So in the midst of all of the house packing, I came across the “We’re gonna miss you” card from the company I worked for out in California. Among the varied roles I played at the company was the “Keeper of Knowledge” role. This is a continuous problem with tech companies in particular – all of the information winds up in the brains of just a few people. It’s also known as the bus factor – how many people would have to die in a bus accident to screw your company over?

I was reading through what the various folks wrote and trying to picture some of them, when I came across this inscription:

“Mr. Watts – You will be missed, even though the first two months we worked together you made me ask questions to a puppet.”

While that comment pretty much stands on its own, you might be thinking to yourself “Surely this is some weird sort of in-joke. It can’t mean what it sounds like it means, can it?” It can, and it does. As one of my “the answers are at your fingertips, do you really want to ask me the question?” tactics for teaching people to fish, I had a hand puppet named QA Cow. Kind of a fuzzy version of “Speak to the Hand.” If you had a question about how to do something in our little QA group, you had to go through QA Cow first. Yes, I’m just that wonderful to work with.

Okay, I know I said last week I was going to have a post about the Regionals, but this is not that post. If you’ve followed any of my other blogs, you’re accustomed to to the despair, heartbreak and broken promises that comes with following me.

Instead, this post is about one thing: Certification.

Last weekend was my Level 1 Cert up at Reebok and I kicked its ass. We had an awesome coaching staff headed up by EC Synkowski and composed of Heather & Ben Bergeron, James Hobart (AKA J. Ho), Dave Lipson, Austin Malleolo and Mr. Smooth Talker himself, Jon Gilson. As you’d expect, all of them were smart, friendly, funny and extraordinarily helpful.

The sheer amount of information covered in the two day cert is astounding when you look at it on paper, but everyone does such a great job of explaining things and covering all the bases that it doesn’t feel like a gigantic info dump. I wish I had kept a tally of all the times I thought to myself “Oh, so that’s why we do that.” Just in the first day, I was probably already in the teens.

If you haven’t taken it yet, it basically boils down into a combination of sit-and-take-notes lectures (on the more general things like what CrossFit, nutrition, programming, that sort of thing) and mini-lectures on a set of movements followed by a breakout into groups to practice the movements and try our hand and spotting flaws in form. I’m torn on which was my favorite. The breakout sessions were great and we learned a lot about the actual coaching side of things, whereas the lectures were fascinating and didn’t destroy my calves nearly as much.

The other two things involved over the weekend are one WOD per day (three guesses what one of them was and the first two don’t count) and… The Test. The most interesting thing about the test was that for about 80% of it, I could look at the question and recall just who covered the answer for it in their lecture. The moral of the story is, when someone with a red shirt is talking to you, pay attention!

So my recommendation is, start saving your pennies and go to the first Level 1 cert you can. It’s worth the money for the education alone, then you have fun on top of it. What could be better, right?

There was also one other little bit of stress to add to the whole certification process: Today at noon was my first class coaching all by myself at CFNH. And what better day to start your coaching career than a WOD with a max effort power snatch? It’s not like that’s a complicated movement to teach or anything, right? Then we had a max effort weighted chin-up, which was much easier to teach (do a chin-up, but with weight. Go!) and we finished it all off with Isabel – 30 snatches for time.

My first class went okay. I had all my steps in my head as I drove to the box, going from ground to overhead. Then I see Dan as he’s leaving and he tells me how he teaches it, which is head to toes. Now I’m starting class with this mixed bastardization of down-to-up and up-to-down steps boiling in my head. Fortunately there were only four folks at the class, yet somehow we still managed to span the full range of abilities in those four people. I’m proud to say that by the end, I’m relatively sure everyone was snatching better by the end of the class than they were at the start and no one died so, Mission Accomplished.

Next class: Friday at 6AM. And this time, we’ve got back squats and deadlifts. Those of you who really know me can imagine the smile on my face when I say that. It’s wheelhouse time, baby!

Holy crap, three days in a row.

