Studio B: WOD

I love to coach.  When I discovered CrossFit, I flipped out over the intensity and workouts, couldn’t get enough.  But what really get’s me out of bed at 4:00am like toast popping out of a toaster (hey, you Paleo heads – that’s metaphore) is the chance to coach.  There’s something so fulfilling about increasing someones strength or power output just by changing a joint angle.  Just to open that knee up a bit centering it over that food, seeing that back arch a bit more and watching a deep squat increase by 10#.  Oh, just the thought of it makes me want to put a bar on my back right now!

Coaching form, coaching technique, coaching movement takes a keen eye.  You have to asses the total sum of the parts moving.  See, in the example above it might not just be the knee, it might be the ankle or a shoulder rotation.  It’s a moving puzzle that I get to figure out.  Sometimes you get it right immediately, sometimes it takes 3 weeks of trial and error.  I’ve been doing a lot of (I say “I” in this post I’m writing but Liz, Peaches, and Rudy all feel the same) coaching these past couple of months in preparation for Sectionals (our areas CrossFit competition leading up to Regionals).

Why I really like coaching is not for the movements or the exercises, but what happens in between them during a WOD.   You’ve heard me barking out “connect them” or “one into the other”, because that’s what really fascinates me.  Let’s use 21-15-9 SDHP’s, Burpees, and box jumps as an example.  There is that decisive moment when you’ve just finished 21 of the first two motions and you step up to the box jumps.  SOME will interlace their fingers and place their hands on their heads, wincing their sweat filled eyes, gasping for more air and pause.  SOME will stagger over towards the box, eyes wide open, with their focus dialed in on the top of that box and explode off the ground (or at least begin to step up).  I tell you, I’ve been in this business for over 20 years now and coaching that moment, that thing that happens in between, most intrigues me.  That short burst of time when a person is exhausted and afraid (technically they are afraid because they don’t know what’s on the other side of that purely exhausted state that keeps them from jumping up), where they tighten their stomachs and CHARGE…  To me, that moment in between is the key to transforming not just your athletic spirit but the also the belief that anything is attainable.  Because it takes that spark to ignite the flame, that moment in between.  Search for it.