Festivus Games this weekend. For many of them it’s their first competition, and the idea of packing for it is as daunting as the idea of just doing the damned thing. (Personally, I find packing harder, there’s no one there to cheer you on, and if you are the goob who forgot your shoes, there’s not a whole lot of “way to give it your best effort” that’s gonna make up for it.)  So, here’s my general approach: pack like you’re going camping. Which means, make sure you have every

Backing up, there is a long tradition in CrossFit of writing Hero WODs to honor those killed in the line of duty. It’s a tradition that we also honor, and I have posted more profiles of fallen soldiers than I care to think about. Because I hate the fact that we keep sending our young across the planet to die in wars that are so often unjust and so often motivated by greed. (And then sent home, and too often neglected until they decay on our streets…..) That said, honoring the

I mean…. WHAT THE FUCK. They combat the public health risk of Coca-Cola, and then give out guns as prizes. Nevermind that there is no connection between fitness and guns. Or that we are, as a country, mourning countless innocent people killed at the hands of yahoos with guns….. And now, as affiliate owners, we are having this brand association connected to us. As if Dave Castro’s moron programming and endless homophobic, sexist douchebaggery weren’t enough for us to explain.

Packed into Rocket CrossFit after a big Holiday Workout My husband and I own a CrossFit gym. We squeeze more than 200 members into a 1,500 s/f gym, 14 at a time. Rocket CrossFit is not a fancy gym, though we’re well-equipped. We don’t send members to The CrossFit Games, nor do we care to. We keep our prices as low as we possibly can, because our goal is to increase community, not just make money (though this is our livelihood.) As a result, we know many of our neighbors, run

Me, clearly bumming, in my happy place. I spent the last two days doing the CrossFit Level 2 training, which was chock full of nonstop learning. But, being a very shy introvert with ADHD, it also left me with a lot of time to think about things that happen in my gym, and probably every other gym out there. In one of my very few moments of speaking out loud, I said something about wanting to ban sick people from working out and getting everyone else sick, which garnered a quic

Celia.Huddart at the Olympic Training Center, wearing her favorite Oiselle shorts. She has 3 pairs, because they gave them to her, and they’re all she ever wears! http://www.Oiselle.com What Nick Symmonds wears is important. As one of the best in the world at running the 800M, what Nick Symmonds wears is important to his performance and his livliehood. It’s important to his ability to be one of the best, something that he spends a lot of time working on. And it’s important to

@Celia.Huddart, doing what she does, working hard and having fun. My daughter and I were driving to one of many appointments that surround her blossoming weightlifting career. We have an early A.R.T. appointment, then a massage, then she has to go work out. Her pursuit of a spot on Team USA is a job. For both of us. It never occurred to me that I might be raising a future Olympian. I never would have even tried for that. It came to us – which, I now know, is how it happens. T

Yoga? Pilates? CrossFit? Or just our own mix of things we believe in? Hard to tell. I get asked, all the time, “What is CrossFit.” I’ve started giving a really simple answer: Nothing. It’s a word. (A trademarked word, specifically.) It’s a brand. (But a brand without clear definition.) It’s a way of doing things. (But not one way, more like a lot of ways, that are kind of similar, but not really.) It’s a concept. (Well, not really, because it changes so much from person to pe

Kyrsten, totally in the zone on some serious Kettlebell swings. I am the least competitive person on the planet. If you tell me you want me to go head-to-head with someone, I will say “no.” Then, I will likely editorialize something that vacillates between the martyrdom of “let them have it” to the egalitarian hooey of “it’s not about winning.”   So it may seem odd that as a coach, I am constantly pushing our athletes to compete. I think that competition is one of the best wa

Celia and I messing around in the gym. Photo by Tim Aguero. I am terrified of flying. I am the crazy lady who delayed a flight from New York to Spain while I had a panic attack that I really believed to be a heart attack. My infant daughter was in my arms, and as horrified as I was that I was inconveniencing everyone else, it was having her in my arms that made me realize how big a problem this was. Not the delay (which we probably made up in flight,) but my fear. Specificall

