TO CREATE BODIES BUILT WITH INTEGRITY AND DISCIPLINE.

TO PUT HARD WORK BEFORE ALL ELSE.

TO PUSH YOURSELF UNTIL YOU FACE THE WORST OF YOUR CHARACTER

AND TO PERSEVERE UNTIL YOU DISCOVER THE BEST OF IT.

TO PURSUE A GOAL BEYOND AESTHETICS.

TO RECOGNIZE THE HARD WAY AS THE ONLY WAY

AND TO SEE ANYTHING LESS FOR WHAT IT IS, LESS.

TO NOT STOP UNTIL THE TASK IS COMPLETED.

TO UNDERSTAND THAT THERE ARE NO SHORT CUTS AND NO QUICK FIXES.

BUT TO KNOW THAT WE WILL WALK DOWN THIS PATH WITH YOU,

AS FAR AS YOU ARE WILLING TO GO.

THIS IS THE WORK OF FLOW STRENGTH. 

The group class model is an inherently flawed system. While pretty much all of you have goals that fit fairly neatly into a few buckets, you are all still unique athletes when it comes to injury history, athletic background and ability, recovery capacity, strengths and weaknesses, etc.

Now, just because you are different, does not mean you need your own special program in order to get better. With that being said, the more we can individualize things for each athlete, the faster the progress that we can make in addressing each persons’ specific needs.

Many of you know from experience where your specific weaknesses lie already. You may suck at squats, or kettle, or jumping rope. Question: why aren’t you practicing these movements every time you come to the gym, regardless of whether we do them in the warm up or WOD? You do not need my permission to show up early to practice pull ups, or throw some extra hip mobility into your Strength Program, or jump rope for 5 minutes instead of 2.

I implore you to take ownership of your fitness goals and path to success. We’ll get you there eventually, but nowhere near as fast as we can with you proactively leading the charge. Now get to work!

G.R.A.S. - Generally regarded as safe. I heard this acronym recently, and I think it does a great job of summing up one of my key programming philosophies as a coach. There are a ton of cool exercises performed in CrossFit, in particular at competitions like the CrossFit Games. However, many of these movements are complex in nature and require a high degree of skill and ability. Therefore, throwing some of these movements into the average CrossFit workout at the gym is not a great idea considering the varying levels of skill in a typical class. Additionally, one must consider the difference between performing CrossFit as a fitness routine, and CrossFit as a sport. Learning how to do a muscle up may be cool, but does it magically improve your fitness in any appreciable way that pull ups and dips do not?
 
Generally speaking, the younger the athlete, the more aggressive you can be in your training methods. Young athletes tend to be much more teachable, adaptable to stress, better movers, and overall are more capable of learning a broad spectrum of exercises quickly. It is important for us as coaches to look at both the training age (experience level) and biological age of our athletes when writing programs and workouts. Just because you want to learn the kipping pull up and overhead kettlebell swing because you saw it online the CrossFit mainpage is not reason enough for me to teach it to you. Will learning those skills really help you in the direction of your goals?
 
Put simply, there are well accepted guidelines when it comes to training and physiological principles that exist for good reason- to help us as coaches make informed decisions about how to train our athletes. There’s no reason to break the mold simply for the sake of being different and ignoring convention. Instead, I’d rather learn from great coaches and implement concepts that fit my vision of training and athletic population.