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It could be called the “anti-gym” gym, but more accurately, it’s an old-school gym with a modern workout strategy.

Lowcountry CrossFit is housed in an obscure, relatively small warehouse on a no-name road off the Johnnie Dodds Boulevard frontage road in Mount Pleasant. The gym is a contrarian in the current world of fitness, with the plethora of chic personal training “studios” and big-box fitness clubs that offer cardio machines with TV sets, aerobics, Spinning and yoga classes and child care.

CrossFit is neither, though it’s more closely related to a personal training studio, albeit of the bare-bones variety.

Inside the warehouse are basically a few pull-up bars, gymnastic rings, suspended rope, “glute-ham” developer for forward and backward sit-ups, a few wooden boxes for jump-ups, some medicine balls, a few barbells and lots of weight plates and a boom box.

That’s about it. No mirrors, no TVs or satellite radio, no showers, no smoothies.

“That’s how we keep it affordable,” says co-owner Hosea Sandstrom, noting that the $115-per-month charge at CrossFit includes unlimited group personal training, compared with typical individual personal training sessions that cost up to $60 an hour.

Sandstrom and Ian Bowers, who opened Lowcountry CrossFit on June 1, lead hour-long, group personal training sessions that focus on “functional movement.” Think pushing, pulling, squatting, reaching, lifting and running. The main part of the program is typically 20 minutes of intense, push-you-to-your-edge exercise.

“Everything we do in here applies to everyday life,” says the 31-year-old Sandstrom. “There are hardly any isolation movements.” Bowers adds, “The only place where the hamstring operates in isolation from the quadricep is the gym (on a hamstring curl machine.)”

They follow the model of the CrossFit fitness program, developed by former gymnastics coach and celebrity trainer Greg Glassman, which features a “WOD” or workout of the day. The WOD, posted on CrossFit Web sites complete with videos demonstrating the different exercises, varies vastly from day to day. Some may use a combination of sprints, sit-ups, pull-ups, throwing a medicine ball and various weight-lifting moves, such as a squat or snatch.

Some “prescribed WODs” feature the names of “heroes and girls” and are used for fitness benchmarks.

“Barbara” features five sets of 20 jumping pull-ups, 30 push-ups, 40 sit-ups and 50 squats with a three-minute rest between sets. “Michael” entails three sets of 800-meter runs, 50 back extensions and 50 sit-ups as fast as possible.

And “Mary” includes five handstand push-ups, 10 pistols and 15 jumping pull-ups, as many as possible for 45 minutes.

Every workout is charted for either the number of repetitions for each exercise performed or how fast they are performed. Those numbers go up on a dry-erase board. So, in a sense, each workout turns into a competition against others and/or with oneself.

“It’s more of a sport than just going to the gym for another workout,” says Sandstrom.

CrossFit is not without its critics, who say the workouts are so intense and require so much technique that participants risk injury.

Sandstrom and Bowers say that the workouts are scaled to individual fitness levels and skills.

One workout group last Wednesday demonstrated that.

Two women, Cris Miller and Bonnie Anderson, showed up for a 9 a.m. session.

Miller, 32, is an ordnance clearance diver for the Navy Reserve as well as a waitress. Like some, she started doing CrossFit on her own in her garage for a year before the gym opened in Mount Pleasant.

Anderson, 56, is a former employee of Whole Foods and started CrossFit workouts three weeks ago. Before that, her activities consisted of yoga, t’ai chi and walks on the beach.

Miller, with a compact, muscular build, proceeded to perform a weight-lifting move known as a snatch, with 95 pounds probably 40 times, rip through “wall balls” (throwing a medicine ball up a wall) and zip through pull-ups with amazing speed. Anderson snatched with just a bar and completed two of the three sets.

Afterward, Anderson said Sandstrom and Bowers don’t try to push people beyond what they think they are capable of. Yet she added that working out at CrossFit has boosted her fitness and physical confidence levels beyond her expectations.

“I was really frightened of it because I had seen the videos and how intense it was. I’m 56 years old and thought, ‘My God, I’ll stroke out before I even try to do any of this,’ ” she says, adding that it turned out to be a great workout and that she’s already noticed signs of improvement.

“It’s one of those thing where sometimes you slip into that, ‘I’m 56 and can’t do it,’ to, ‘I’m 56 and I can do it.’ “

Reach David Quick at 937-5516 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .