Crossfit Mini

The nice thing about doing Crossfit is that it is scalable to people of all shapes, ages, heights, and abilities. Yesterday was definitely a case in point about that, and I figured that instead of studying for my statistics midterm, I'd write a little about it.

So I've officially been offered the scholarship spot to the L1 Certification at St. Paul, and I'm getting ready to payoff the registration I have for the Kids Certification in Ramona! As of May 1st-ish, I'll be coaching the kids classes at Crossfit St. Paul, and to prepare myself for the cert and the class, I'm going to CFSP to observe and assist with Mike's kids class. Like I've mentioned before in posts about coaching, I'm really interested in learning more about what the "hierarchy" of important points are for each movement. There's so many things to remember about a good squat - weight on the heels, hip crease below the knee, chest up, knees tracking toes - and its difficult for some people (and especially kids) to keep track of it all! But, if I can only correct one thing each time about form, what's the most important thing to correct? What's the foundational element of each movement and what's the progression from there?

Watching the kids class, I'm already recognizing that coaching kids is going to be a challenge, but one that I am definitely going to be able to enjoy. Children tend to have a pretty short attention span and it's important to make them feel engaged at every point of the class. This experience is going to keep me on my toes!

After the kids class, I drove over the Minneapolis for my regularly scheduled 6:30 program.

For time:
50 Wall balls (20# / 10#)

Ever since the Midwestern Sectionals, Tyler has stressed the importance of upholding the standards and not counting crappy reps. So, I grabbed my 10# med ball and started aiming for the 10 foot target. Keep in mind, I'm just over 5 feet tall, by far the shortest person at our gym (one guy is 6'9"!) and probably within the whole state of Minnesota. Nordics.

I had a counter (Jenny, who's new to our gym and who I coached during our warm-up), and I explicitly told her to not count any reps that didn't hit the target or where I didn't reach the bottom of the squat. Well, I did about 12 reps and none of them counted. Eventually, I started hitting the target, but when I was exploding upward, I was essentially standing on my toes trying to reach it. Everyone was already done around minute 2 and I had only gotten to about 20 counted reps (in actuality, I was probably at about 40 or 45 total, but none of them hit that gosh darn target!). Tyler decided I should aim for the 10 ft target, but as long as I got between the 10 ft and 8 ft targets, the rep could count. Whoosh! I knocked out the last 30, tired, but without any major issues. Final time - 4:05.

So yeah, I was kind of disappointed because it seemed so slow. But recently a guy at our gym did the math to figure out how much power he generated doing a workout. He's a bigger guy, and he took about twice as long on a workout than other people at the gym, but when you boil it down to the formula, (force x distance / time), he actually generated the same amount of power as someone shorter and lighter who did the WOD in 8 minutes rather than 17. It's the same in my case because I have much more distance to cover in order to reach the same 10 ft target as everyone else!

Crossfit: for kids and short people alike!