This one will be a little scrambly just because that’s how my brain is this morning. Last night was a late night, but it fell under CrossFit’s motto of “Try new sports.” Assuming that trivia is a sport. Three of my fellow CFNH Honey Badgers (Barb, Mark & Taylor) and I descended upon Anna Liffey’s last night to take on their weekly trivia contest thingie. In true honey badger fashion, we smacked the shit out of it. We attacked the bar two weeks ago and placed second, but last night we steamrolled over the competition to take the win.

Today’s lesson was the shoulder press, which I did… let’s say “okay.” Out of a hundred, I’d give myself a 63. Totally forgot about shoulder positioning and the subsequent arm position at the top of the lift. D’OH! After class, Jay had me teach the push jerk (which was the actual movement in today’s workout) to Adam (one of the other coaches).

I did okay, better than I would have expected when I woke up this morning. The biggest problem I had was in my own technique. I’d do an okay job of explaining what I wanted Adam to do, but then my own example would be, shall we say, lacking. I need to work on my own hip extension, as I’m usually thinking hard about it when I’m lifting, but can’t use all that brainpower when I also need to be talking about it.

One other thing happening in my world lately has been my stupid right shoulder getting impinged again. It re-happened a couple of weeks ago and I’m slowly creeping up into that “It feels better” danger zone. Today’s workout had a nice little 500m row sprint in the middle of everything and I manged to tear off a callus. That’s right. 500 meters of rowing shredded my hands. I can only imagine what’s going to happen to them once I can start doing pull-ups again.

One last note – I’ll shortly be packing up so Barb and I can head up to the Northeast Regionals. Right now you’re thinking “Oh my God, Brian! I didn’t know you were such a bad ass firebreather!” First, thank you. Second, Barb and I are going up to volunteer for the weekend, so don’t get too awe-inspired. I’m dragging my laptop along so I can keep up with the daily posting thing, but the post times are probably going to shift into the evening so I don’t have to lug this thing around Reebok headquarters all day.

Also, with that in mind, I’ve updated the “Follow” link for Facebook over there on the right, so it should actually take you to the From Couch to Coach Facebook page rather than, well, nowhere. Go like the page, then you won’t have to sit here hitting refresh all day. Plus, it’ll make me feel special.

Let’s see now. Socks? Check. Underwear? Check. Fanboy eyes with optional Gaze of Wonderment? Check. Extra underwear in case of excitement peeing? Check.

Today, I’m writing from the table at CrossFit Milford, since my eye was messed up all day and I neeeeeed to get on a daily posting schedule. The downside to that is, I’m posting on my phone. That means no multimedia and slooooooow typing. Especially since the WordPress app doesn’t have autocorrect, let alone the “two spaces equals a period and a space” feature. Bastards.

Yesterday went quite well, teaching the back squat. There’s a definite difference when you’re teaching a movement that you’re 100% confident about. I could just focus on talking about the movement, since I knew my body could do it right on autopilot.

Today is all about deadlifts, though I haven’t heard if I’m teaching it yet. Then tonight is Anna Liffey’s to kick some more trivia ass.

Oh, I also stopped by CFNH last night to follow Dan around for the last class. Dan had posted about me being the new intern on the CFNH blog, so I got an “I know you! You’re the trainer in training!” from one of our on-rampers. Yes, I’m THAT famous.

Well, things have been going a little crazy around here off and on, both in my coaching life and non-coaching life. That gives me more stuff to write about, which then makes me want to put off writing ’til the next day, then something else big happens to add to the update pile and the snowball starts rolling. So before I go crazy trying to write a gigantic day-by-day update post to get everyone up to speed, I’m just going to try to hit some highlights for now to get something out here, then try to stick to more of a daily schedule. Otherwise, I’ll never get around to updating this thing.

Last week, I started actually teaching some movements! Well, that’s probably not quite accurate in some of the circumstances. The first movement I taught was a shoulder press, which went okay explanation-wise. I mainly needed to walk around and have people repeat the movement a few times and correct some form here and there. Also had some issues with being a little scramble-brained in the explanation. Like, demonstrating how their heads should be pushed back when pressing the weight up and suddenly realizing I hadn’t mentioned foot positioning. Then back to the arms. And did I mention the knees? Oh, and the back!

