CrossFit Athletic Group

Any movement can be broken down into a start position, a transition position, and a finish position. During his Free+style coonnection seminars, Carl Paoli used to spend most of his time teaching and lecturing on the transition positions because they're the most difficult. Take a squat, for example: The starting position of a squat is standing straight, the finish position is also standing straight, the transition position is at the bottom, hips below the knees (unless you're Mrs. Tara on Elizabeth). The starting position should be the easiest, and the finish position is the second easiest, but good Lord sometimes it can feel like you will never make it out of the transition.

Carl also teaches that, despite being so difficult, the transition position is where the magic happens because it's where we can spot our weaknesses and build progressions for the future.

The Champions Club as a whole is in a transition and I would like to share why that is and where we are going from here.

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Verse 1: A Gym for Athletes

I think it is important to understand the origins of the Champions Club: it was created as a gym for high school athletes. Not parents, not middle school kids, not babies, not Mrs. Gloria. High school kids. Me (a college athlete) and Brian (thought he was an athlete) were approached by Ryan Richard and (Cap'n) Jack Trastevere to help them get better at lacrosse, then 28 more kids followed. 12 Summers later that is still the identity I'm looking for here.

This train is moving towards a destination where a random November weekday brings 50 people in attendance, 20 of whom are high school kids, 15 are parents, 10 are middle schoolers, and the last 5 would be Shakes, Jay, Evan, Sydney, and Schott.

Crap, and Erica. I keep forgetting about Erica! Make it 51 then...

Double crap... and Bubs. But you get the idea.

Being stationed inside the walls of a high school the first two years kept that balance almost automatically, but when we moved out on our own in 2012 I took that demographic for granted, not understanding how "wanting" to be a gym for athletes didn't just make it happen. I also felt pressured to take just about any good-natured someone who walked through the doors because, although Champions Club, Inc. has never lost money in a single month, we used to scrape it real close. Plus I had a goal of having 100 people in the gym (which now serves as a heavy reminder to set goals based on the process, not an end point). That open-door policy proved to be the reason we couldn't replicate the Freaks generation in Summers 2014-2018, leading to our loss of identity and poor Danielle Woooooooooorden being an only child, (Not having a high school generation for her is one of the biggest regrets I have as a coach, along with never making it to one of Alyssa Jabara's college softball games).

Summer 2019 was an absolute game changer - which is a term that gets thrown around a lot but when it comes to reclaiming our identity, it's difficult to compete with a rookie class so loaded that Dillon Sharp, Alex Schulz, Caitlin and Emily O'Malley, Mrs. Hana, and Adam Bordoley didn't make the picture. That Summer's rookie class provided a springboard to the Foley invasion of late-2019 and the Lamphere invasion of early-2020.

Verse 2: A New Standard Revisited

The lockdowns that happened a few months later provided a different kind of springboard: one for me as a coach. It was this session right here, actually, that did it:

It was so got damn cold on this "8 am at Exchange" morning with squat jumps and L-sits and I remember coming to the harsh, humbling, realization that I had been giving more to Cecilia, Aaron, Javier, and Alejandro than I had given anyone else in the Champions Club, ever. I was completely myself for those four kids, without holding anything back. I was embarrassed to admit that I didn't compromise with them, but I did with Mr. Wonsil and Mama V; that I challenged them in uncomfortable ways I didn't challenge the Banet girls or Saporito; that I held them to a standard I didn't hold Big Kris to.

Up to that point the Champions Club was getting about 70% of my effort, and unfortunately that's not the important part; the work it takes for the last 30% was really my identity as an athlete and definitely is now as a coach, but year after year I would discard it with the thought "not everyone operates like me". It's annoying to think how much more there was to Matt Fecht or Shannon's potential that could've been explored if I wasn't such a pansy.

So with thoughts like that in mind, I made the committment to start this whole thing over again - which marks the second time since 2017 I did that. Dillon and Jessica were the first two Champions Club high schoolers ever that were held to a high standard. Read that sentence again. I will always feel in debt to them for accepting that challenge and thriving; Chase, Jaylee, Lulu, and Conamora will be better off because of those two. And since this is a gym centered around kids, that means Mr. Carey, Mr. Kuiper, Mrs. Gloria, Bubs, and all you other lucky ducks have had to adjust to the new standard as well, and you guys did not disappoint. I would also like to give a special nod to Crystal, Bewick, and Woorden - three people that really made me proud with how they worked through the transition!

I can tell you with 100% certainty from experience in basketball, football, track (especially track), and CrossFit that it is way easier to set standards from the start than it is to change them midway through the coaching tenure. I really feel for people like Fry, Lindsey, Reggie, Jacob, Murley, Mr. Z, and anyone else that might've got caught in the transition feeling unwanted; I definitely did not communicate the vision well. A better coach would have been able to keep them around. 

Verse 3: Sports

Over the last year and some change I've learned a lot about the vulnerabilities of truly centering a gym around teenagers. The main thing the Champions Club has going against us is the fact that many adults rely on youth sports as their primary source of money; all other bad things - sport specialization, lack of off-season, too many games, bad practice habits, burnout, coronavirus, the LA Lakers, melting of the polar ice caps, and the songs in Frozen - can be traced back to that. As long as a coach needs Lily Cavataio to pay his rent bill, he'll be scheduling soccer stuff for her year-round and charging for it.

Understand, though, I have absolutely zero problem with someone touching a basketball every single day of the year, it just becomes really important to have a dedicated time where the end product that day isn't more important than the process of addressing the limiting factor. Tournaments build hype, practice builds skill, and if the hype is ever going to reach its potential it needs to take the backseat to practicing more often than not.

