CrossFit Athletic Group

The other day I messed up feeding the dogs; it did not end well. Instead of separating the chicken legs in my hands I accidentally dropped them on the ground and Champion and Zebo went absolutely apeshit. It took us a good minute to detach their jaws from each other. This is not the first time it's happened. This is the first time, however, I thought of Michael Banet and Josh Bennis while they were fighting.

See, Champion and Zebo were never trained to have manners. They were never trained to understand the concept of sharing or conflict resolution. In fact, they were never trained at all. There were two chicken legs on the ground RIGHT NOW, and they were hungry RIGHT NOW. There was no process or progression. No preemptive growling or other verbal communication. It was the domestic animal equivalent to stepping on a landmine; there's nothing then suddenly there is everything.

A few days earlier I had witnessed the exact opposite; the entire Double-A session twinkletoeing around in attempts to take each other's lunch.

...........

One of the common requests I'll get from parents or kids is to help improve speed. We succeed with this in literally every case we've seen... in the gym. Then a year later the request will come up again, when the demands have apparently not been met. After more digging I realize it's not straight line speed they necessarily wanted, but rather "game speed." It's the burst to hit a hole hard between the guard and tackle, the ability to make one move and blow by a defender, the agility to change direction and get to a ball hit cross court.

In other words, in some cases the CrossFit has not translated to the field or court. Allow me to bring in Dean for a little bit to help explain.

Hello. Are you calling for me because it's Halloween and you want me to scare some people at the gym?

No! No, we are done with that. Although Amy stopped by a week or so back. She says hi.

So why are you calling me out?

We've gone over this. I call you out here so I don't have to resort to paragraph structure and such.

Let me guess, you're getting frustrated over things you can't control.

Am I really that predictable?... Okay, but I think I can with this one! That's the thing. There have been plenty of cases where the speed in the gym has shown in the sports.

And now you're going to try to draw parallels between two untrained animals fighting like... animals... and human beings acting like human beings?

Yes!

Okay, I'll get the popcorn.

Okay here we go. In 2019 I took a few trips to watch Sara Daley teach English to these cool little foreign kids at her elementary school. It was awesome! The main thing I came away with in that setting was a new appreciation of the fact that everything we do is learned at some point - whether formally or informally, verbally or nonverbally. Sara was great in her role.

This has been most easily observed at the gym in two ways: running in general, and the Babies session in specific.

The two people who stand out the most on either ends of the running spectrum are Adam Bordoley and Nicole Murley. Adam was... you guys remember Adam right? Inventor of the Dakota rule (surprisingly it wasn't Dakota who invented it), owner of the tightest hamstrings in the gym, and also really, really fast. He was a legit sprinter in a tough league and he looked every bit of it when he sprinted. When he didn't sprint... whoa Nelly. The poor lad just couldn't get his legs to connect to the rest of his body. He was a track athlete his entire life and sprinting was all he knew; it took quite a few months for him to gain the body control needed to slow down his lifting and running.

Murley, on the other hand, was an endurance athlete in every sense of the phrase. She played 4 sports in high school - all in the endurance realm (wraastling, cross country, track, and swimming). Her default habit was going at a speed that could be sustained over a long period of time. In college she worked her way from being a walk-on runner at Madonna to a top-3 runner on the team and finally breaking 20-minutes in the 5k. Her specialty was exposed on hill sprints and short CrossFit workouts. You want a 2:00 400 and she'll give you a 1:30; you want a 1:15 400 and she'll still give you a 1:30.

On the contrary Shannon, Saporito, and Matt Fecht, while having their own specialties, all operated well at different speeds and I think that has to do with their exposure to those speeds. Not just once-in-a-while exposure but consistent exposure through sports (baseball, hockey, football, and basketball) and their diversified running training.

You just wrote about 400 words about running. I thought you hated running?

I hate track.

So does that mean you're going to write 800 words about the Babies? I don't have that attention span.

No, thankfully I just have a video.

Who the devil is that little one thwacking the pool noodle around at all these taller people?

That, my departed companion, is Johnny J. 1/6 of the Nevarez clan.

But he's just thumping them! Nonstop! Like an endless loop of Whack-a-Mole.

Isn't it awesome!

But they're not even retaliating! They barely brushed him with their noodle?

Exactly! Though careful with your choice of words, Jacob and Mr. Malak read these posts. Anyway, why do you suppose they aren't doing anything?

Aren't there some laws on your earth against abusing children?

Yup! Both Koltin and Mrs. Carey know that if they actually swing as hard as they can (or even much harder than they are now) they would send Johnny J into a wailing fit like his mom just spilled water on his shirt.

It's called "touch," in sports terms. They are putting a touch on their play in the same way they can't shoot a layup with the same force as a full-court shot, or they can't throw a 20-yard pass with the same force they throw a 70-yard pass.

This is what I've been noticing at the Babies session (and Double-A session) when I give them free time. They all have the breaks on when they play except for Cameron - which, coincidentally, is why I think he has a lot of athletic upside despite being related to that.

So you're suggesting we get JB and Michael to fight like dogs?

No! The Jump Ball Drill at the Double-A session is an experimental replacement for pull-ups, not necessarily targeted to teach aggression. I'm just saying that we have to understand that everything we are doing is developing a habit for something. The dogs have never been trained to know any different habits and they displayed a scary powerful output.

If you run slow more often than you run fast, and you run fast more often then you RUN REALLY FAST, then it is no mystery as to why the speed is not to your liking.

And you think this is in your control?

Yes! Relative to the individual. It's learned. Or, at least 50/50. It's the reason we see push press reps get better as the reps go on despite fatigue kicking in.

It really comes down to having a standard and holding yourself, or your team, to it. Dillon and Jessica would stay back on the turf for hours practicing one single soccer thing until the speed was up to the standard they wanted. And it worked. I would sit there and watch the start product look slow, then over time their brains would gradually make a better and better connection with their feet, and the end product looked like someone who just went through 6 months of "speed and agility" training.

But if they practice at that speed for one hour on the turf, then go to their 2-hour soccer practice where a coach isn't holding them accountable to that standard, then the habit won't be built properly. This is what I think is happening with Madison and Chase at the moment. They're the two kids who probably have the biggest gap in their CrossFit performance and sports performance; they do CrossFit at an All-State level intensity, and play at an All-League intensity. I understand a lot of this has to do with environment.

Not a lot of room to slack on intensity here.

The reason I think this is in my control is because our whole approach to CrossFit centers around you guys being able to perform without a coach. I've been there, dude. I know how difficult it is to go from playing basketball in Detroit to playing basketball in the suburbs. It just takes extra awareness to understand what's going on and use every opportunity you have to build a habit.