, 3 burpee penalty done at the end
- 100m Row
- 8 Wall Ball Shots 20#/14# to 10'/9'
- 6 Sit Ups
- 4 Air Squats
- 2 Push Ups
Some things I really liked here:
- Great location! About a 5 minute walk from the Times Square metro stop
- Pretty much open all day. Classes from 6am to 10pm on weekdays, 8-3pm on Saturday's and 2 classes on Sunday's. Check out their schedule.
- Very descriptive WOD blog with detailed warm up, strength/skill, and workout
- Un-coached Platform use on weekday mornings. This allows you to use their platform, Pendlay plates, and blocks. Not sure how many people are allowed to book this time as they only have 1 platform. They have kg plates.
- Variety of equipment, pretty much everything you can think of: ropes, airdyne, reverse hyper, benches, platform, blocks, kg plates, fractional plates, place to do leg raises and bar muscle ups, log, tire, parallettes
- Open gym daily.
- Bathrooms, lockers, and showers
- $25 drop in fee. They require quite a detailed email before dropping in. Read it here.
Some things that could use improvement:
- No dropping weights. To do that you must use cushions.
- Supposedly classes are capped and you have to reserve your spot online, but the Saturday AM classes were jammed pack. It was tough to do the double unders in the warm up without clashing ropes with someone else. Space for snatching was very tight and limiting. Space for the workout was ok since it was a partner workout, but probably would have been a disaster had it not been a partner workout.
Some pictures:
3. pull up structure
4. reception and products
5. storage on the sides
6. platform in the back w/ kg plates
7. view of front from back
8. pull up structure from the back
9. stairs
10. room upstairs / waiting area
11. other side
12. locker rooms
13. view from top
14. max storage
Overall, it was a nice gym, especially for Manhattan, and it had almost every piece of equipment you can think of. But what good is the equipment if you can't drop it, or pretty much do anything that would make it cause a loud noise (such as flipping the tire)? Got a good workout in, but I'm still in search of an awesome gym in Manhattan.
Nearby Gyms: CrossFit Wall Street (Manhattan) | Reebok CrossFit 5th Ave (Manhattan) | CrossFit Virtuosity (Brooklyn) | CrossFit South Brooklyn (Brooklyn)
Nearby Gyms: CrossFit Wall Street (Manhattan) | Reebok CrossFit 5th Ave (Manhattan) | CrossFit Virtuosity (Brooklyn) | CrossFit South Brooklyn (Brooklyn)