About Us

Located in Oldetown St. Helen's, The Vault's mission is to provide our members with a long term physical development program that promotes health and well-being. With an emphasis on functional living, we provide you with the ability to take your fitness to the highest level, often exceeding your expectations. You will learn that CrossFit is a lifestyle that begins with physical fitness and nutrition, and quickly crosses over into our everyday lives. The goal-oriented mentality that is developed in the gym can and will lead to success in your personal and professional lives, and everyday activities that may have once been challenging will become easy.
Finally, CrossFit is a family. You will meet many exceptional people at The Vault and our surrounding CrossFit affiliates (Portland, Bend, Seattle, Sumner, Vancouver, Eugene, etc.), developing personal and professional relationships that will withstand the test of time. While you sweat, bleed and cry together, you will earn respect as well as fitness, and before you know it, you too will be amazed at the differences in yourself.

What to Expect as a Beginner?

CrossFit is the most effective general physical fitness preparedness program in the world. Inherently it is not a “get fit quick” boot camp although you will not get quicker results anywhere else, but rather a long-term physical development program designed to help each athlete reach their full potential while minimizing the risk of injury. We begin by familiarizing you with many of the basic body-weight movements (squat, sit-up, pull-up, push-up) while working on improving metabolic capacity, or your stamina/endurance. In addition, you will begin learning the proper mechanics for several different fitness paradigms, including: gymnastics, Olympic weightlifting, power lifting, kettle bells, endurance training, etc. As your mechanics improve and you demonstrate consistency in your movement and commitment to the program, we will begin to ramp up your intensity. What does this mean? Basically, we begin adding small amounts of weight, challenging you to maintain good form (mechanics), while increasing the difficulty of the exercise.

What Does a CrossFit Workout Look Like at The Vault?

A Crossfit X-Factor daily workout contains four parts—the WOD (Workout of the Day), Mobility, Skills for the Day, and Strength Conjugate Training/Other. Not all parts are mandatory, and depending on your fitness level, you may do only the first two portions. We focus on all ten general physical skills of fitness (see link), which is why Crossfit gives us such great results. We want people to be better at everything, i.e. cardiovascular/respiratory endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, power, speed, coordination, agility, balance, and accuracy. We train hard in the gym to make everyday life easier. Crossfit is a general physical preparedness program that is based on sound scientific principles. It is a program that you can never perfect; you can train your entire life and still have things to work on.

Workout of the Day “WOD”

Crossfit is a high intensity program with a focus on true functional movements, meaning things you would do on a regular basis. The intensity portion is what gives us the great results Crossfit has continually shown, although, we are only intense after we are consistent (see “What to Expect as a Beginner” for more information). We vary our workouts and movements daily. For example, we might do 400m runs, or sandbag 400m runs, or 400m runs backwards. Our Benchmark workouts are fitness tests we do periodically to see change and progress (see link). There are other Crossfit workouts that you may do only once in your entire life.

Mobility

“Every human being should be able to perform basic maintenance on themselves. You know…what to eat, how to train, and what to do if you have a cut; you should also know how to fix your tight hips, painful knees, and stiff shoulders.” (Kelly Starrett, DPT) As our society has become more sedentary, we’ve seen an exponential increase in chronic hip, back, knee, and shoulder disease. A majority of these are due to pattern overload on a daily basis. Our lower backs didn’t get tight in a year; rather, it’s a problem that’s been going on for many years. During Mobility, we spend minimally 20 minutes on sound flexibility techniques such as self-myofascial release, stretching, and PNF (proprioceptive neuromuscular feedback). Our coaches assess you during the workout portion, and then address your mobility issues and give you specific mobility drills to focus on.

Skills for the Day

Due to the broad nature of the Crossfit training program, we are each going to have facets of our fitness that we need to improve on. That’s why we need to practice movements. During the skills portion, we practice technical and complex movements such as Olympic lifting, powerlifting, gymnastics, kettlebells, and endurance. (And yes, there is a lot more to running than just running, which is why it’s the most injury-prone sport in the world. We will teach you how to run correctly.) During this portion of the training program, we are not interested in intensity; we are focusing on very strict technique. “Punish your weakness” is a phrase you will hear often at Crossfit. There’s something very rewarding about mastering a skill level you’ve always had difficulty with.