Certified!

Last Friday, Chip and I hopped the plane to Milano, Italy.  I was on a mission to get certified as a Level I Crossfit Trainer. Why get my Level I you ask?  Am I going to open a box, coach, or anything else? Probably not.  But, training alone or with just a few people is HARD. You constantly question whether you're doing it right. How best do you program your training for youself? Oh, and not working right now really makes me wonder what I'm doing with my life. Why I didn't take a career in fitness or physical therapy, I will never know....

So, the Cert.  Held at CrossGym Milano. A great facility. The day started with lectures on what is CrossFit, what is fitness. Then a squat lecture. Small group time on squats, then a workout. TABATA! :) Then we broke for lunch and came back for more lectures and small group time, then Fran!

This was an odd weekend to say the least.  This was not your typical crossfit group.  There were americans, brits, lots of italians, germans, austrians, spanish, czechs, hungarians....and only about 40% actually spoke conversational English. The entire weekend was done in English and Italian. Yes, everything was translated.  The HQ staff were not prepared for this but did an amazing job nonetheless. So, you've got language barriers.  Then, a bunch were italian personal trainers who just wanted to learn about CF not actually do CF. (I think) Also, in terms of respecting the HQ staff and other trainers....there was a crowd that chitchatted ALL DAY LONG. It was incredibly distracting.  Then you had people asking, on day 2, "What does RX mean". Sigh...the days are long enough at a normal cert--9-5.  Ours went more like 9-7 or later and I'm sure the staff had to shorten certain sections because the lectures took forever to translate.  Then, on day 2, it took 45min to just EXPLAIN the test. A good portion of the crowd had never even taken a scantron exam.  

In the end, I realized that all the doubts I had about my knowledge of crossfit, both the exercises and the concepts, were false.  Jerry Hill and CFOT more than prepared me to do this and to now carry this knowledge and the kool-aid out into the Schweinfurt community.  I realized this weekend that I came from a box and enviornment that was super hard core intense crossfit, but that in reality the spirit of crossfit is about spreading the importance of functional fitness, caring for your body, and building a community of fitness.  What is important is not your max rep deadlift, Fran time, Murph time, consecutive pullups, etc.  It is about loving your body enough to make it move they way it was meant to and making it strong, inside and out.

So, the best part of the weekend was Fran.  Since moving to Germany, my training has been spotty, less than intense, uncoordinated, outside of the last 4-6 weeks of training OPT with Jason. Overall,  I'd felt like I've lost strength, gained some weight, confidence, etc. I wanted to PR on Fran when I signed up for this. 

I went in thinking this is so not happening. I'm not sure I can do 5 pullups, let alone 45, and 65# thrusters? Yea, right. I've only done that once in the past year.   They gave a 10min time limit on Fran.  I told Trainer Courtney that I was going for it RX'd but wouldn't likely make the cutoff, but I didn't care.  She said, go for it. I'll get you there. I was 1 of 6 women at the cert and the only one with a kipping pullup and the only to attempt RX'd.  I barely remember much of the WOD, but I do know my right quad felt like it was going to tear with each thruster.  Round of 21 wasn't so bad.  I split the thrusters on round 2 into 5's. Starting round 3 I was at like six minutes...NO WAY! I blew through the 9's. I didn't get chin over the bar on 2 pullups that last round and by now I had like 3 sets of trainers eyes on me---no cheating here--they called every rep. I finished in 8:29. A new PR.  Not only a PR, but a PR by almost 4 minutes!!!  After a morning TABATA score of 17. The intensity and explosion that came out of me was scary. I hadn't gone all out like that since Murph on my last day at CFOT.  That one simple WOD gave me more confidence about my fitness that I've had in years.  Clearly, not every day has to be at peak intensity. Train constantly varied and be ready for anything. That's what I did, and I was ready.

Monday was a day for sighseeing!