The Adopted One!

Coach Burgener has created a Monster!  Several in fact!  We are still flying high from the weekend Olympic Lifting Cert.

Coach B’s christening of Cynthia as his “adopted daughter” has gotten her all pumped up and she just won’t stop bragging about it.  The only thing we could do to stop her chatting was to let her get it all out…

Meet Cynthia (aka Killa C’)…or as she demands to be called now “The Long Lost Cynthia Burgener!”

A Weekend in the Life of a Crossfit Olympic Lift Certification Attendee/Junkie

Preface: I signed up to take the O-lift cert because I have the intrinsic motivation to improve my training as much as I possibly can. To be a Crossfitter is to be involved in the lifelong pursuit of becoming the best version of yourself you can possibly be. For whatever reason I love ,and have gravitated towards, all of the lifts we do at Crossfit. As I have progressed through the body weight exercises into the more complicated Olympic lifts, I can’t get over the success I am having to pull numbers I never thought possible. The Crossfit Toronto trainers are amazing but I wanted to take this cert to have the information presented to me in a different and more intensive way. When I watched some youtube videos (which my husband calls my Crossfit porn) of Coach Burgener training others, I just knew I would love his approach. I just didn’t realize how much…

Day 1

Coach Burgener runs a tight ship and does not f— around!  We made sure to pay attention, and be loud and clear with “Yes Coach” or pay the price with “Burpee Motivation.”  Yeah, Burpees.  I loved it.  I also loved how you could tell he was memorizing each participant as we went around and introduced ourselves.  Coach B commented on people’s favourable attributes as they related to lifting. When he saw my short Killa C frame I was christened his “adopted daughter” which made my day!

Day 1 is all things Snatch!  We did the Burgener warm up more times than I can remember, as well as some skill transfers. I can’t even begin to describe the number of repetitions…but they were NUMEROUS!  PVC suddenly becomes very heavy after hours of drills and my body felt it!  Having said that, I feel much more confident executing the snatch at heavier weights now, as I have a better understanding of the different phases of the lift.

A couple messages that came through loud and clear for me today were: “Body Weight Exercises Before Barbell Exercises,” and “Drills Enhance the Skills.”  Burgener won’t let his athletes touch a barbell until he is satisfied with their ability to do body weight exercises and endless drills with various weights of PVC tubing. It helped me understand why John and Machiko are so militant about 2 things – 1. Perfect technique and 2. Repetition of the basics.  So that time I was p-ssed off by the 300 walking lunges, I can now thank them for helping strengthen the base of my split jerk.  When I see front squat show up more times than I like, I know they are helping me improve my cleans. Or when we do “stoopit” workouts where it feels like we’ve done 1000 air squats… or GHD sit ups/back extensions, I know my core is getting stronger which will only quicken my “speed through the middle.”  When I want to punch John and Machiko in the face for all of the box jumps – they are just helping me develop a solid base for landing…I could go on and on and on…

Day 2

After Day 1, I was certain I was going to wake up unable to move.  Quite the contrary actually, I feel pretty good… just tired.

Clean and Jerk was the topic of the day.  I’m feeling better about performing these movements from the high hang, but as soon as I go to knees or shins I feel like I forget what to do. There are so many areas to dissect a lift, that I find it best not to think about any of them when I am trying to execute a lift.  (don’t get caught in “paralysis by analysis”)

This weekend made me realize the importance of working my flexibility to improve my performance.  There is no reason not to go down and hold my squat as long as I can and press out my knees (“give me your hips!”)…or spend more time stretching out my wrists.  EVERYDAY!

A highlight for me was a conversation with Burgener regarding my age!  He thought i was about 18 years old and this made my day…perhaps my year!  I love this guy!  There is just something about receiving a compliment from him that makes you feel like the most important lifter in the world. I felt the same way whenever Natalie, Casey, or Sage encouraged me as well.  I love that they have experienced so much success in their sport and still take the time to give back to others, and want to help develop more competitive lifters.

I highly recommend if you have the opportunity to take any Crossift Certification – you should absolutely do it.  The Olympic Lift one in particular rocks!  O-Lifts are technical as f—!   And the more you can practice and learn the technique, and discuss with others, and hear the information from as many different sources in as many different ways as you can, the more likely those neurons will fire off the “Oh… I get it!” signal.   John and Machiko have given me very a lot of good instruction over the last 2 years, but it took 2 days of intensive drilling and repetition for my brain to truly understand the “clean” and “snatch.”

Watching Olympic lifters perform the movements, and looking at super-slow-mo videos breaking down the steps of the movements really helped as well…not to mention having your technique corrected by an Olympian!

In case you are reading this and wondering why the heck you should care about the Olympic lifts (and therefore, whether or not you have good form executing the basics) my answer is simple: Olympic lifts, because they are so technical, cannot be faked. There are specific areas of strength needed for the various phases of all of the lifts, and using crappy technique will not help you develop them. Performing a lift without the commitment to execute the correct technique is just going to end up bad… likely in injury. I like a sport that comes with accountability….that’s how we grow. There is also something about motivation through pain and fear that I find exciting and really pushes me to keep at it. I feel a great sense of pride and accomplishment from executing a lift correctly, and lifting a weight I didn’t think possible. There is also nothing better than O-Lifts for developing strong and sexy midline stability. Guaranteed to get better results than P90X….but that’s just my opinion

Having completed the weekend and all it’s drills and skills transfers, I can’t wait to hit Isabel and Grace like the meanest junkyard dog ever!

Cyn (aka Killa C, aka Cynthia Burgener the Adopted One!)

Don’t Miss the UPcoming Certifications at Crossfit Toronto:

• Crossfit Endurance (July)
• Crossfit Olympic Lifting Certification (August)
• Crossfit Nutrition Certification (October)

We may specialize in not specializing, but to improve, seek out the knowledge of an expert!  Certification makes better Crossfitters…and the world needs more Fire Breathers!

Also, LAST 2 DAYS TO REGISTER FOR THE ONTARIO CHALLENGE NEXT MONTH!  Remember, YOU ARE GOOD ENOUGH!  I would put my money on you.  Competitions are for winning, challenges are to prove to yourself how hardcore you really are and how far you’ve come!  Stop thinking and just do it.  SIGN UP NOW!

Complete 3 rounds, not for time:

• 500m Row
• Max rep Bench Press at Body Weight
• Rest 3 mins