CrossFit Athletic Group

Opening up a CrossFit gym from the perspective of a experienced, successful business group of adults is a pretty straightforward approach.

Step 1: You already have money.

Step 2: You find multiple huge locations that would fit the mold of a lucrative gym.

Step 3: You use each location as leverage against the others to drive down the monthly rent price.

Step 4: You draw up a business plan that results in you and your business chums making 6-figures.

Step 8: You count your money after executing whatever happens during steps 5-7.

Step 9: You take a vacation.

Opening up a CrossFit gym from the perspective of the Champions Club is a game of blackjack. We see what we have in front of us and then make wild guesses hoping not to bust. I mean, just look at the first sentence of this post; we were the exact opposite of everything. We were an inexperienced, unsuccessful, school club of children. Not to mention we got Stan Marsh'd just months earlier.

Since we began our journey as a CrossFit Affiliate, absolutely nothing has come easy. And I doubt that will ever change. Luckily, we happend to recruit just about the only group of people who - for some sick, twisted reason - prefer that to the alternative.

...........

As the Summer 2012 was approaching, nobody had a clue as to what was going on (including the person in charge). We thought we knew uncertainty with our first Summer. But at that point, we still had an exit strategy, which was just cancel the entire thing and pretend the idea never existed. No harm, no foul. In this instance, however, there were mouths to feed. 70 to be exact. All longing for a permanent place they could call the Champions Club.

While I was certainly feeling the pressure, this uncertainty didn't seem to deter anyone else. By June 4th (a mere four days before Summer started), we still did not know where the Champions Club Summer 2012 would be located... yet we had a total of 43 people signed up. In fact, it wasn't until the night before Summer when I sent out the email detailing the location plans. I'm convinced I could've told them we'd be training in a cornfield in Nebraska and would've had the same turnout. Having that kind of following can be scary at times, but scary in a good way. And while people like Emma, Murley, Cap'n Jack, and The Moms have all shown their loyalty time and time again over the years, there has been one person... no, character that seems to have stood out among the group.

She is simply known by four letters: BUBS.

I wonder what Qdoba is doing right now...

Mariah Fielder started with us in the fall of 2010. To say she was a part-timer would be a compliment.

Instead of working out, Mariah had an odd fascination with the dip bar inbetween the squat racks. Not for actually doing dips. Nope, nope, nope! She would just hold herself to support and give her interpretation of an L-seat in an attempt to impress me. It did not look like an L-seat, it looked like someone having a seizure on a bar. It was impressive for an entirely different reason - one that made me wonder about the future of the school's athletic programs. But either way, she would not stop smiling and laughing and she talked like Ducky from The Land Before Time. So I could never really get mad at her, even though her shoddy attendance continued through the Fieldhouse days.

But something different happened during the winter of that year. Something very odd. Bubs started showing up. Consistently. So consistently, in fact, that she received the Athlete of the Winter award. That momentum carried through to the Summer where she earner herself an invite to the advanced session (which was actually advanced at the time) after near-perfect attendance and solid performances in the Filthy Fifty and the Disney Doozy theme workout. Towards the end of the Summer, I had to come to terms with the fact that Bubs was just not going away. And after the final attendance and all of the workouts were taken into consideration, Mariah Fielder was announced as the Athlete of the Summer.

...........

The Champions Club Summer 2012 was one of the most incredible, exciting, experimental, and scary things I have ever gone through in my life. We thought we knew uncertainty. We were horribly mistaken. There is nothing quite like stopping a session mid-way through because a city inspector who specifically told you to not to be in the place you are at right now just pulled in your driveway. It takes a certain kind of innocent bliss to see something like that and think, "yeah, we'll be okay." Bubs provided us a constant reminder of what that mentality is capable of accomplishing.

Athleticism, like money, can give you a lot of room for error. Mariah had none. Maybe less than none, if that's possible. But, for some unknown reason, kept existing in this world of athletics because she was too happy to know any better. I was at a loss. As I mentioned before, I longed to coach the best and most accomplished athletes. That is who I wanted to surround myself with. Yet, this character, this Bubs, was an infection that spread through the gym and caused everyone without immnuity to break out in intense smiles. I was not an exception, and I actually enjoyed it. And after awhile, she became a more-than-respectable athlete. This began a transition in my coaching philosophy. It is still something I constantly argue about with myself, and somehow always lose. I guess the best way to explain it is give the story of the first time I saw her.

During the fall of 2010, Emma told me that her volleyball teammate, Mariah Fielder, wanted to join the Champions Club. When Emma took me to the gym to point her out, I was directed to a short, chubby girl facing the wall and hitting the volleyball to herself, obviuosly practicing some kind of technique. Unfortunately, that technique didn't last long, seeing as her next hit missed the wall by a mile, hit the ground right below her feet, then bounced back up right into her face.

Mariah laughed. I cursed under my breath. And that pretty much sums up our relationship since her joining.