CrossFit Athletic Group

In the fall of 2011, one of our original Mom's Club members, Jen, brought in her three kids to a workout session. At the time, Hannah, Abby, and Jake were 9, 7, and 5 years old, respectively and as entertaining as they were (especially Jake) the regular high school Champions Club sessions were a little too fast-paced for them. So we tried to recruit a session of younger kids that could focus more on games and fun than workouts.

See any familiar faces?As the group went on through the winter, Ricky and his crew of misfit GA kids naturally progressed a little further into the basics of weightlifting and intensity, while the younger Trips were not quite there yet. We made the best we could out of the situation by modifying workouts, adding coaches (mainly Sydni), and always including a game at the end of the session. "Spartan" was a favorite.

By the time we moved into our current building in the infamous Summer 2012, we had the freedom to run as many different sessions as we wanted - a luxury not afforded to us at the school. That was our first attempt at a true "babies" session. Sydni and Aly did the honors (well, Sydni did the work, and Aly was there watching - which is another in the long list of things responsible for the Aly thinking she's more important than she is tag.

Other than the noticeable lack of scuffs on the floor, the main difference I see is the formal nature of Sydni's coaching - and it should be noted she was doing pretty much exactly what I asked her to do. This session died off as the Summer went on and reemerged briefly the next Summer, where I took over for Sydni and continued teaching things the same way.

...and much like the time before, this group died out as the Summer 2013 ended.

Then one of the three most significant coaching epiphanies happened for me in the Fall of 2014: I was invited to "teach" a fitness class at the Great Lakes Child Development Center - previously held at St. Dennis (my alma mater) before they closed the building down. In plain terms, I was a preschool gym teacher for an entire school year.

I came in with this brilliant gameplan proving I could teach the little chitlins how to do push-ups with their elbows in, jump with feet together, and run using gravity as their guide. The process of me finding out how incredibly wrong I was can be recounted in my Day Care Diary series, but it resulted in not only a dramatic reshaping of how I coach in general, but a new look at our Babies Session:

Then last year, while I volunteered at Matt Fecht's basketball camp, we picked up his longtime camper Jacqueline to follow along with Kyle and Haley from the day care. Those three have been our staples for the youngest generation of Champions Club athletes, and also put on a great showing at the Christmas Workout a few weeks ago.

Front and center.The Champions Club "Babies" session is once-a-week and lasts for a half hour. The main idea that has to surround that group is fun; we have to pair the idea of workout out with the emotion of having fun. Failing to do so could potentially set a kid up for a lifetime of dreading any kind of training - this is why we keep the sessions short. But through my experience at the Day Care, there is more behind the scenes.

The actual goal of the babies session is to introduce some basic, general movement patterns - running, jumping, climbing, pushing, pulling, etc. - and disguise them as fun. So the games, laughing, and play time is the frosting, but the movements are essential. By letting the kids swing from the bars, try to push me over, throw dodgeballs, and jump over the boxes, I hope to help them develop the general, overlapping physical skills that will help them with the specific ones - like push-ups, pull-ups, squats, cleans, track, football, basketball, and volleyball - anywhere from 3-10 years from now. We have ditched most of the formal teaching because it takes away from the goal. And man, it is a blast!

From the sounds of it, we may be getting a pretty big influx of Babies to the group over the course of the next few weeks. If you get a chance, make it a priority to catch one of their sessions. Hopefully you'll have as much fun watching as the coaches do being in the middle of it.