Social Workout

It's 7:30 A.M., and CrossFit Gotham coach Michael Pommerening has four of "clients" grunting and sweating hard in the basement gym of a church in Midtown Manhattan. It's no frills. Just plates and bars and rubber mats and Coach P. with a timer and a mission: To turn his small, new affiliate into his own CrossFit utopia.

So, what is the business, exactly? He calls CrossFit Gotham "an evolving archetypal representation of the CrossFit methodology." Huh? 

[Hello first installment in photographic mini-series on CrossFit Gotham by Angela Jimenez.... ~The Eds.]

Michael Pommerening started CrossFit Gotham in January 2009. In 2006, with three others, he had launched CrossFit NYC, affectionately known as the "Black Box," arguably the first full-fledged CrossFit operation in the city. As CrossFit has grown, Pommerening and another of that original crew have left the Black Box to start their own shops. The son of a U.S. Marine, with a degree in Physical Education and a career in corporate sales, he became convinced the city's was ready for more hardcore fitness options. His is the sixth CrossFit affiliate in the city.

You can't find just pick Coach P, though, he has to pick you. The location of his workouts is not listed on his website. You must contact him to let him know who you are, and then he decides whether you mean business. He runs his workouts early in the morning, six days a week.

Angela Jimenez, intrepid Social Workout photoblogger, awakes at the crack of dawn to explore the strange and wonderful world that is Pier 40 in Manhattan's Hudson River Park. Vast, beloved, post-industrial home of soccer junkies, trapeze artists, wind sprinters, and parked cars; it has also spawned a raging community battle, that has only been partically damped of late by a general lack of cash and municipal willpower. Click through to explore....

With all due respect to Los Angeles, New York is the global capital of the fitness class. With a gym, yoga studio, dojo, or pilates den on every block, and thousands of personal trainers beating the streets, it is the cauldron where new class "concepts" are created, new brands and fads launched, and new gurus forged. Today, there is perhaps no more compelling figure among the crowd of New York rockstar teachers than Patricia Moreno. At dinner tables or over drinks around town, you will hear people tell the tale of how they've discovered intenSati, Moreno's creation. Part workout, part church revival for busy urbanites, the phenomenon is one of the inspirations for this site. As the second in our series of photo-essays, Social Workout photo-blogger Angela Jimenez set out to capture a day in the life of Patricia Moreno....

 [Introducing Angela Jimenez, our new resident photo-blogger. That's her in the photo above, running as a child. We'll be working with Angela in the coming months to put together a series of photographic essays covering the urban workout scene in New York and beyond. To kick things off, she's gathered together images from her wonderful ongoing investigation of the wild world of senior athletes. We're thrilled to present them here for you. -Oliver]