I believe they ran out of kettlebells so a human was the next best choice for Spencer.
A few weekends ago I headed up to King of Prussia with Danny and Jose from Steve’s Club in Camden NJ to become officially certified in crossfit. The certification was a 2 day experience that included lectures about crossfit philosophy, exercise demonstration, lab breakouts to learn exercise technique, nutrition and health information and a few fun workouts mixed into the whole ordeal. At the end of the two days we had to show competence in the material by passing a written exam. We had instruction from James Hobart, Spencer Hendel, Aimee Lyons, Mel Ockerby, Rob Miller and Cameron Bells.
What I really liked about the certification:
- Excellent technique demonstration and cues.
- A systematic way of identifying problems in exercise technique.
- Identifying common exercise faults and corrections.
- Addressing the public’s concerns of crossfit causing injury and ways to prevent injury. Crossfit does not promote poor technique, quite the opposite, poor technique seen in crossfit boxes are a result of the trainers there not correcting these issues. Crossfit also gives trainers a lot of freedom to create programs as they see fit to maximize exercise safety.
- I liked how open minded the trainers were about the exercise, fitness and nutrition theories crossfit has adapted. For example, Crossfit has really popularized paleo and the common notion would be that anything besides paleo in the crossfit realm is blasphemy. Joe Alexander was certain to let us know that the stance crossfit takes on health and nutrition were all based in theory. If you want to know more about health and nutrition, feel free to learn more on your own.
- Everyone was very passionate about fitness and were friendly.
- The staff working there was very well spoken, professional and the certification went very smoothly. You could tell that this was rehearsed well.
- I liked that all of the staff obviously practiced what they preached. Spencer recently placed 13th at the crossfit games and said his clean and jerk is around 350lbs and snatch around 300lbs. I enjoyed picking his brain.
What I disliked or disagreed with:
- I really enjoy learning the philosophy behind exercise but when I’m face to face with coaches I’d rather get more practical hands on experience.
- Their emphasis was on “evidence based” fitness. As I’m working on my clinical doctorate in physical therapy I am often skeptical of the word evidence based as it is thrown around quite a bit. I understand that crossfit bases their philosophy on theories grounded in scientific theory, but I really doubt much research exists in the world of crossfit specific exercise.
- I like the emphasis on shoulder external rotation in the “active shoulder” that crossfit uses to teach the overhead pressing movements. However, I don’t know what to think about the scapular elevation they teach to accompany a finished lift. Scapular elevation or “shrugging” contributes to upper trap dominance, decreasing the scapula’s ability to upwardly rotate and potentially causing subacromial impingement. The shrug was exactly what the trainers said “created space” in the shoulder (I’m guessing they meant the subacromial space) and decreased your chances of impingement. I think what the shrug does is probably decrease boney congruency in the shoulder (and with it stability) and that’s what allows you to do shoulder dislocates easier with a PVC pipe when you shrug. I’m still more a fan of Gray Cook and the RKC’s use of shoulder packing. When I asked Spencer Hendel about the active shoulder he replied that he teaches it that way because coach Mike Burgener teaches it that way. I can’t really argue with Mike Burgener from a performance standpoint but from a shoulder health standpoint I don’t know if the scapular elevation is safest.
- I personally would have enjoyed less information about health and fitness theory and philosophy and more hands on breakout sessions teaching technique and other skills and progressions.
Danny, Spencer, Me, Jose
Areas that could be improved:
- We had an hour lecture on how to develop crossfit programs and a training guide that touched on the basics but figuring out how to develop a safe and effective program for multiple populations with proper stretching, warm-ups and progression was lacking. The random nature of crossfit programming (It certainly is not completely random) makes it very difficult for a beginning trainer to learn how to make effective programming for a facility. Obviously it would be impossible to cover this in a two day seminar.
- I enjoy the random nature of crossfit but to make progress on certain skills and lifts I believe a more routine training schedule would benefit athletes more. I know our gym and others like Rudy Nelson are already doing this. This is strictly an opinion.
Cost: $1,000 – Quite a bit of money to throw up for a certification. This rate is comparable to other certifications in the field though that have a 2 day certification process.
Who would benefit most?
- Anyone who wishes to get a baseline idea of crossfit theory, methodology and practice.
- Athletes who wish to increase their lifting and skill proficiency by learning better technique.
- Those who already have a baseline level of experience with crossfit training and want to become a crossfit trainer.
Overall I had a great experience. It was entertaining and a good learning experience.
Fran for days,
Dan Pope