CrossFit

My first coach and mentor was Doris Brows, an Olympic gymnast from Germany. She taught me a lot about physical and mental toughness which has had a significant impact on my life.
 
Transcript: "So this question is, who was a mentor of yours and who had significant impact on your life and why? And I'm going to go with, actually, my very first coach was my gymnastics coach and she was from Germany. She was in the Olympics four times and she was kind of a hard ass to be honest. And I think that she taught me a lot about mental toughness, physical toughness, and I've thought about her a lot over the years. Her name is Doris Brous and she was fantastic."

In CrossFit, everyone is talking about the CrossFit Open, which is the first step in qualifying for the CrossFit Games. In physical therapy, I'm excited about dry needling research and its effects on patients I've been working with.
 
Transcript: "This one is what's a topic in your field right now that you're excited about? Well, I'm going to say my two fields are CrossFit and physical therapy. So in the CrossFit world, everybody's talking about the CrossFit Open. It starts next week. It kind of begins our whole process for qualifying for the CrossFit Games, which is the pinnacle, basically, of what we do. And in physical therapy, I'm going to go with dry needling because I just got dry needling certified. I just finished my certification over the weekend, and there's a whole lot of research that's going into dry needling and what can be done and the effects that it's having. And in the clients I've been working with so far, it's been pretty cool to see results. If you don't know about dry needling, there's a whole lot more information, and we can talk about that another time as well."

I look to past experiences, my kids, and workout buddies for inspiration.
 
Transcript: "This question is where do you go for inspiration? I would say to be honest I probably think about past experiences the most. So the type of things like you know when was I most proud or what makes me feel accomplished that sort of thing. So in the CrossFit world I realized you know for me some days I don't want to get up, I don't want to put my shoes on and go to the gym, I have to work out at 5am because it's the only time of day that I have. So the hard part is getting up at 4.15, getting to the gym at you know 4.45 and doing my thing. And I think about like okay I know I have to lay the foundation, I know I have to do the hard work if I want to compete, if I want to get stronger, if I want to get better, any of those sort of things. So I think I try to look at the big picture I guess is a way of looking for inspiration in that capacity. Also I would say it comes down to like my kids so I think about what do I need to do in order to provide for them or to take a nice vacation or that sort of thing. So I think I look at previous experiences, past experiences. I also have some great workout buddies that keep me pretty motivated as well. I'm a people person so to speak so I look to others as well."

To reduce soreness in the shoulder blades while skiing, try turning your damper down or attempt to get really tall on the ski by dropping your bodyweight and using your arms to finish the stroke.
 
Transcript: "If you find your shoulder blades are getting really sore on the ski, it probably just means you're overusing your arms to generate power. So one of two things I would try, one is either turning your damper down, I ski at usually about a 4, maybe a 4.5 on the damper setting. Or try to think about getting really tall on the ski, get up on the balls of your feet, generate the initial power of the pull by dropping your body weight down and hinging. And then finishing with your arms, similar to how on the rower we generate power by starting with the legs, moving into the hinge, finishing with the arms. It should be similar on the ski where you get as high as you can, let some of your body weight do the work to get that fan moving. And then as you come down you can finish the stroke hard with your arms. Give that a shot and see how it does for you."

To improve on water events in a CrossFit context, it's important to swim as much as possible and find a physical coach to provide feedback. It can be difficult to use equipment on pool decks, but if open water or 50 meter lanes are available, it is an advantage. Open water swimming is great for exposure therapy and practicing at a higher heart rate.
 
Transcript: "I think the first step to improving on water events in a CrossFit context is first of all getting into the water as much as you can. You know right now I try to swim at least two times a week and you just get that level of comfort and you sort of get that cruising speed and stuff. It feels a little more natural. Another huge advantage is if you can find a physical coach to be there and watch you, obviously that's a huge advantage. You can take all the tips you want from YouTube and I would encourage everyone to do that but there's nothing that beats instant feedback and hands-on coaching. One of the biggest challenges is you can't really bring equipment to pool decks and a lot of times we have to do you know workouts with a certain amount of equipment in them. So I sometimes try to do things just on the side of lanes where I can do some even just simple push-ups, burpees, things like that. Bring a yoga mat so you're not worried about slipping on the tile and lifeguards aren't coming over to rescue you. But if you can do that, terrific. If you can get to open water and or 50 meter lanes, it's extra advantage. Open water swimming is great because if you can get to like something or somewhere that has a little bit of a beach you can bring a dumbbell or something and just do something to get your heart rate up. Jump in the water, repeat, practice doing that swimming with high heart rate. That's what's gonna get you the most comfortable. A little bit of that exposure therapy."

Competing for Team Canada at the Invitational was a great honor and it was always fun because of the testing ground for new equipment, the opportunity to make friends with other individual athletes, and the fun stories and memories created.
 
Transcript: "It was always a really big honor and privilege to be invited to the Invitational at all and to be able to represent your country anytime is really cool. But I kind of have three reasons why I really loved competing for Team Canada at the Invitational. One is the Invitational was always a kind of testing ground for new equipment, new concepts that CrossFit would bring to the table. So we kind of got to be the first ones to play with some stuff and try new things and that's always a lot of fun. The second is all the athletes that went there were all individual athletes and we all consider ourselves individuals, we compete as individuals. So being put on a team, the pressure kind of changed. Everybody was just in an unfamiliar territory and nobody took it too seriously. So you'd kind of get to go somewhere really cool, spend a week with a bunch of the athletes, get to know them a little better because you don't have that same stress of competition hanging around all the time. So you got to make friends and just have a lot of fun around the event knowing it wasn't super serious and nobody's hanging their hat on how well they competed at the Invitational. And then lastly, you make some fun stories and memories doing those kind of trips. I wish they still did it, it would be awesome if they brought it back. I still, one of my favorite stories in my career is in the 2016 Invitational. It was my coach Michelle's last year as an athlete, she was on the team. We were using the worm and in the last event, everyone on our team kept jumping forward and I was on the back of the worm. And by the end, I was holding basically the whole back half of the worm by myself. And I remember finishing that event feeling just wasted and everybody else on my team talking about how good they felt in that last section. And it made me feel pretty bad about my fitness for about a day until this photo surfaced. And now I always take advantage of any opportunity to bust it out and rub it in my coach's face when she says I'm slacking."