“Diane”

21-15-9 reps of:
100Kg Deadlift
Handstand push-ups

Post time to comments.

My experience at the Orange County CrossFit Certification – Part 1

“Man would you have to train for that. Nobody wants to be the fat crossfitter” Courtney informs me of this as I book myself into a Cert. Long before I’ve affiliated, long before I’ve shown a person how to squat or shared my love of a deadlift, I wanted to get CrossFit certified. In just a few month’s of CrossFitting, I’d gone from a slightly tubby, small shouldered gym dweller into a less tubby, nicely shouldered CrossFitter. And now, I wanted to get certified. I wanted to train amongst the absolute best in the world, and understand this CrossFit thing as much as I possibly could. So with a contract completion bonus in my hand, I searched for the next available cert. Turns out there wasn’t one until December, and it was the end of June; such is the demand for these bad boys. I emailed Deana at customer service and booked myself a spot at the Orange County Fire Authority’s Level 1 CrossFit Certification.

Fast forward a few months – I’ve got an affiliate, some clients, our own t-shirts, and even a beard (chicks dig beards, Will). I’m now standing at the registration in the OCFA, amongst the many Crossfitters busily setting up. I’ve worn green, that way I figured people would know I’m Irish.

Once Jamie figures out where I’ve come from she barrages me with questions and tells the others at the desk who I am and where I’m from. There’s some difficulty pronouncing my name but other than that it’s all cool. I hand out some t-shirts and this warms them up even more. Mallee asks one for her fiancé and say sure. I’m then asked, “Do you know who Mallee’s fiancé is?”

When I’m informed it’s Greg Amundson I consider calling him a pussy briefly, but it’s probably too early to bust out the Riley humour. Unfortunately Greg wasn’t around that weekend so I couldn’t take a photo of him giving me a wedgie as he steals my t-shirt. Still think that would make a good photo…

I inspire Pat (Tony’s apprentice in all things multi media) to ask for more t-shirts off people as they sign up. Dude did well, I think he got another four out of it!

I’ll only cover what was really insightful for me at the seminar, and give a general jist of what went on, rather than write up exactly what was taught. Having said that, there were so many great gems that this will probably end up being a complete break down of the certification.

*cues hastily scribbled seminar notes*

Greg Glassman – for anyone who doesn’t know, he’s the founder and CEO of CrossFit (CrunchyFart?) – gave the first talk, and it began predictably enough with what Fitness was. He moved onto the subject of Functional Exercises. Functional exercises were defined to be:
• Universal Motor Recruitment Patterns – you see these everywhere
• “Natural”: Not invented, they’re ‘prehistoric’ to quote Glassman. People picked things up, stood up, held things overhead long before Globogyms and even the concept of fitness existed
• Safe – the explanation here was the first great YES moment of the certification for me. The term used was safe at post maximal loads. If your deadlift is 100Kg for example, and you keep form, you won’t get injured. If you push it to 101Kg and start arching your back, straightening out your legs early or whatever, you are no longer doing a deadlift. That’s what will get you injuries.

Conversely, if your doing a lateral shoulder raise, at pre maximal loads, you can injure yourself. Shoulders will pop and al other sorts of nasty things will happen. In a leg extension, for example, the patellar tendon isn’t in the patellar groove. These isolation exercises are not only silly, but dangerous, is our contention.
• Elemental: If you break a squat into a leg extension and a hip extension, and then try to apply it to a sport, you just don’t get the same results. You can’t break these movements down any further. (Seems so obvious when it’s stated like that, doesn’t it?)

But afterwards, Greg was keen to stress that all these things were characteristics of the movements, and not really the reason. “I’d love it if the solution to fitness was to drink beer and go for long cycles with your mates”

The reason we do Functional Movements? The move large loads long distances, and do it quickly. They’re powerful. So what? Well, power is the independent variable most commonly associated with optimizing favourable adaptations. We want to get fit and do it in the best way possible, so we’re going to use these movements because they deliver. We’ve no emotional attachment to these movements, they just give us what we what.

(my notes get a little fuzzy on page two, either I was excited, scribbling, or the flu medicine was giving me the shakes)

Some other little gems of knowledge from that opening talk that I’d like to record here, lest I forget them. HR is a poor measure of intensity with regards to exercise. NASCAR drivers have HRs of 180bpm, does that mean they’re fit. Hell no, they’re scared shitless! It’s just the adrenaline.

Why do we combine “strength and cardio”? Well, we are training for a broad, general inclusive fitness that prepares us for the unknown and the unknowable. And “in an critical situation in all likelihood you’ll need to test your strength at a high heart rate”. Think about that next time you’re taking a breather midway through Elizabeth.

Nicole and Mallee then took us through the 9 basic movements, starting with the squat, front squat, and the overhead squat (remember, when God squats, he does OHS)

If I was asked beforehand what I’d like to get out of the Cert, I’d have said kipping pull ups, or a better Snatch. I figured I had my squat down. I mean it looked right, and the numbers were going in the right direction.

Man, was I blown away by the depth of the squat! Essentially in a squat, there is no part of you that’s relaxed. If there is, you’re doing it wrong.

We were taken outside to our groups to work on the exercises. The idea of virtuosity and perfection became readily apparent when we were introduced to our trainers. For our group, Kelly Starrett was our head trainer.

