CrossFit Athletic Group

Again, if you are not familiar with this post format, the Untitled/Unedited Rants give me a chance to be lazy with writing and you a chance to see how I think without the filter (not that you don't get enough of that at the gym anyway). You can also make fun of all the typos. Once I pout the period down in the sentence, I don't go back and edit/change anything. As the title suggests, this one is about last Saturday's Powerlifting meet.

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Josh Bennis used chalk for the first time in his 9 year-old life. He finished his last deadlift at 105 lbs, realized he was done lifting for the day, ran over to the chalk bucket to accumulate as much as his hands would contain, then ran to me to smear the chalk all over my black nike pants.

Alex Schulz - as in, zen face, always even Alex Schulz - was nervous as me at a social event before the meet at the thought of having to back squat 65 lbs with three people watching.

Dillon Sharp was likely the only competitor at the meet who arrived at Ford that morning not knowing they were actually going to compete in the meet.

Lira Bordoley found out she won her weight division while she was getting school volunteer hours working the scores table at the boys event.

Sammy Butcher was, by most calculations, the most experienced, game-ready athlete of our group to go to the Ford Regional powerlifting meet. She then proved both me and Coach T wrong on this account by getting DQ'd on her first two back squats when she forgot literally the one thing she was supposed to remember.

The Champions Club Powerlifting kids had absolutely no clue what was going on last Saturday. It was awesome. In reality the only people who really feel at home in that kind of environment are bearded people with forearm tattoos. But at the Champions Club - and CrossFit in general - we train for the unknown and the unknowable. Lira, Sharp, Sammy, JB, and Schulz need to be ready for all the stuff that we think they'll face in their sports, and all the stuff they have no idea is coming. Athleticism has to do with the ability to perform a new skill. Lira won the meet and had never benched before in her life. Dillon finished in the top 8, had never benched before in her life, and was lifting with pneumonia. Schulz and Sammy had never lifted weights in front of judges before. And Josh... honestly he seemed exactly the same. You know, trying to run up the gym wall, talking to random people he'd never met before, having no idea how oddly well-rounded of an athlete he is. In short, I know our kids are going to do well when they're at the Champions Club. They don't have a choice. So how bout we throw them to the wolves. Round #1 went pretty much as expected.

A Powerlifting meet is a test, not a training session. You are who you are when you walk in. Your capacity coming in is made from the months and years of training and adaptation. That day is just showing off that capacity. There were weights left on the table. There is nothing wrong with that. Alex closed his back squat at 95 lbs. last week, and will probably open with 115 next time. That is abnormal for an experienced lifter and about right for a 7th grade baseball player lifting in a meet for the first time. Lira deadlifted 230. If she knew there were not 1, but 2 girl scout patches on the line, she had the capacity to do 250. But the closer we get to our full capacity, the more likely we are to see a breakdown in form. Part of the deal I have with T in this Champions Club Powerlifting thing is our form standards have to live up to our name. Lira knowing she's strong enough to lift 250 is enough right now for a track athlete hoping to make States in May.

Speaking of form, this is my third year attending a Powerlifting meet. I knew what to expect coming in, and I told myself last year that I would not be the person to stand on a hill and point out all the bad form - especially when Sammy was rounding her back and JB was chicken-necking. So I will not do that.

Except Cross-Lex. You're coaches fucking suck, dude. Either that or the kids are coaching themselves.

Powerlifting is just weird, man. It just seems to me that, like track, there are a lot of rules put in play just to have something to officiate. I think the commands, dress code, lifting format, and weight selection could be simplified to make it go smoother and to minimize the amount of things that need to be officiated. Set a start, transition, and finish position for each lift, and make sure they go there. Nothing else really matters.

I have a bias towards certain sports. Basketball, obviously, is number 1 in my eyes in terms of prestige and difficulty. But I would not argue with someone who held up a middle finger to me and said Randy Moss would have been a Hall of Fame basketball player if he wanted. It's when we move down the list, however, that my bias starts to kick in more. Those sports are: swimming, running, wraastling, and lifting. It's difficult to put into words how I feel about those, because I definitely have respect for all those sports. I lifted in competitions and ran track from 5th grade through 12th grade and was good at it. I guess I would just say I'm not as impressed by someone doing well in one of those sports compared to ball sports. Here are some things that catch my attention:

• no contact
• weight classes
• lots of $ required to play
• lack of black people
• individual competition
• people walking around drinking honey like Winnie the Pooh

One of the big knocks in the sport-side of CrossFit how it's almost an all-white competition. I've always heard comedians talking about LeBron on hockey skates or Aaron Donald on a wraastling mat, and there is a lot of truth behind that. It seems that football and basketball, especially, attract the best athletes. Many of them are black. There is also contact in both, they're team sports, they don't require a lot of money to play, everyone is playing at once regardless of weight or hieght, and nobody is drinking honey between plays. If Lira Bordoley can just walk into a Powerlifting meet and be the best lifter there, you wonder how many others could do the same thing. And I also wonder how many powerlifters would be able to walk onto a basketball court and shoot with coordination, or shag a fly ball in the outfield.

It's almost like the more functional the sport, the less I am impressed by it. In no way will shooting a leather ball through a hoop lend itself useful in every day life. As such, not a lot of people can do it well. Or do it at all. Everyone can swim, run, wraastle, and lift to some degree. It's almost like those skills are taken for granted.

I don't enjoying lifting heavy weights, myself, and that bias is pretty obvious - either by reading stuff like this or by looking at the workouts we do at the gym. I will say that after three years of experiencing Powerlifting from the outside, I am definitely a fan of schools having teams. It's especially cool to see girls not being afraid to show how strong they are. Mr. Schulz said it best - chronic stress is never a good thing, but getting a kid like Alex to experience some acute stress going into this meet is important for him. Plus the thing they're doing is a decently difficult physical activity and something that will be useful in a lot of circumstances in sport andlife. I'm with that.

The girls in the platforms next to Lira and Sharp were constantly pointing at them and gawking at their muscular definition. I heard someone else say this, and also saw it for myself.

The purpose of Champions Club Powerlifting has a selfish core. It is in place to recruit kids for the Champions Club, plain and simple. Alex Schulz would not be a part of our gym right now if James Swanson did not participate in Coach T's powerlifting sessions during Summer. Howeva (in a Stephen A. Snith voice), the extremities are not so selfish. Coach T is really into the Powerlifting thing and he believes that he can make a change in the form standards that are currently accepted in our local community. A program like this would help him in that respect, and Because It Helps Coach T is a good enough reason for just about anything. If he was willing to do that, it could also serve as an avenue for a NuNu/Izzy/Sammy kind of kid who does not really excel in any one particular sport; this could give them some extra motivation to keep training in the same way basketball kept me training. Lastly, it's really freaking simple; just do a back squat, a bench press, and a deadlift. We do two of those 3 often in the Champions Club. So it was agreed with Coach T and I that if an athlete from the gym had good enough form, they could jump a meet without training and practicing with Champions Club Powerlifting just to show off. This is what Lira, Dillon, and Josh did. Selfishly I hope they don't pursue the powerlifting thing full-time because I think it would limit the other athletic opportunities they have. If they do catch on to it, though, I can't think of a better person to lead them than Coach T.