One solution to this vulnerability for the Champions Club is to get kids young enough before the money becomes a factor. How young, exactly? Well, that's difficult to tell because both the Babies session and the middle-school session are also in micro-transitions as we speak (Mallory, Kendall, and Josh Bennis - the "Double-A" level - are really making me rethink the way I've previously "coached" those sessions). My guess is somewhere between 10-12 year-old range is the prime time to build relationships like we have with Conamora now, who's mom has no problem missing a random soccer session in December for a CrossFit workout if that's Conamora's limiting factor at the time.

In most cases it seems the wrong thing only lasts until the right thing is discovered. I truly believe the way we approach CrossFit will set up young athletes for long-term success in their sports and I am patient enough to let that reputation build... or fail, in which case we'll just hit restart again. Either way, this train is moving towards a day where a kid has to step completely away from their travel sport for 3 months if they want to make our roster.

Verse 4: New Kids on the Block

So are we bringing in new people right now? Well, let me shoot a question back: who do we need?

• Parents? Are the Vans and Careys and crew going anywhere? 
• Older kids? I'm good with Shakes, Jay, Evan, Schott, Erica, and Sydney. Plus there's a lot of college kids on the verge of graduating. Bethany seems to be fitting in.
• College Kids? Anto and Bubs are local, Owen, Danielle, Aaron, Luke, Noah, and Cecilia are always back during Christmas and Summer. Mix of high end athletes and regular hard workers.
• High school kids? We just graduated Dillon and Jess, but Madison, Chase, Sarah, and Jaylee are all underclassmen. Mix of high end athletes and regular hard workers.
• Middle school? Lulu and Conamora. Enough said. Or, it would be enough said if we didn't also have Lily and Sam. Mix of high end athletes and regular hard workers.
• Younger than middle school? JB, Kendall, Mallory, a stable of Nevarez kids, and another Banet?

Straight up, assuming there are no major job changes or movings, the Summer 2021 roster has the Champions Club set for the next 7 years. So on the record, no, we are not taking new people. I want to concentrate on who we got right now. The Tampa Bay Rays don't need trades or free agents at the moment.

That being said... uh, I am currently looking for new people. Here's who I have in mind:

• Kids - 7th grade or younger, preferably unathletic as all hell but willing to show up every day
• Parents - teacher and/or coach that played team sports growing up

Bottom line: we need to keep feeding the lowest levels of the farm system, both from a perspective of getting ahead of the sports curve mentioned above and for the long-term health of the gym. Plus we have a lot of connections with great athletes, so time to balance that out with some fat kids who are ready to outwork the superstars This doesn't mean I wouldn't take a Mrs. Burton or a Sydney Larson, it just means I am really going to do extra homework to make sure they fit.

Currently we have 6 main recruiters: Mrs. Teri, Mrs. Regine, Coach Casey, Mr. Malak, Coach T, and Shannon. What is great about them is they have such a good feel for who to ask and who not to ask. In fact, I routinely hear Mrs. Regine and Mrs. Teri gently steering away some red flags. The best way to make cuts, after all, is to not have 100 kids at tryouts.

My favorite recruiting, however, is done by everyone individually taking care of their own personal fitness and health - and I promise that's not just a cop-out. Shakes, for example, has not directly brought one person* that stuck during her 7-year career. She has, however, done everything in her ability to make this place appealing to New Kids. The significance of that goes beyond anything that can be tallied.

So if someone catches your eye that might fit well, make the connection. Otherwise keep playing your role in what makes this place unique. People initially come here because of what they get from me, but they stay long-term because of what they get from you.

*technically she brought in Jen Ash, who brought in Evan; also she brought Ally, but I kinda put College Kids in a different category

Verse 5: CrossFit by Community

Of course, all of this brings to attention the biggest vulnerability of all: what if something happens to me?

Most gyms have multiple coaches, multiple owners, automated systems, and just plain-old structure and organization that we don't have: my business plan has always been to play sports as long as possible, then coach once my career is over, then die. I am good with this trade-off because the more formal something is the less authentic it feels. However... yeah... the downside is also obvious. This is something I thought of back in 2019, and since then I've always been stumped at who would replace me. But on Christmas day this past year, after my sessions with Javier and Chase, I realized that the Something Happens To Chris Plan isn't for someone else to take over, but rather for the Champions Club to keep operating as its own community without a head coach.

To reach that state of security there are two things that need to be developed, and I'm not sure in which order. One of them is athlete independence: you guys need to move with great form and scale workouts without my coaching. The other is an unconditionally strong community: our group has to be tough and unselfish and made from the same kinds of people. So if one day my curiosity gets the better of me when I see a DO NOT TOUCH, HIGH VOLTAGE sign, or I trash talk Todd the Plumber at the rugby game, I am relying on a Champions Club that is resilient and empowering; as luck would have it both of those things are just as important if I'm gone as they are if I'm right there every session.

...........

I have sat on this little bottom section here for about three weeks trying to wrap the post up, hoping something would come to me. Welp, it's 2:30 pm on Sunday, I still haven't left the gym from this morning, and all I can really think about is how much freaking fun I'm having at this place. I love where the Champions Club is at and I am so excited for the direction we're headed. I am the point guard, wearing number 11 and a wrist band on the left arm, ankle socks exposing my massive calves; the Lamphere crew is running the right wing, leaving a subtle scent of farm animals and lettuce; the soccer families are running the left wing on their heels; our veterans are rim running jogging; and the Double-A generation is taking the ball out and trailing, waiting for their turn.

If our current momentum continues the next few years will be as exciting as the Phoenix Suns Steve Nash days. We'll figure out transition defense when we get to that end of the court.