Next up was the front squat. I explained possibly everything there is to know about the front rack position, using about ten minutes’ worth of words in about two minutes. Then, after purging everything I know about front rack, followed it with “… and then you squat. GO!” As Jay told me shortly after, if you’re teaching the front squat, it’s kind of important to teach the “squat” part of the equation.

I think the biggest thing for me is figuring out how to narrow things down to key points and cues and get them straight in my head before I open my mouth. Like my friend Dave told me, “Think of it like a bartender. Somebody orders a drink, they don’t start measuring out one ounce of this, two ounces of that. It’s just tequila, rum, juice, blam! Done!” Sure, he could have used a cooking analogy too, but hey, we’re CrossFitters.

I also attended an Olympic lifting clinic held by EC Synkowski & James Hobart which was awesome from an athlete perspective and overwhelming from a coaching perspective. First off, these two are astounding in how quickly they get everyone’s names figured out. My house consists of me, my wife and our dog and I’m only certain about their names 70% of the time. The big stunning thing was going over the snatch for an hour and a half or so, then realizing that this was the same thing I’d occasionally have to teach in only a few minutes’ worth of class time. If I start to think about it too much, I need a paper bag nearby to breathe into.

On Saturday, I taught all of Fight Gone Bad for one class. I felt most comfortable there, as it was more of a “watch me while I demonstrate, ’cause you’ll be doing this in a couple of minutes” kind of class. I do well in front of crowds, but something about having twenty people staring at me with PVC pipes on their shoulders makes my brain go all jangly. Oh well, with time and practice comes confidence and less jangliness, right? RIGHT?

This afternoon’s movement to teach? The back squat. Those of you who know me can imagine the grin I have on my face. Now we get to see how well I teach from my wheelhouse.

Great. Now I just freaked myself out again. Tune in tomorrow for the results!

Wow, I really need to come up with some sort of schedule for getting these things out. Either that or I need to take much better notes, ’cause a week’s worth of stuff is hard to remember. So here’s a recap, random-style!

Our high school team really seems to be digging our CrossFit workouts. Thursday and Friday we started them off by teaching cleans, specifically hang power cleans, power cleans and squat cleans. After the skill work was done, it was outside to the field for… TIRE FLIPPING. Dan decided that since I had attended Rob Orlando’s Strongman Seminar back in April that I should teach the kids how to flip a tire. Of course, he tells me this as we’re all gathered around the tires looking at each other.

Even though my brain was scrambled, I’m pretty sure I hit all of the important points. I showed them how to flip it once in one direction with no problems, since it was probably only a 400 pounder. Flipping back? Let’s just say that rubber tires on rubber mats handle differently than rubber tires on artificial turf. I got about a quarter of the way up and the bottom edge of the tire broke loose from the ground and slid, thereby cracking my chin on the tire when it smacked back onto the ground. “And there you see how NOT to flip a tire,” I said, while pretending that I wasn’t seeing sparklies everywhere. I may not be quick, but at least I’m quick on my feet.

For the workout, we had them in two lines behind the two tires, flipping them in teams of two. They’d flip 20 yards, then sprint eighty. My team destroyed Dan’s team. Though, to be fair, Dan might not have realized we were racing each other. We did the same workout on Friday with the other half of the team and my guys came from behind to win again. The best races are the ones where your opponent doesn’t know it’s a competition.

I did a lot more shadowing at Milford and Jay officially introduced me to one of the classes, so for a few people at CFM I’m no longer that creepy quiet guy who’s watching everyone work out. Jay also told me I might be leading some warm-ups and cool-downs this coming week.

Saturday was the big four oh. I’m slowly creeping up on Master territory, depending on whose age ranges you’re looking at. CrossFit’s definitely given me a reason to look forward to getting older. The older I get, the less chance there is I have to compete against the young whippersnappers. Started out the day with a Thruster Gauntlet, which gave me a 60 pound PR for my birthday. Of course, that’s primarily because I’ve never done a max effort thruster and my previous high was 115, but I’ll still take it. I skipped the metcon part of the workout because Barb let the cat out of the bag the night before and told me my big Birthday Surprise. We were going up to the Catamount Aerial Adventure Park to do some rope climbin’ and ziplinin’. I still had to do my forty birthday burpees thanks to Whitney. Oy.

