Kelly Frankson DOT COM

Client of the month is going to be a new feature on my blog where I’m going to feature one of my Personal Training Clients.  They could be featured for great athletic accomplishments such as doing a sub 10 helen, or for personal feats such as getting there first pullup or 2x body weight deadlift, or for just being all around great people, like Lee, my March Client of the month is.

Like many others, when Lee first started Crossfit, he did not have the grip or upper body strength to connect kipping pull-ups. So he came in early everyday to work on progressions and build his strength. Before Christmas, Lee was working on connecting his kipping pull-ups (and making great progress being able to connect 10+), but while pushing away from the bar at the top of one of his pull-ups he pushed a little too far back and slipped off the bar landing on his wrist fracturing his Tiqueprim bone.

Rather than just saying he was injured, feeling sorry for himself and taking a break from Crossfit, he sent me an email letting me know the status, the limitations that he had and asked if there was still a way he could continue to come and work out. I worked with him to put together a plan that would allow him to continue progressing while letting the wrist heal. He came back to do some personal training sessions where we created a series of wrist friendly progressions and workouts that he could be doing to keep his fitness up and was able to integrate back into the 5pms classes where he followed along with the class the best he could inserting his alterations when needed.

Rather than making himself an outcast and saying that he could not do certain exercises, he would always ask if there was a way that he could make it work. This attitude not only paid off for Lee, as he is comming back from his injury even stronger than he was before, but it paid off for the entire 5pm class as it was an inspiration for others and made everyone else around him work that much harder.

It would have been very easy for Lee to just take 2 months off, but the Gym was much better off for having him come in and tough it out despite the one-armed obstacle he was trying to overcome.

Above are pictures of some of Lee’s more creative workarounds including the 1 arm wall ball, row, push up and weighted squat.

Thanks for being you Lee, your positive attitude and encouraging comments to all make you a joy to have around. You are part of what makes Crossfit Vancouver such a great place to be!

People have often asked me why Crossfit is so expensive and why you can’t just do it on your own, and my response has typically been that it the price it is because people are willing to pay for it (Crossfit Vancouver has almost 300 members right now) and its not that you can’t do it on your own, its that most people won’t/don’t do it on their own at the level of intesnity required to produce the results.  But after reading through the Crossfit.com Forums, I have realized the huge advantage Crossfit Vancouver clients have-You have experienced trainers watching your every move and adjusting your technique flaws before they become nasty ingrained habbits.  The following is one of many posts on .com about people trying to copy the technique that they have seen others use without realizing that it is not proper technique for them:

“I’m 5′10″ tall, and I have a 30″ inseam, so my legs are very short for my body. When I do back squats, it’s very difficult for me to avoid butt wink even with just 135 lbs. When I do front squats, by contrast, I can do 345×3 with perfect form. Since it’s not safe for me to back squat, I only front squat heavy. I’ve been trying to back squat correctly for almost a year, but I’ve never been successful. I stretch regularly, so I don’t think it’s a flexibility issue. Could it have something to do with my freakishly long torso?”

There were several responses blamming flexibility-which tends to be the static “text book” excuse.  However, being a personal trainer at Crossfit Vancouver has exposed me to a wide variety of people with a wide variety of body shapes and one of the first things that you learn at the certifications is that not everyones squat will look the same-however the majority doing crossfit online is trying to repolicate the SAME squat.  This was my sugestion:

“Length of the torso definitely does have something to do with it because of the position it puts the bar in. If you have ever gone to a Riptoe cert or read his book you will you will have it drilled into your head that the bar should stay centered over the midline of your feet-for regular proportioned people this means there needs to be a slight forward lean in your torso to move the bar from behind your feet to the center. However, when long torsoed people try to replicate the same position (have the same amount of forward lean) they actually bring the bar in front of their feet throwing off their center of gravity and eliminating the structural alignment needed to efficiently come up out of the whole.

