CrossFit Athletic Group

Take a look at this picture from a November 2017 Babies session:

No support structure of 32301 Stephenson was safe from Josh Bennis finger/footprints. That is still the case today but there has been a very interesting transition that happened this fall: Josh doesn't have to be tricked into working out.

If I may briefly backtrack, the Babies session was restarted in 2016 with one single kid (Jacqueline Asmar - bottom right of the picture above) and a stubborn idea that the Champions Club needed to be broken down and built again, starting with the youngest age group possible. It was a formula that would probably take a decade to see come to fruition but was the only formula that might be able to cover up for the Champions Club's one major business flaw: it's business owner is not very good at "business". Murley needs some credit for this one too, because she helped organize the big-picture methodology of the Farm System; the goal of the Babies group was to desguise general movement patterns as fun. This so blatantly and obviously worked, as our Babies sessions would have like 19 kids in them right up until the lockdowns started. Josh was having fun in every sense of the word, and managed to mimic his way to 11 handstand push-ups, stopping only when he got bored of being an upside down treefrog.

As I've talked about before, the lockdowns gave me such an incredible opportunity to reevaluate what the Champions Club needed at all levels, and one of the main conclusions I came to was that I believed kids would be rewarded in the long run for delaying the formal coaching as long as possible. This realization came at a very trying time, though, because we had 4 superstar prospects in Single-A: Josh Bennis, Natalie Nevarez, Zeena Ndana, and Michael Banet. Above their athletic capacities and frames, all four had ties that would potentially keep them connected to the Champions Club for, like, as long as Mrs. Nevarez and Anto want to keep coming to the Champions Club. Which is hopefully forever.  So it was my 2014 Chris mentality vs. my 2020 Chris mentality: "Look at how dope I can make a 11-year old kid move" vs. "who cares, call me back when they're 17."

And this is where a big credit is due to the parenting of Mr. and Mrs. Bennis: in a youth sports environment that makes soccer training for toddlers a viable full-time occupation (ask Cecilia about that, by the way), Mr. and Mrs. B went against the trend and played the long game, trusting the glaring common sense that if Josh felt comfortable enough to be at the gym all the time, eventually that will lead to him doing workouts when the time is right. So for two years Josh fielded the "do you want to jump in the workout with your parents?" question, and most of the time he said, "nah, I'd rather play."

This fall, however, that answer started to change; now a 7th grader, he chose to jump in more workouts than usual. As time went on, I stopped asking and just assumed. He told me to do so. And even today, I was stuck between him, Mrs. Hana, Mrs. Van, and Mrs. Carey for Athlete of the Fall, when I saw him huddled in the corner of the garage door to block the nasty wind, waiting for me to unlock the doors. This was the same kid who, just a few months ago, had "all that potential" and wanted to play instead.

Yeah, this one is going to JB.

His version of box jumpsThe thing is, the "delay formal coaching as long as possible" process is still in the works for him; he's still in the Double-A session. He still gets the short-end on partners if he wants to jump in a team workout, or might get left out if there's not enough equipment or the workout is more complicated than usual. He'll still do jump-and-touch instead of heavy cleans, or take Michael Banet's lunch money instead of pull-ups. And if someone asks why, I'd just come back with, "why not?" Knowing all that, he can do 18 rounds of Cindy, 90-something pounds on a clean, 185 on a deadlift, and can almost beat Mr. Ron in a run. Nobody reading this or coaching him can say they could do that at his age. And the kid goes out of his way to work out in a rusty old warehouse literally every day whether it's 90 degrees or 9 degrees. Play on, playa.

Did I know at the time I was taking a picture of all four AOTF candidates? Yes.

...........

Mrs. Carey needs to be given a big shout-out this Fall. She was the Aaron to Josh's Bubs from the Summer. The consistency she's shown over the past 12 years is absurd and is more impressive than any of Evan's lifts or Mr. Mark's runs. But even more than that, what she's provided is a familiar face that any wondering Champions Club kid can always come back to. And that proved to be the highights of the fall.

David Saporito is back at the Champions Club. I cannot stress to you how much this both improbable - given the tire incident - and important. The kid provides an incredible floor as to what our fittest male athlete will be, and also adds a Coach Casey-level community presence. 5-star recruit, no doubt. He didn't know Mr. Mark, Mr. Robinson, or Mrs. Tara when he first came back in September, but he sure as hell knew Mrs. Carey.

Alyssa Jabara is back at the Champions Club. And just in the nick of time too, because Bubs was getting reeeeaaaaallllllyyyy confident in her lifting numbers. Jabara brings in that team-player mentality coming off a 4-year college softball career but is also ready to take some Me Time out for herself every day. As Mr. Carey would say, "she's a good egg" and someone that makes a session better the instant whe walks in.

I always figured we'd get those two back at some point in time, but I never imagined I'd be hearing back from Laura Camargo after her brief stint with us. She originally rolled though after we finished our track conditioning sessions at Stoney Creek, but the drive and the timing wasn't right. Now she lives even further away but has managed to make it in 4 times per week, highlighted by a standing ovation at the 5:30 session after some heavy power snatches.

The way I kind of view the Champions Club right now is like a very well-connected ecosystem that stretches out further than we can see (except when everyone comes together at Thanksgiving and Christmas). Our main group usually resides in the 30s every day - sometimes 40s - but you never know when the timing will be right for Sam and Sarah Curtis to come in on the regular, or Matt Fecht and Elizabeth Banet to make their return like Sap and Jabara, or one of the parents from the Babies session to follow the paradigm Mr. and Mrs. Bennis started in 2018. Ideally, our regular, everyday group would represent more of our ecosystem, but eventually it will happen. We have that Blue Magic, baby, and it's just a matter of time before the pressure of this dopeness does its thing.

Once in the Champions Club, always in the Champions Club!