Workout of the Day:
Behind the Neck Jerk
3-3-3-3
and then,
Five rounds for time of:
9 Pull-Ups
6 Burpees
3 Push Presses (use 65-70% of today’s 3-RM)

The Benefits of Personal Coaching for a CrossFit Veteran
Written by Invictus Charter Member Cynthia Lumley

I’ve been doing Crossfit since May 2008. Before that, I’d never done a squat or a deadlift or any of the movements that I regularly do now. I had the typical gym routine of treadmill and bicep curls and tricep kickbacks. Boring and ineffective, to say the least!

With all these new movements that I’ve learned to love, I have NOT learned to love the aches and pains that my body throws at me every now and then. Granted, I’m 43 years old and was never really in great shape to begin with, so some achiness is understandable. But not pain. And the thought of hurting myself makes me afraid to do some of our lifts with any real weight.

I started having hip flexor aches and throbs a couple of months ago, and laid off squats for a few weeks. That kind of helped, but when I started squatting again, the aches came back pretty quickly. That, coupled with some lower back pain that I’ve had intermittently over the past few years, ended up with me crippled after we did the Crossfit Total last week. Well, maybe not crippled…but it really hurt!

That same afternoon, I emailed Calvin Sun, one of our Invictus coaches who is studying physical therapy and body parts. I had heard that Calvin was good, but little did I know that he would help me as much as he did. Our session included him measuring my flexibility (quads, hamstrings, etc) by moving my legs in different positions and noting the degree of flexion/extension. Then he would do some PNF (see the April 3 blog post) stretching to the part we were working on. Then he had me do some simple air squats. I wish I could convey the happiness that I felt after each stretching segment when he would have me squat. I was getting lower each time, without any pain.

I had thought that my hip flexors needed to be rolled and worked on in order to ‘fix’ me. Though it is important to work on that area, it turns out that my tight quads and calves were the problem areas. There is no way in a million years that I would have figured that out on my own.

So here’s the advice portion of this blog: MAKE AN APPOINTMENT WITH A COACH!! Even you young whippersnappers out there who don’t have any aches or pains. I wish I’d done this a long time ago and possibly prevented some of my problems. But it’s never too late! At the very least, have a coach do a one-on-one to assess any possible weaknesses you have that might cause problems later down the road.

I can’t wait for my follow up appointment with Calvin next month! I’m doing the stretches and foam rolling techniques that he showed me every day after class, and I hope that he’ll be able to see a difference in my movement.