Wednesday 4th April 2018
Strength – 10 Rounds for quality
10 Push Ups
10 Ring Rows
Conditioning (In pairs) – 6 Rounds for time:
400m Run
15 Overhead Squats 42.5/30
How the barbell helped me in the garden all day long
Typically, I like to write a blog post that will provide some value to our community, and include tips or tricks on how to be happier, healthier and fitter. But, for today I’m just going to share a story from one of our members that makes me smile and brings me a bit of joy. Hopefully, it brings a smile to your day as well.
In 2015 we had a lady join our community from overseas. I’ll call her “Mary” for the purposes of the story, and Mary was a former high performing soccer player and a very busy professional (hence the overseas travel and location within Whanganui).
When Mary was located to Whanganui she looked up CrossFit Whanganui and came along for a free trial class. At the end of the free trial class (showing her how we air squat) we did a 10 min AMRAP of Squats, sit ups and push ups. To this day, Mary still holds the record for newbies.
She loved the intensity, community and coaching of CFW and joined the very next Onramp. Also coming with her was her husband, “Joseph”. Joseph was a very active dude, and loved to cycle and trek around with his wife. After years of running and cycling Josephs hips were pretty shoddy and he had difficulty squatting/lunging or jumping. His most used expression in the early days was “I probably won’t go too hard, I’m really just here to support my wife and spend time with her”. That was completely fine with us, and we smirked as he joined in and did the scaled versions of the movements, slowly improving every session.
This went on for about 9 months, and when it came time for the whanau to relocate elsewhere in the world, I had one of the best conversations with an athlete that I’ve ever had in five years of coaching.
He hugged us and thanked us for the wods. The day before he spent all day in his garden cleaning it up and packing to leave and for the first time in a long time, he was not sore the day after.
We often forget the core reason we use functional movements in our workouts. It is not so that we can have abs. It is not so that we can win a local fitness comp. It is to make us better humans and help us live our lives without pain and as happy as possible.
I hope this story brought a smile to your day…remembering these two awesome people has definitely improved mine.