Aaron’s Level I Certification Report

Doing Crossfit for a little over a year now has made me redefine what my paradigm of fitness was.  I will never forget training for my black belt and thinking that I was in pretty good shape until I did “Fran” for the very first time.  As most of you already know Fran is a relatively simple workout with 21-15-9 reps of thursters and pull-ups which took me over 17 minutes to complete the workout.  It was so difficult for me that I had to lie on the ground for nearly 2 hours just recuperate.  I thought I was in pretty good shape.  My current best time for the Fran workout now is 4:53 and I can fully recover anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes afterwards.

I knew going into this certification that it was going to be an amazing life changing event.  Everyone I talked to that had previously gone had highly recommended the certification because it was so well put together.  They were right and I highly recommend the certification for anyone that is interested in learning the true definition of fitness.  Some of the other key takeaways that I got from the certification was in the areas of the 10 physical skills, and the metabolic pathways, and class programming.  I also learned some amazing things from some of the top athletes in the world.  Athletes like Jason Khalipa and Josh Everett.

Definition of Crossfit

The shortest definition of Crossfit is constantly varied, functional movement at high-intensity.  The constantly very and high-intensity part is pretty easy to understand but what they went into great detail to define what functional movement was.  Movement that is functional must be naturally occurring in everyday life with activities like shoveling your driveway or picking up a bag of dog food can carrying it into your house.  Movements that are essential like simply getting off the toilet.   Lack of functional movement is surprisingly one of the number one reasons why people need to be an assisted living.  Movements that rely on core to extremity are functional movements because this is how we throw a baseball,  hit volleyball or even kick a soccer ball.  And most importantly functional movement must be safe.

The 10 Physical Skills

The first four of the 10 physical skills are cardiovascular endurance, stamina, strength, and flexibility.  These change the cellular structure of your body.  The next four are accuracy, agility, balance, and coordination.  These skills rely on neurological brain development.  The last two physical skills are power and speed which fall into both categories.  Crossfit specializes in making sure that it covers all of these physical skills.

Metabolic Pathways

I was fascinated with this section.  The first pathway is the Phosphagen which is where the power lifters only live.  They can lift massive loads but only for extremely short periods of time.   These guys are fun to spare and grapple because they are gassed in about 30 seconds.   They have a hard time even shoveling their driveway or even bring in bags of groceries.  I hope none of these guys are put in a situation where they would have to rescue their family out of a burning building.  The other extreme pathway is the Oxidative.  This is where the extreme long distance ironman athletes live.  It was funny to hear that Travel Magazine named the fittest man in the world as the seven time winner of a Ironman competition.  But this so-called fittest man in the world could not bench press 95 pounds and his vertical jump was only a few inches.  The middle pathway and the pathway that Crossfit does most of its training in is the Glycolytic regain which includes moving larger loads over a longer period of time.  This is the area that fireman, gymnasts, Navy Seals, and most professional athletes live.  Using the simple power equation of Force*Distance/ time = power we can graph our Work Capacity charts.  I have documented proof the Crossfit has increase my performance in all of these pathways.

Class Programming

Being a certified Crossfit Kids Trainer I took special attention on how to “program” classes over a period of time.  There is a real art in creating a kids program that is well balanced and matched the equipment and the running area that is available to you.

The Khalipa Stretches

I learned two great stretches from Jason this weekend and I have already used them in my classes.

Khalipa Stretch #1

Start out by going down in the front splits as far as you can go with your hands on the ground and your toes pointing straight ahead.  Then walk your hands out keeping your feet flat on the floor and still pointing forward.  Then drop your hips down into the stretch.  Oh… I love this one because it gets the groin area.

Khalipa Stretch #2

Start in a full squat and press your elbows into your knees with your hands in a prayer position.   Then place your hands on the ground while rocking back and forth over each foot.

Again this was an amazing two days of training and I learned numerous progressions for the 9 basic movements and how to detect and correct problems.

-Aaron Jones

Crossfit Kids Certified Trainer

Crossfit Level One Certified Trainer