Rower Heaven!
What a WEEKEND!!! I’m going to condense the
2 days into a single blog post, but I wish you could have been a part of what I
experienced. There was so much learning and so much doing. 60 people sharing
their desire to take the next step down the CrossFit teaching path
@CF_Colosseum. We had an all-star group of instructors (Jason, Jenn, Matt,
Mattieu, Kevin, Austin and Andrew) who shared their knowledge and helped us acquire
the foundation for us to build on. It was a lot of hard work, but I’m hoping
that it will be worth it (can you tell I’m still nervous about the test??).
Day 1:
Both days were from 9am-5pm and involved so
many things, not all of them will be captured here. I will say that I was nervous even before we
started, but Jason and the rest of the crew put us at ease right away. There was a lot of information to cover and
they delivered it in a succinct and easy to digest format with lots of
demonstrations. We then broke out and completed the progressions that we
learned about. We got to see and understand the cues from the lectures and how
to correct them. This involved Squats. Lots and lots of Squats. We worked hard
and all of the members of my break-out group were sweating.
During our lunch break, we got to see how
top tier CrossFit Athletes handle a WOD. The entire group of ‘Red Shirts’ had a
mid-day throwdown that involved multiple rounds, Heavy Kettlebell Clean &
Jerks and multiple runs. It looked intense and I was pretty happy we didn’t
have to do that one. We had afternoon break-outs and I had my Push-Jerk taken
apart by Coach Jenn. I was getting tired and when 1 element was good, something
else went sideways. It was cool to see how she dealt with the disaster that I turned
into. We finished up the day with a spicy WOD involving 21 – 15 – 9 reps of
Thrusters (@75lbs) and Burpees. Ugh. A quick BEvERage before we all headed home
after a long and tough day.
The day wasn’t over for me yet though.
@SavannahJessie and I hooked up with @nipshankFF, @murdochjay, @to_jmc and Marn
for the Fera & Moncayo Bachelorette after party. Unfortunately it wasn’t to
be a party night for me, 1 beer and some KISS pinball (along with seeing some
folks I haven’t seen in a long time) and it was off to bed to get ready for
tomorrow.
Day 2:
Bright and early (Venti Bold in hand), it
was back to work/school. We completed the learning on the 9 fundamental
movements and a huge section on nutrition. Wen we broke out today, it was all
about the Deadlift (queue the little hop-skip-jump of joy). Andrew made some
changes to my setup (which I can’t wait to try) and we spent some serious time getting
knees out of the way and pulling. We followed that with the Sumo Deadlift
High-Pull (which I received some good information about from Austin) and then
the Med Ball Clean. There was lots of work and when we broke for lunch the
Instructors had another throwdown with a Power Snatch Ladder and Chest to Bar
Pull-ups.
The afternoon session was a doozy. We split
into 2 groups and we worked on the Muscle-up and the Snatch (not together). It
was pretty intense in Muscle-up school, but during the progressions I hit my
FIRST EVER STRICT RING DIPS!!!! Can you tell that I’m excited? Snatch School had a serious progression cycle
that had us all sweating, but hopefully it will help me improve mine. We then
sat the test.
It was an unbelievable weekend and I want
to send a heartfelt thank you to the instructors who spent the weekend sharing
their wealth of knowledge and experience with us. It was intense (I’m still
sore as I finish writing this on Monday morning), but it is one of the best
CrossFit experiences I’ve ever had. I can’t wait for the results…
Beez
