CrossFit Athletic Group

Champions Club Summer 2023 has started off even better than I anticipated; 2019 was our biggest Summer with 130 being our final number, and we are already a little over 150, with 5 weeks still left to pick up some new names. Having this many people has been a challenge I haven't experienced yet, but it's probably the most fun challenge I could ask for. So I thought I'd share a few observations here in one post instead of spreading them out in different ones.

Website. Yeah man, I just don't have it in me right now to write on the regular, which is a little bit of a shame because I have posts drafted up about the Farm System, AAU basketball season, more on the concept of want (or lack thereof), ranking and averaging out your performances in Benchmark workouts, who's actually responsible for your pr's on Benchmark workouts, the Monkeys, and the clock being 7-10 minutes ahead in the gym. I started doing pictues to accompany the Workout of the Day, and then I didn't (names and times are accurate, though). One of the main functions I realized this website serves is my own personal thought-organizer, so I suppose my scatterbrainedness in recent weeks might have something to do with not writing on here. In the meantime, I suppose I'll just have to resort to, you know, actually saying my thoughts and observations to people directly. As many of you know I'm not the confrontational type, so this has been new to me. All I can do is stay as politically correct as possible and hope nobody's feelings get hurt.

The Money Cup. I didn't update, in the spring (I don't think), but I think we'll be good this Summer. I usually expect about 2-3 people to miss Summer payments every year, so if that stays true with this big number then we'll probably be caught up a bit from the spring. Or maybe not. I'm not basing it off anything other than a gut feeling.

150? Yeah, man. That's what I've always heard is the magic number coaches begin to lose control. From Summmer 2021 Final Attendance:

There are so many intangibles that goes into what makes a Summer great, and also makes it really unfair to compare one to another. But from a sheer numbers perspective this is clearly the best Summer we've ever seen, and by quite a long shot. And that also doesn't take into account the overflowing attendance on weekend sessions. I honestly can't fathom what 150 people... Champions Club people... would look like, or how that could be managed. We can take a few more Babies and Double-A kids, but otherwise we're just about full, y'all.

That was written before we knew the Robinsons existed. What it looks like, from my eye view, is actually really, scary good. I don't really see any crazy standouts or anyone lagging way behind, and while I definitely may be missing something, I've looked pretty thoroughly. This brings up a very arbitrary but very important problem...

AOTS. In sports the purpose of having someone to compete against is to beat them; it's to humiliate and abuse them and to slowly and joyfully destroy their will until they no longer want to compete against you... and then you say, "Hell nah! We're running that back!"

CrossFit, however, is not like that because CrossFit was not invented as a sport, it was invented to make a gymnast better at his sport and then scaled to the masses so that everyone else could be better at whatever else they wanted to do. It originally began as an individual thing and then when the demand grew to the point where Coach Glassman could not handle any more one-on-one sessions, he began pairing the athletes together at the same session and their intensity naturally increased. The Sport of Fitness happened as a byproduct.

The purpose of competition in CrossFit is to help pull you along faster, further, and more powerfully than you can by yourself When Chase finished Kelly, the very last thing he wanted to say was, "Hell nah Cecilia, we're running that back!"

As the Sport of Fitness evolved into a potential career path, so did the purpose of competition. The CrossFit Games served as a way for athletes to really push the boundaries of the phrase "We fail at the margins of our experience" in all directions at once. As a result, CrossFit created a select crowd that truly had no weakness. Well, until they were forced to show their weakness.

Because of the diversity we have in the Champions Club right now, it's so difficult to tell who is truly doing the best because it not only depends on the workout, but also who is at that session. Say, for example, Aaron does Murph at the 3:30 session and beats Mr. Mark and Mr. Ron; that looks great for him! But what if Zander, David Sap, and Owen come to the 4:30 session: now they all look like the fittest guys in the gym. Or, they would, except Matt is back on our roster this Summer.

Matt Fecht is the only person I've ever met who has the physical capacity to make Murph look like a nice, solid warmup; he would also finish 2 minutes behind Aaron if Fran was the workout of the day. So the question becomes how to I gauge these results I'm seeing? How do I compare Chase getting the top Kelly time of the Day with Mr. Curtis beating his time from last year by 10(!!) minutes. Last year's two-person race was the most difficult decision I've ever made in the history of the Champions Club, but I definitely knew the winner would be either Bubs or Aaron. This year I have no freaking idea. I think Cecilia and Aaron have both worked their way back to being the fittest girl and guy in the gym by a slim margin, but I would not say either is running away with the award. To say that half of the gym is in the running would not be too much of an exaggeration: From Mrs. Carey to Jessica, Mr. Ron to Owen, Mr. Carey to Chase, Mrs. Van to Madison, Mr. Kuiper to Michael Banet. Gun to my head I still say a parent gets it, but man, I am overwhelmed in the best way possible.

Kowalski: Status Report? It is going about as good as I could have hoped. JB, Natalie, and Michael are the three experiments that have shown the most return, and Bread, Zeena, and Dita are also right there with them. I have tried to avoid talking to the parents about their kids in favor of talking about themselves, but when I do talk to Mr. Gjon about Dita, or Mr. Andrew about Reese, or Mrs. Lanette about Kadence, the message has been consistent: give them a chance to show they want it, and to see the natural consequences for not wanting it. I am a handful and a headache to deal with as a coach during any given workout; my voice is best saved for someone who wants to be there and is ready for it. And if they're not: no biggie! Just keep them plugged in until the time is right.

The plug. For a few years, the goal of the Farm System has been to blur the lines between when someone joins the group; a stranger walking into the gym at any time should have a difficult time determing who is and who isn't in the actual session. I am about the furthest possible thing from a stranger to the Champions Club, and the 10 am session has me more confused than Mr. Ron at a sign language convention. Here's a picture from the 10 am session after Kelly:

First off, no, Rae has not signed a waver, and I have no idea how she got up there, or when the rest of the minions dragged the blue mat under her. Secondly, her session is supposed to be on Sundays, and Kelly happened on a Thursday, so I have no idea what she was doing here in the first place. Thirdly, the 9 am session still hadn't left from their workout. Fourthly, this picture was taken at 10:39 am and the 10 am session still hadn't began yet.

Two months ago I planned on Dillon, Madison and crew to be planting their flag at 10 am for the 5th Summer in a row. A month ago I planned on Dylan and the Backos Boys to get an extra hour of sleep and pick up where they left off last Summer. Now, it seems the Farm System has invaded 10 am. Spontaneous baseball games sprout on the turf and, more often than not, some of the Babies will venture over towards our end talking about, "Can I do the workout?" So here's the invite to anyone: Do you know any stray kids in your neighborhood who look like they could be perfect candidates for liabiity risks? Do you have children you're so embarrassed about and keep hidden in the basement that need a place to be bullied into normalcy? Mel, you want to ship your kids here to feed off paint chips and chocolate milk and learn how to become fire hazards? Mrs. Tara, do you need to drop Coach Casey off somewhere while you run some errands? Man do we have the place for you!

Conclusion.