Ignite: What the First Three Months Look Like
Most gyms sell you a membership and a door code. We don't, because it doesn't work for the person we're built for — someone who hasn't trained in years and is nervous about starting. Hand that person a door code and a timetable and you get someone who comes twice, feels lost, and stops.
So, the first three months. It's called Ignite: classes from your first week, with five hours of one-to-one coaching running alongside them.
The five Foundations sessions. Sixty minutes each, just you and a coach, booked around your classes. We teach the movements from the ground up — the squat, the hinge, the press, the pull, how to get a barbell off the floor without your back doing all the work. We find out what your body does. Not what it should do — what it does. The shoulder that doesn't quite go overhead. The knee from the skiing accident. The back that's complained since 2018. All of it gets accounted for, because the alternative is a coach discovering it mid-class with a bar in your hands. You go at the pace the sessions require. Some people need three to get the squat right and one for everything else. It's a one-to-one, so it bends to you.
The benchmarks. Everyone does five benchmark workouts and test lifts, whatever their starting point. If you can't do a single press-up, we test it anyway and write the number down. This is the part people are most nervous about and later value most, because in six months you do the same tests again, and you have a number, and the number is different. Evidence, not a feeling. It's the most motivating thing that happens to anyone in their first year, and you can't have it unless someone made you do the uncomfortable thing on day one.
And you're in class the whole time. You don't wait to be ready. A coach who has spent an hour with you one-to-one is the same coach standing in front of you on Tuesday, and by week three you know the movements, the language, where the toilets are, and half a dozen people in the room.
Then three months of being coached. Every session is scaled to you — your version, not a lesser one — and a coach is watching. If something hurts, we change it. If something's easy, we load it.
Why three months and not a taster week: nothing meaningful happens in a week. In three months you'll have changed how you move, added weight to lifts you couldn't do in September, and found out whether this is a thing you want to keep doing. That's a fair test.
It costs what it costs and we'll tell you exactly what on the call.
If the thought of walking into a gym makes you wince, this is exactly who we built the place for. Book a free, no-obligation 15-minute chat with Jeremy or Beth at crossfitchiltern.com — no hard sell, and most of us hadn't trained in years when we started. We'll build a plan around your life, not a generic template.