Holy crap, this place is awesome. We’re already putting plans together for a larger CrossFit outing to this place in July for my fifth re-birthday (the day I got my stem cells back and was officially cancer-free). There’s a video in the upper right-ish corner of their site that gives a pretty good rundown of the place. A word of warning – don’t wear Merrell Trail Gloves when you go. They seem like a good idea when you think about it, but there are a few different obstacles that consist of walking across steel cables. And holy hell, do they hurt when you don’t have stiff soled shoes. For that matter, you’ll probably want to leave your Vibrams and Inov-8s at home too. Another tip – don’t do a max effort thruster workout before you go. Or maybe it was the wall balls a couple of days previous. Just make sure you’re prepared to squat-walk across things occasionally.

The rest of the evening went well, with dinner at Prime 16 with some CrossFit couples and a follow-up at the official CFNH watering hole, Christopher Martin’s. Mark tracked down some candy for me (more on that in a later post) and Barb, in addition to monkey time in the trees, got me a sweet poster that has pretty much been the theme of this year.

 

I’m fully underway in Intern mode now and, since one of my rabid fans has been insisting, it’s time to bring you guys up to speed.

Friday was the last day of work with very little fanfare. It occurred to me in my last couple of weeks that I had approached my last job almost like a reality show villain: “I didn’t come here to make friends.”

Not that they were necessarily bad people, mind you. But most of them lived close to the office, meaning they lived close to me and, most importantly, they weren’t CrossFitters.

Saturday was my first official intern day, which worked out a lot like before – shadow time! We didn’t have any late seminars this time, so I was only at Milford for the first half of the day. It was an action-packed day, being our second annual First Responder Throwdown. Each class in the morning did the same set of workouts, and a LOT of work was done all through the morning. By the athletes, that is. The way Jay set up the workouts, there wasn’t a real need for setup and breakdown people, as those tasks became part of the workouts. Now that’s some genius programming.

Sunday was our first Purge Morning, trying to whittle down our possessions to better fit into our eventual apartment. Barb’s a purging machine when it comes to this stuff, but I can only do it a little bit at a time. I start off detached and ready to ditch things, but the sentimentality starts to build up after a bit and I have to stop where I’m at before I become totally useless and overwhelmed. I did good though – in addition to setting aside quite a few big boxes for Goodwill or eBay, site unseen, I also did an item-by-item search through eight other “Stuff” boxes. Those are generally composed of random things that happened to be near each other which all got thrown into a box during one clean up or another. In the end, I had narrowed the eight boxes down into one and a half keep boxes, one eBay, three Goodwill and half of a big trash bag.

Sunday night was party time – one of the owners of our box, Eric, was having a 40th birthday shindig. This makes him so much unbelievably older than me, since I don’t turn 40 until Saturday.

This brings to mind one of the really wonderful things about CrossFit – the Family. The next time the owner of your box is throwing some kind of shindig, mention it to someone who doesn’t know what CrossFit is. I did that one time at the dentist. “So, wait. The person who owns your gym is having a party, and you’re going to it?” What seems so perfectly normal to us is completely foreign to everyone else. Put yourself in their shoes – can you really imagine hanging out with anyone else who goes to your Planet Fitness? Can you imagine hanging out with the owner too?

Monday was a happily full day of wandering. I started with Ye Olde Six AM class to get my WOD in, then I was due at Milford by 9:00. It’s amazing what a difference a half hour and a shorter commute makes. The old job was at 8:30, and I had to race home from the box, shower fast, then hit the road to try to make it on time. Yesterday I came home, took a loooooong shower (stupid kettlebell swings) and actually sat down and ate breakfast. Hot damn!

Got to Milford and caught the tail end of Jay’s class then followed Adam around for his class. Adam’s a great coach and entertaining to watch. I’ve trained with him before, but that was back when he was still new to coaching and figuring out what’s what. Now he’s got it down and really connects with his athletes. Seeing his easy rapport and confidence keeps me going, since I knew him back when he was more like I am now.

 

During the class, I received a text from Dan, another one of our trainers. He has a gig doing strength and conditioning training at an area high school and wanted to know if I wanted to tag along and help. I checked with Jay and since he didn’t need me again until the next day, it was all systems go for high school football in the afternoon.