Rather than copying the typical images of people doing back squats, try doing them with your Torso a little more upright and make sure that bar is never passing in front of your feet. If you are comparing back angles of a short and long torsoed person doing back squats they should be different, so don’t try to be like everyone else, find the alignment that works for your body!”

…and the result:

“Kelly, your advice might help me a lot! At home tonight, I could get really good form squatting with a broomstick on my back while keeping my torso almost vertical. Stupidly, I always thought I should lean forward more on back squats because that’s what almost everyone else does. After making sure that my torso was closer to vertical, I did 225×5x10 tonight with almost perfect form. My workout partner watched closely and said I only lapsed on a couple of reps. I don’t know what my form will be like with heavier weights, but I’m really happy about this progress. I was always told that the perfect bottom position of a back squat is similar to the stretch where you squat down, put your hands together, and spread your knees apart with your elbows while keeping your back arched. For someone with a long torso, that position puts the bar over the toes instead of the middle of the foot. Thanks everyone for the help.”

So come in, get trained, then you can go off and do it on your own!

Reading through Kelly Moores recipees I noticed that she makes something called Kefir, so I looked it up to find out exactly what it was and this is what I found:

Kefir is a cultured milk product, like yogurt, but it’s more of a drink. It contains strains of gut friendly bacteria not found in yogurt. It also has beneficial yeasts which protect the gut.

It’s very easy to digest and is great for babies and people who are lactose intolerant.

Like yogurt it’s high in calcium, but also in phosphorus and Vitamin B12.

Many find Kefir too sour on its own and add honey or fruit. For this reason it’s perfect in smoothies.

I may even build up the courage to try it sometime this week!

I spent Friday/Saturday/Sunday/Tuesday from 9am-10pm doing something called the Landmark forum. Although it is hard to explain what it is all about or why it was so valuable, what I do know is that it was well worth it and money very well spent.It is different from anything I have ever done or heard of and isnt really about changing, communciation or motivation but rather choice. It looks at the notion that while we think of ourselves as open-minded and objective, infact our approach to ourselves, our circumstances and others is often filterd and even obscured by pre-existing notions an ideas by our upbrining, our values and our past expereinces. It also looks at hidden contexts from which we live that determine what we see and what we don’t see; what we consider and what we fail to notice; what we are able to do and what seems beyond our reach and leaves the possiblilty for the first time to make a choice about who we are are and how we can be sepearate from these contexts.

It looks at the illusion of someday, the myth of Is, the idea of fear, the distinction between change and transformation, the nature of choice and the ability to be extraordinary.So since starting the Landmark Forum on Friday I have been trying to figure out what it all means, and yes I kept thinking I had it all figured out and was able to clear up some things up with others and a lot of things up with my self along the way. I jumped on board the idea of being extraordinary pretty quick and to stop making excuses for simply having a “good” life, but it wasn’t until last night where I let go of the need to try to understand everything and at 4:30 in the morning I all a sudden woke up and realized that I’m living the life I’m living my life because I choose to be living the life I’m living my life and that I don’t need to justify it to anybody (including myself) (and yes as cheesy as it is, the comment even came into my head in those exact words). And for some reason truly believing that comment just cleared a whole new space and I couldn’t fall back a sleep because I was all excited about all the things that I can do.

For starters, I came into work early this morning to meet with my manager before all of his meetings started told him about the Landmark Forum and then he just looked at me and said when is your last day. So next Friday is going to be my last day at WorkSafe J J .

I also signed up for the Advanced course this morning which will be the first weekend in April.

I want to be able to delve into this nutrition thing more, start putting together some Olympic weightlifting mini clinics, and do some more consulting for the Dalai Lama Centre for Peace and Education.

And Im actually going to make the time to get to know my clients better and interact with people on a deeper level rather than making myself and my mind so consumed that I end up doing is bouncing around on the surface.

Very exciting, very exciting, I’ll keep you all posted as more changes are on the way!!

kel

Goals are for the future; values are for now. Goals are set; values are lived. Goals change; values are rocks that you can count on. — Sheldon Bowles