I am watching her, but I see her, at age 4, in ballet class, with her underwear bulky under a pink leotard as her feet disobediently jitter about like a drop of water on a hot skillet. This is my baby. It’s been 16 years, mind you, but I’m still sometimes confused about the fact that I’m a parent. I don’t recall, really, if we planned it or it was impulse. I do know that I never wanted to be a parent, because I can’t imagine anything harder, more important, more terrifying th

Just another morning, hanging around at Rocket CrossFit. Of all the things I’m asked about CrossFit, the one I’m asked most often is “do you know anything about this gym?” or its variant, “do you know a good gym in this city?”  The answer is usually “no,” because it’s not like we all know each other. Even in Seattle, I don’t know thaaaaaat many of the bajillion gyms that are popping up. So I do what I do when I’m curious about anything, Google it. And although there is NO sub

Me, this summer, paddle boarding with the girls. Joy. That’s what it was, JOY. It only tangentially matters that I was in bed with my husband when I retold him a conversation that I had with my 16 year-old daughter. And that “conversation” is an overstatement of the few sentences that passed between us, somehow filling me with hope for the future, and a little bit of pride in my parenting and, as always, more love for my daughter than I know what to do with. She and I were dr

People talk about “integrity” in a way that is interchangeable with “manners” and “proper” behavior. As if “integrity” means “doing the right thing.” And it can mean that, or has at least come to mean that. And that’s awesome. I think that most of the world has a long ways to go in terms of both having good manners and doing the right thing. He talked about “integrity” as always making sure that you clean up the gym after your shift, or change the toilet paper roll, or be sur

Let’s get something straight, something that I think we can agree on: BODIES ARE AWESOME. I’m not gonna pretend that one of the best parts of my job isn’t watching strong bodies do amazing things all day, all glisteny with sweat and making sounds that, I mean, really, sound kinda naughty-fun if you close your eyes. Also not gonna lie and pretend that I don’t love looking at pictures of women’s bodies, generally speaking. Yum. I don’t know whether it’s aspiration, inspiration

With Kevin Ogar, and a look on my face that just screams, “I hate the way my foot tastes.” I ran into Kevin Ogar at The CrossFit Games. I was looking for him, he was on my short list of people I’d really like to meet. Actually, I’m not even vaguely impressed by celebrity, so he was the only person on my list. Because I feel a kinship with him, on behalf of all of us who are walking around broken, and utterly undefeated. For those who don’t know, Kevin is a legend in the Cross

Me, look all concerned-coachy. My job as a coach is to make people stronger. It’s really that simple. It is mostly a physical task, as in, my job is to make you physically stronger. But there is also a fairly large emotional component to it, one that is too-often ignored. Because the path to physical strength is a long one. It involves you being able to assess any task, figure out whether it will help you or harm you, make adjustments on the fly and proceed with your own self

Photo by Tim Aguero: http://www.aguerophoto.com I just finished my first week of programming WODs for Rocket, all by myself. Well, I wrote them, then very nervously handed them to Brady for his seal of approval, which it got with only very-minor discussion and one small change. (I need a drink, that was nerve-wracking.) This momentous achievement has made me an expert in absolutely nothing, except, perhaps, how hard programming was the first time I did it. But it did make me

Photo by Tim Aguero: http://www.aguerophoto.com UGH. I really tried to ignore this current round of “Bash CrossFit For Sport.” But EVERYONE tagged me in that inane article written by “she who won’t be named” about the evils of CrossFit, complete with declarative statements that her opinion, supposedly formed after two visits to a clearly awful gym, was true of the whole sport. All of it. All gyms. All coaches. And that as a professional power-lifter, she had never deadlifted

Just a day at Rocket, all types of people, doing work, together. I am a woman in my mid 40’s. By the time I found CrossFit, I was past 40, and had “been there and done that” for almost anything fitness related that you can name. Except weight lifting, unless you count adding tiny dumbells to some situps and stuff. Like many women (and maybe men,) I found the idea of CrossFit intimidating at best, and downright unappealing at worst. Not because of the exercise, but because of