I had a few hours to kill at that point, so I gave Carla, Eric’s wife and our box’s webmistress (that’s sure to turn up on some interesting Google searches) a holler to talk to her about our current site. It is, shall we say, less than optimal. It’s great on the front side of things, but the back end is the very model of user unfriendliness. We agreed that I’d meet up with her after her noon class so she could point out all the things that drive her crazy. Since that gave me a couple of free hours, that meant I had plenty of time to do Highly Important Work.

 

Yes, it was time for lunch and a nap, then off to CFNH. I watched the last half of the noon class with both O’Briens, then sat with them to go over the current site. To say things could be better is an understatement. I can see a lot of areas we’ll be able to make it much easier for the folks posting things on the site, and hopefully I won’t have to keep my Web Developer hat on for too long to get us there.

Dan arrived after that and it was back to school. This team has fifty kids on it, all working out in a room about a quarter the size of our box. It definitely keeps you on your toes when you’ve got a lot of kids throwing around weights in there. Dan’s been working with them for a couple of weeks and takes half of them one day and the other half the next. Monday and Tuesday, we’re teaching them deadlifts and sumo deadlift high pulls.

 

It was rewarding to see just how quick most of these guys picked up the techniques. The only deadlifting they had done up to that point was using a trap bar:

 

It was great watching Dan work through a large number of people in a short period of time in such a confined area. I also learned one of the important lessons of being a coach: only one cue at a time. Being Dan’s Little Helper, I had to correct the form of the guys near me and the first couple were more than a little overwhelmed as I tried to correct ALL of their shortcomings at once. “Pull your knees back. Pick your hips up. Think like you’re sitting back into a chair. And pull your shoulders back. Think like you’re trying to put your shoulderblades in your back pockets. And keep your focus in front of you on the floor over there. And keep your core tight. And get a haircut. And yellow’s really not your color.”

Luckily I have a lot of experience confusing people, so I recognize the symptoms when they appear. I narrowed down my cues and kept them as simple as possible. In the end, it went pretty well. I’m going to go over there with him again today before I have to rush over to Milford for my next bout of shadowing.

When we got back to CFNH, the 4:30 folk were just starting to arrive, so yeah – I stuck around and shadowed for a couple more classes. Plus, I got to be Designated Camera Boy for awhile as well. Good Times. One more full day of following and watching in the books, which led me to my current, hectic morning.

 

Not a tremendously eventful week, at least right until the end.

Around midweek, I signed up for my Level 1 cert. I’m taking it up at Reebok at the end of June, so if you need your Level 1 and you wanna hang out, sign on up and we’ll lift things.

Friday was Trivia Night for CFNH at St. Rita’s and of the many tables there, we had two full of thirsty CrossFitters. Naturally, our table (composed of celebrity couples Maylor, Marin, Carlic and Brarb) was the victor. Of the two CrossFit tables, that is. We wound up coming in third due to a surprising lack of religious trivia knowledge in the last round. But hey, we were the top CrossFit table there, so that counts for something, right?

In keeping with the “Hey, we were there at least” theme of the weekend, the CrossFit New Haven Honey Badgers attacked the Metro Dash in New Jersey on Saturday. I was racing as an individual/scout and Barb, Maylor and Dags were racing as a team. This was my first real race of sorts, at least on foot.

 

It was definitely… interesting. Above all else, it was deceptively difficult. As we walked around the edges of the track, watching the earlier heats go through the obstacles, we were convinced that the organizers had told everyone they had to walk – no running allowed. From what we saw of the track, there was no other plausible reason for all these people taking their time everywhere. Sure, they were breathing hard, but come on.

I was the first of our group to experience the beast that is Metro Dash. The first obstacle out of the gate was a rope ladder climb.

Looking at a rope ladder, it seems really easy. I’ve climbed ladders. I’ve climbed ropes. This should be a breeze, right? It wasn’t necessarily hard in a physical sense, but exceedingly difficult in a “where in the hell are my FEET” sense. Right off the bat, all I can think of is how I have no idea where my body actually is in relation to everything else. Clever setup here – I think they have some kind of evil psychologist working on the order of these things.