Picture the loudest Drill Sergeant you know. Now imagine he was also the most fun guy you know. That’s K-Star right there. He’ll get right up in your face and shout “Get those hips back, Colm!” and you’ll feel happy he shouted at you. It’s great! Contrast this to the soft whisper in your ear from Nicole as she corrects you. Maybe she knew I embarrassed easily?

Be it the flu, the fact that I was stiff from a lack of exercise, or maybe even the flowery shorts, but I did something weird on my very first squat. Something in my left hip just squished, and for the rest of the day it was sore to lift that leg. Funnily enough, doing a (now) proper squat was the only thing that didn’t hurt it. Sitting and moving around my chair was a chore. Now I knew CrossFit would make me feel like a pussy, but a warm up squat? C’mon!

After each exercised was introduced, one person was brought into the centre and their form critiqued and corrected by the trainees and seminar attendees. This is another thing that’s uniquely CrossFit. While we’re striving for virtuosity, and indeed it is nerve racking performing any exercise in front of a bunch of people, anyone who was pulled up was really grateful for the tips and advice.

After the squatting session Glassman brought us through the area under the curve, i.e. work capacity.

It was interesting to see people start to get confused about this. Glassman mentioned that CF probably wouldn’t help an Olympic Lifter excel at his sport at the highest level, but would make them fitter. Specialty athletes will excel at one aspect of fitness, or a few components in a narrowly defined modality. But because of that specialisation, they’re area underneath the curve (work capacity will be diminished)

When Glassman mentioned that if you try to get stronger, your area underneath the curve will get smaller, i.e. you won’t be as fit. This seemed to go against the teachings of Rip, in that strength is the basis for a lot of the other components of fitness, and how the WoDs have progressed since Rip joined CrossFit. Basically the observation is that stronger athletes tend to perform better in the WoDs than they’re scrawny, endurance counterparts. I wanted to question this, but
A. I couldn’t quite phrase my question properly in my head
B. My flu meant my voice projection was down to zero
C. I didn’t want to look stupid!

Now that I’ve had time to reflect on it, since CrossFit is open source, it is constantly changing/evolving to increase both the speed at which you increase your level of fitness and the total fitness you have (area under the curve), it’s going to change and adapt as more and more people come abroad and we discover more effective and efficient means of forging elite fitness.

At lunchtime I hung out with Ryan and Dave from CrossFit Milwaukee. This was just one of the great people experiences I had while over there. Within a couple of minutes we were all shooting the breeze and joking around like we’d been mates for years. There was no ego or defences put up, no sussing of each other out, just straight up, friendly conversation.

Post lunch the impending dread of the inevitable workout that I know I’d have to do and that I know I’d suck at. Despite the heavy medication I’d ingested all week the Gods had decided I would be unwell this day, and that was that. I could only hope somewhere along the lines my strength would return to me.

But it was not the case. For the final three exercises I was really feeling the strain. They were the deadlift, sumo deadlift high pull, and the medicine ball clean. Man, was I feeling stiff. My elbows ached just to hold onto the medicine ball, which was only twenty pounds.

And just when I was thinking, “hey, they haven’t called me up for the centre yet,” I was sent up for the medicine ball clean. Bugger! Every single thing that you could do wrong with a medball clean I did. I wouldn’t reach triple extension. Then I’d correct that only to bicep curl the ball. Then I’d drift into the bottom instead of catching it cleanly. And the worst thing was Tony came along with the camera and caught this all on film. It would have made a great main site vid had Jeff corrected me but alas it was not to be. It’s a good thing I’d my shades on, because I’d rather the larger CF community didn’t see me crying.

A brief note on Jeff. Jeff was a short, stocky, bald guy with Oakleys and a Goatee. Just to look at him, you’d think he would beat the living snot out of you for stepping on his shoes or staring at him. Then he opened his mouth and it’s the same, great positivity and passion you get from every CrossFit coach you meet.

The workout was Fight Gone Bad. It went Bad. I flew through the Sumo Deadlift High Pulls and reached my target – I was going for a score of 300 so 20 on each exercise would cover it. I nearly slipped right off my first box jump, and then I started to get a stitch. By the time I’d reached the Push Presses, I just wanted to go home.

All these feelings of self pity and pain were only exacerbated when Kelly and Nicole would come up to me during the workout and shout “C’mon Colm, good work, I know you can do it.” It really upset me that I was being called by name, later on they’d be able to identify me easier as sucking awfully at FGB. Of course, the shouting and encouragement did make me push out a few extra reps, and run that little bit quicker between stations, when all I wanted to do was sit down and weep a little.

251. God damn that was pathetic, I thought as I struggled for breath and sat on a dynamax ball. But like all truly great CrossFit workouts, it left me wanting to do it again, so I could beat my score.

About an hour later the chest pains subsided and I did an interview with Kelly and Tony for the affiliate site. Prior to the interview, I asked them whether they’d like serious interview or a comedy one. We went with comedy. Now, during the interview it seemed like good fun, and as I’ve previously mentioned, the CrossFitters got my humour. However, on reflection I’m quite concerned about how it’s going to be perceived by the community at large. Either I’ll come across as the wittiest SOB we’ve ever seen, or a complete c*ck. Let’s hope it’s the former.