Next up, you pick up a medicine ball, race it back and forth, climb a wall and run through some tires, football training montage style.

 

Then you climb another wall, slide through a tunnel and hit the killer – the big ass cargo net.

 

Aside from it being way the hell off the ground and held up by a lighting rig from one of Def Leppard’s tours, it was a gigantic mental and physical energy suck. The physical part’s pretty obvious – you’ve got a big ass cargo net to climb up and another one to climb down. The mental part, though – the rope ladders have already proved to me that I don’t know where my feet go when I put them places. Now suddenly I have a LOT of places to be putting my feet. I’m concentrating on my feet so much that I’m not thinking about breathing. Or relaxing. Or pacing. Or any of that other stuff you’re supposed to be doing when you’ve got over twenty more obstacles to get over.

Guess who started walking right about now.

At the end of it all (15:50 after I started) I was as impressed with the Metro Dash as I was disappointed in my endurance. Regardless of the Navy Seal stamp on their site, you can tell CrossFitters had a hand in this thing. This was so much like one of those oh-so-deceptive WODs where you look at it the night before and think “Oh, it’s just power cleans, wall balls and a run. Easy!” Then you show up the next day and get your ass handed to you.

Team Honey Badger made it through later as well. We have no idea where they finished team-wise, as the results are really screwy for teams and there’s not much of a way to figure out where the team placed if you’re not in the top three.

Like everything this past year, it’s one more learning experience on the board. We’re already making plans for the Boston Metro Dash (once they actually decide where & when it will be) and we’ll make sure to have a full complement of Honey Badgers at this one. There has been talk of a bus. Hell yeah.

 

Okay, so this one time I have a good excuse for going undercover. There was a coach’s meeting on Friday and Jay (my boss/mentor/leader/trainer) wanted to surprise everyone with the announcement of me being the latest victim newbie entering the intern program. So I’ve been keeping low out here and being vague about what’s happening in person. An awesome plan, if enough of the coaches had been in town for us to have the meeting. D’OH!

Since I had already saved up the time off for Friday, I went in to do some 1RM back squats (15# PR, thank you very much) and follow Carla around the floor. She even made me the demo boy for the last WOD to ease my transition into the whipping boy interning world.

So Saturday was my first day with my new identity: The Shadow. I spent all day hanging out at CrossFit Milford, watching coaches, lurking in the background and occasionally shouting out seemingly random numbers. It was a Fight Gone Bad day, so I got to be the “THREE, TWO, ONE, CHANGE!” guy a lot. Yelling is fun.

In all, I got to follow around three different coaches during WODs (Jay, Andrea & Adam) and then stalked Colin during a powerlifting seminar. Aside from each coach being different, each class was as well. Jay’s class was large and varied, with most everyone having some kind of CrossFit experience, if not Fight Gone Bad. Andrea’s was smaller and mainly experienced athletes. Adam had both a regular class and the “free intro to CrossFit” folks. I think what impressed me the most about all three was their innate sense of the time elapsing while still paying attention to the athletes and correcting form where need be. If I’m not focusing on the clock, I still get lost in whoever I’m watching/helping at the time.

Toughest part of the day: listening to Adam describe the proper wall ball technique. “…and when you catch it, I wanna see balls in your face…” One of these days, he’s going to catch on to what he’s saying. Until then, I’m going to hurt myself trying to keep a straight face.

While the first three classes showed me what I have to learn about class management, Colin’s seminar let me see how far I have to go on picking out issues with form. He covered deadlifts, back squats and bench presses and with each one I found I knew about 75% of what to look for. My “something’s wrong here” radar is pretty acute, it’s just a matter of figuring out what’s setting it off. For instance, in the deadlifts, I always think of shoulders and lower back/butt position, then knees/shins. Quite a few folks set off the radar with those set up correctly though. Turns out, it was often a feet-in-the-wrong-place thing.

One last great thing – we had an odd number of people in the last FGB workout, so I got to count for someone. While I counted, I also tried to give her some cues to help out with a couple of the more obvious things that were making my CrossFit Sense tingle. In addition to (honey)badgering her in the last round to beat her middle round reps, Adam told me afterward that he noticed a huge change in her push press form for the better by the end of the workout.